Two classrooms. One school year.180 Days represents the collaboration of two master teachers-Kelly Gallagher and Penny Kittle-over an entire school year: planning, teaching, and reflecting within their own and each other's classrooms in California and New Hampshire. Inspired by a teacher's question, "How do you fit it all in?" they identified and prioritized the daily, essential, belief-based practices that are worth spending time on. They asked, "Who will these students be as readers and writers after a year under our care?"What we make time for matters: what we plan, how we revise our plans while teaching, and how we reflect and decide what's next. The decision-making in the moment is the most essential work of teaching, and it's the ongoing study of the adolescents in front of us that has the greatest impact on our thinking. With both the demands of time and the complexity of diverse students in mind, Kelly and Penny mapped out a year of engaging literacy practices aligned to their core beliefs about what matters most. They share their insights on managing time and tasks and offer teaching strategies for engaging students in both whole class and independent work. Video clips of Kelly and Penny teaching in each other's classrooms bring this year to life and show you what a steadfast commitment to belief-based instruction looks like in action. 180 Days. Make every moment matter. Teach fearlessly. Empower all students to live literate lives.

    When exhausted parents are living the day-to-day grind, it can seem impossible to muster enough energy to make learning fun or interesting. How do parents nurture a love of learning amid childhood chaos, parental self-doubt, the flu, and state academic standards?In this book, Julie Bogart distills decades of experience--homeschooling her five now grown children, developing curricula, and training homeschooling families around the world--to show parents how to make education an exciting, even enchanting, experience for their kids, whether they're in elementary or high school.Enchantment is about ease, not striving. Bogart shows parents how to make room for surprise, mystery, risk, and adventure in their family's routine, so they can create an environment that naturally moves learning forward. If a child wants to pick up a new hobby or explore a subject area that the parent knows little about, it's easy to simply say "no" to end the discussion and the parental discomfort, while dousing their child's curious spark. Bogart gently invites parents to model brave learning for their kids so they, too, can approach life with curiosity, joy, and the courage to take learning risks.

    They also argue that it should be taught in the simplest way possible. Drawing on twenty years of experience, the authors present the Question Formulation Technique, a concise and powerful protocol that enables learners to produce their own questions, improve their questions, and strategize how to use them.Make Just One Change features the voices and experiences of teachers in classrooms across the country to illustrate the use of the Question Formulation Technique across grade levels and subject areas and with different kinds of learners.

    This book offers exciting -- and useful -- information about the mind and the brain that provides some answers on how people actually learn.

    An easy-to-learn overview of the theorist opens each chapter. The author then distills the theorists’ work to reveal how it relates to child care and children.

    Best-selling author Mike Schmoker boils down solutions for improved schools to the most powerful, simple actions and structures that ensure you prepare all students for college, careers, and citizenship.

    The proposed plan enables kids from the age of 18 months to 18 years to build the seven crucial “C’s”—competence, confidence, connection, character, contribution, coping, and control—needed to bounce back from challenges.A variety of approaches are featured such as building on natural strengths, fostering hope and optimism, avoiding risky behaviors, and taking care of oneself physically and emotionally. With new chapters on perfectionism, the negative portrayal of teens, military families, and what parents can do when resilience has reached its limits, this examination also includes two personalized guides for creating customized strategies.

    It's a message that stressed-out parents are craving to hear: Letting tots learn through play is not only okay-it's better than drilling academics!Drawing on overwhelming scientific evidence from their own studies and the collective research results of child development experts, and addressing the key areas of development-math, reading, verbal communication, science, self-awareness, and social skills-the authors explain the process of learning from a child's point of view. They then offer parents 40 age-appropriate games for creative play. These simple, fun--yet powerful exercises work as well or better than expensive high-tech gadgets to teach a child what his ever-active, playful mind is craving to learn.

    How did they do it? For the first time, Kenny reveals the secret to creating a powerful workplace culture that attracts the most talented people and brings out their passion and highest performance—a culture that produces stunning student achievement results and teachers who regularly use words like “magical” to describe the workplace environment. It is a must-read for anyone who cares about children and the future of this country and for leaders who want to inspire fierce dedication in their employees.

    This highly practical and accessible resource gives special and general education teachers the tools to implement explicit instruction in any grade level or content area. The authors are leading experts who provide clear guidelines for identifying key concepts, skills, and routines to teach; designing and delivering effective lessons; and giving students opportunities to practice and master new material. Sample lesson plans, lively examples, and reproducible checklists and teacher worksheets enhance the utility of the volume. Purchasers can also download and print the reproducible materials for repeated use. Video clips demonstrating the approach in real classrooms are available at the authors' website: www.explicitinstruction.org. See also related DVDs from Anita Archer: Golden Principles of Explicit Instruction; Active Participation: Getting Them All Engaged, Elementary Level; and Active Participation: Getting Them All Engaged, Secondary Level

    The children who heard more words were better prepared when they entered school. These same kids, when followed into third grade, had bigger vocabularies, were stronger readers, and got higher test scores. This disparity in learning is referred to as the achievement gap.Professor Dana Suskind, MD, learned of this thirty million word gap in the course of her work as a cochlear implant surgeon at University of Chicago Medical School and began a new research program along with her sister-in-law, Beth Suskind, to find the best ways to bridge that gap. The Thirty Million Word Initiative has developed programs for parents to show the kind of parent-child communication that enables optimal neural development and has tested the programs in and around Chicago across demographic groups. They boil down to getting parents to follow the three Ts: Tune in to what your child is doing; Talk more to your child using lots of descriptive words; and Take turns with your child as you engage in conversation. Parents are shown how to make the words they serve up more enriching. For example, instead of telling a child, “Put your shoes on,” one might say instead, “It is time to go out. What do we have to do?” The lab's new five-year longitudinal research program has just received funding so they can further corroborate their results. The neuroscience of brain plasticity is some of the most valuable and revolutionary medical science being done today. It enables us to think and do better. It is making a difference in the lives of both the old and young.  If you care for children, this landmark book is essential reading.

    His deep understanding of how we learn, his highly nuanced, empathetic humor, and his gentle regard for fellow learners of any age combine to provide the reader with 'aha after aha.'-Bea Warner, Staff Development DirectorEscondido, CAMake your job easier! Find out what really works for effective classroom management and reap the benefits of engaged and productive students!Conscious Classroom Management is a delightfully rich text that incorporates meaningful stories, insights, humor, and invaluable strategies for what really works in the classroom. And while classroom management is the primary factor behind how successful teachers can achieve sustained student learning, this wonderful text also addresses the human elements of teaching, focusing on three primary subjects: the students, the teacher, and the relationship between the two. Comprehensive and practical, Conscious Classroom Management helps teachers to: Eliminate power struggles with your most challenging students Discover how holding your ground can help students cooperate Uncover your teacher presence while reducing stress Create lessons that help students remainfocused, eager, and willing to learn Appreciate your craft at a deeper level Think ahead and prepare to teach Energize and invigorate how you mentor and train other teachersFor the novice, first-year teacher to the veteran, classroom-tested teacher, classroom management is the most critical factor for sustained student learning. And eliminating the cycle of student misbehavior is the cornerstone for effective classroom management. This reference transcends every level of preparation and provides new and experienced teachers with the practical and comprehensive strategies necessary to get the most out of every student. Written in an easy-to-read and humorous, conversational style, this resource is indispensable for new teacher induction or regular staff development.

    This book shows you how and gives you hundreds of lesson-planning ideas and strategies for every grade level and subject. Discover new educational tools that support research-based instruction, and learn ways to use technologies you already know to * Create and use advance organizers and nonlinguistic representations * Help students take notes, summarize content, and make comparisons * Engage students in cooperative learning * Help students generate and test hypotheses * Support students in practicing new skills and doing homework * Reinforce students? efforts through formative assessment and feedback Getting this guide ensures you always know when to use educational technologies, which ones are best for a learning task, and how they help students use new learning strategies.

    Written for students, pre-service and in-service teachers, it explains how to apply the principles of Visible Learning to any classroom anywhere in the world. The author offers concise and user-friendly summaries of the most successful interventions and offers practical step-by-step guidance to the successful implementation of visible learning and visible teaching in the classroom.This book:links the biggest ever research project on teaching strategies to practical classroom implementationchampions both teacher and student perspectives and contains step by step guidance including lesson preparation, interpreting learning and feedback during the lesson and post lesson follow upoffers checklists, exercises, case studies and best practice scenarios to assist in raising achievementincludes whole school checklists and advice for school leaders on facilitating visible learning in their institutionnow includes additional meta-analyses bringing the total cited within the research to over 900comprehensively covers numerous areas of learning activity including pupil motivation, curriculum, meta-cognitive strategies, behaviour, teaching strategies, and classroom management.Visible Learning for Teachers is a must read for any student or teacher who wants an evidence based answer to the question; how do we maximise achievement in our schools

    Then, open these pages.Welcome to Debbie Miller's real classroom where real students are learning to love to read, to write, and are together creating a collaborative and caring environment. In this book, Debbie focuses on how best to teach children strategies for comprehending text. She leads the reader through the course of a year showing how her students learn to become thoughtful, independent, and strategic readers. Through explicit instruction, modeling, classroom discussion, and, most important, by gradually releasing responsibility to her students, Debbie provides a model for creating a climate and culture of thinking and learning.Here you will learn:techniques for modeling thinking;specific examples of modeled strategy lessons for inferring, asking questions, making connections, determining importance in text, creating mental images, and synthesizing information;how to help children make their thinking visible through oral, written, artistic, and dramatic responses to literature;how to successfully develop book clubs as a way for children to share their thinking.Reading with Meaning shows you how to bring your imagined classroom to life. You will emerge with new tools for teaching comprehension strategies and a firm appreciation that a rigorous classroom can also be nurturing and joyful.