This is a book about LEARNING! Technology is not a magic solution for education. It is an opportunity! An opportunity to shake things up, to connect and grow, and to create dynamic learning experiences for our students!   In this three-part book, you will explore WHY it's time to Shake Up Learning, WHAT changes we can make in our classrooms to support dynamic learning experiences, and HOW to plan meaningful lessons for your classroom. Rapidly evolving technology and the demands of the digital age are transforming not only the way we live but also the way we learn. The tools students are using are newer, sleeker, and faster than ever before. In some cases, the medium is even changing the message. One thing is certain: Educators cannot continue the status quo if they expect to equip young people for the world to come.  Here's the good news: With digital tools that are available 24/7, learning doesn't have to stop when the bell rings. Learning can take on a life of its own! Even better, technology can help you connect with students and empower them to grow and develop a lifelong love for learning--and it doesn't have to be scary or complicated.  Shake Up Learning is a powerful guide and planning tool to help educators at all grade levels make the most of technology. Educator and blogger Kasey Bell guides you through the process of using technology and proven techniques to make learning dynamic. You'll discover . . .  Practical strategies to help move from static teaching to dynamic learning Straightforward and easy-to-use templates for crafting engaging learning opportunities  Tips and tricks for fearless implementation of powerful lesson plans Advice for moving from one-and-done activities to learning that evolves and inspires throughout the school year--and beyond!  This is MORE than just a book! This is a full LEARNING EXPERIENCE! This book is jammed packed with ideas, lessons, and resources, but you can bring it all to life with the companion website, ShakeUpLearningBook.com, and the companion online course, The Dynamic Learning Workshop! Be dynamic! Shake up learning in your classroom this year.

    Ron Clark's The Essential 55 took the country by storm, selling over over one million copies. Now he provides a new edition of the companion workbook with fresh exercises for teachers and parents to transform any child into a successful student. The Essential 55 Workbook is full of easy-to-do lessons to help you reinforce The Essential 55 rules that every child should know. With a series of self-tests, exercises, and questionnaires, The Essential 55 Workbook allows you to adapt Ron Clark's successful tools to your own situation. With determination, discipline, and regular rewards, the children you stick by will be the children you come to admire.

    Reckless. Impractical. Insecure. Distracted. These are all words commonly used to describe adolescents. But what if we recast these traits in a positive light? Teens possess insight, passion, idealism, sensitivity, and creativity in abundance--all qualities that can make a significant positive contribution to society.In this thought-provoking book, Thomas Armstrong looks at the power and promise of the teenage brain from an empathetic, strength-based perspective--and describes what middle and high school educators can do to make the most of their students' potential.Thoroughly grounded in current neuroscience research, the book explains what we know about how the adolescent brain works and proposes eight essential instructional elements that will help students develop the ability to think, make healthy choices, regulate their emotions, handle social conflict, consolidate their identities, and learn enough about the world to move into adulthood with dignity and grace.Armstrong provides practical strategies and real-life examples from schools that illustrate these eight key practices in action. In addition, you'll find a glossary of brain terms, a selection of brain-friendly lesson plans across the content areas, and a list of resources to support and extend the book's ideas and practices.There is a colossal mismatch between how the adolescent brain has evolved over the millennia and the passive, rote learning experiences that are all too common in today's test-obsessed educational climate. See the amazing difference--in school and beyond--when you use the insights from this book to help students tap into the power of their changing brains.

    Anabel Garza: No school board would have put her forward as a model principal. Pregnant and alone at sixteen, widowed by twenty-five, Anabel got along teaching English to Mexican immigrants, raising her son, and taking night school classes.But then no model candidate would have taken the job at John H. Reagan High School. Once known to sports fans across Texas as the great champion Big Blue, Reagan was collapsing. The kids were failing the standardized tests, failing on the basketball court, failing even to show up. Teenage pregnancy was endemic. If the test scores and attendance did not improve, the school was set to close at the end of the 2009-10 school year.Anabel took the assignment. Her first work was triage. She cruised the malls for dropouts. She fired ten teachers, including one who produced a ruler to bemoan the distance from the parking lot to her classroom door. She listened to angry lectures from union officials and angrier ones from black ministers. She kept going. She tailored each student's tutoring to the standardized tests. The numbers started to come up.But with the state education commissioner threatening to close the school, the real work began. Anabel set out to re-create the high school she remembered, with plays and dances, yearbooks and clubs, teachers who brought books alive and crowded bleachers to cheer on the basketball team. She reached out to the middle schools, the neighborhoods, and the churches. She gave good teachers free rein. She mixed love and expectations.The circumstances facing Reagan High are playing out all over the country. The get-tough crowd of education reformers, led by Obama's secretary of education, are redoubling their efforts to replace public schools with charter companies. But what happens when the centerpiece of a community is threatened? And what happens when one person just won't quit?For the first time, we can tally the costs of rankings and scores. In this powerful rejoinder to the prevailing winds of American education policy, Michael Brick examines the do-or-die year at Reagan High. Compelling, character-driven narrative journalism, Saving the School pays an overdue tribute to the great American high school and to the people inside.

    KEY TOPICS: Specific, practical strategies include ways to get students active from the start through activities that build teamwork and immediately get them thinking about the subject matter. 101 activities include ice-breakers for the beginning of class, strategies for the middle of a lesson, and concluding exercises to foster student reflection and future application. In addition, these activities are designed to enliven learning, deepen understanding, and promote retention. Designed for the preservice and inservice teacher, this book is effective for anyone teaching in middle schools, high schools, colleges, and centers for adult education. For professionals working in middle school/secondary school education.

    Useful reading for teachers who are eager to find stimulating ways to engage students' interests and boost academic performance, this volume outlines the principles of social emotional learning (SEL) that educators can follow to help all students to achieve in the math and science classroom.

    This practical book features chapters on the five powerful reading/thinking strategies — connecting, questioning, visualizing, inferring, and transforming. It offers techniques for helping children recognize what happens in their heads while they read, with simple applications that can be incorporated into any classroom routine. A valuable handbook that promotes reading independence with sequential lessons, teacher-modeling tips, and suggestions for guided practice.

    

    Georgia HeardHumanity and warmth are the cornerstones of quality nonfiction writing. But how can students create them in genres that at first seem more informational than intimate? In Finding the Heart of Nonfiction, Georgia Heard shows how mentor texts can help students read for seven essential craft tools and then use them to create inviting nonfiction that keeps readers' interest.Lyrical and practical, Finding the Heart of Nonfiction describes how to choose mentor texts, use them, and mine them for exemplary instruction. Between these suggestions and the instructional ideas, Georgia shows how students can write nonfiction that informs and inspires. You'll find thoughtful, immediately useful support as you:introduce nonfiction with her handpicked, reproducible mentor texts get students writing with the instructional ideas in Georgia's Try This sections familiarize writers with nonfiction craft and text features connect nonfiction work to the Common Core State Standards collect mentor texts tailored to your students. My hope, writes Georgia, is that you and your students will be inspired by the mentor texts I've chosen-but also inspired to seek out your own mentor texts and continue to explore the world through nonfiction. Trust Finding the Heart of Nonfiction and help your students write with purpose, voice, and passion.Preview the book. Download and read a sample chapter.

    Twenty reliable, flexible strategies (along with dozens of variations) are organized into these groups of instruction:*mastery style to emphasize the development of student memory;*understanding style to expand students' capacities to reason and explain;*self-expressive style to stimulate and nourish students' imaginations and creativity; *interpersonal style to help students find meaning in the relationships they forge as partners and team members, united in the act of learning; and*four-style strategies that integrate all four styles.To guide teachers in delivering content to students, the authors started with the best research-based teaching and learning strategies and created a tool called the Strategic Dashboard. The dashboard provides information about each teaching strategy in a concise, visual profile; it is also designed to document how you incorporate current, highly respected research into your instructional plans.For each strategy, you'll find the following information:*a brief introduction to the strategy;*an example of a teacher using the strategy in the classroom;*the research base supporting the strategy and how the strategy benefits students;*how to implement the strategy using a list of clear steps; *guidance through the planning process, providing steps, examples, and suggestions for designing superior lessons; and*additional tools, strategies, and resources for adapting and expanding the use of each strategy.The authors have combined their years of research and practice to deliver reliable, high-impact, flexible teaching and learning strategies grounded in current, highly regarded research to teachers at all levels of experience.

    It will knock the socks off this profession.-Harvey Daniels Author of Subjects Matter and Content-Area Writing The renaissance in comprehension instruction launched by Mosaic of Thought has led to changes in hundreds of thousands of classrooms, where teachers now model reading strategies, and students probe meaning more deeply. But no book in the field has satisfactorily answered the question: What does it really mean to comprehend? In To Understand, Ellin Oliver Keene not only explores this important question, but reveals what teachers can do to encourage all students to engage in deep understanding far more consistently than before.In discovering what's really behind comprehension, To Understand goes well beyond comprehension strategy instruction. Keene identifies specific Dimensions and Outcomes of Understanding-characteristics identified in readers with a highly developed ability to make sense of text-to help you rethink what comprehension is. She demonstrates how to leverage the Dimensions and Outcomes into relevant, provocative, memorable instruction. To Understand proposes a model that incorporates all aspects of literacy instruction-word learning and comprehension-and describes how teachers can focus on what matters most in literacy content. Keene shows that when teachers target the most essential content, they have the time to help every student engage more deeply with texts and discover a passion for reading and learning. The model is founded on four simple, but powerful concepts:Focus on what's important by teaching vital concepts in depth rather than skimming over nonessential skillsUse research-based teaching and learning strategies, including proven-effective comprehension and language-based strategies, then taking them further by showing students how the strategies lead them to a fuller understand of a textTeach the essential concepts over a long period of time so that children have an opportunity to learn not only a comprehension strategy, but to explore where that strategy leads in their understandingGive students numerous opportunities to apply the concepts in a variety of texts and contexts. With To Understand in hand, you'll find new ways to draw out the innate intellectual interest in every student and spark dramatic improvements in literacy learning and comprehension, even among students who struggle. You'll see that by rethinking what it means to understand-by teaching children the Outcomes and Dimensions of understanding-you can help students exceed expectations while broadening your vision of their abilities, their capacity, and their energy for learning. There's still more-much more-to learn about comprehension. Read To Understand, join Ellin Oliver Keene, and discover that what's at the very core of comprehension can not only reinvigorate your teaching but take your students to new, uncharted levels of learning.

    In this expanded series, Killgallon presents the same proven methodology but offers all-new writing exercises for middle school, high school, and college students.Unlike traditional grammar books that emphasize sentence analysis, these worktexts asks students to imitate the sentence styles of professional writers, making the sentence composing process enjoyable and challenging. Killgallon teaches subliminally, nontechnically-the ways real writers compose their sentences, the ways students subsequently intuit within their own writing.Designed to produce sentence maturity and variety, the worktexts offer extensive practice in four sentence-manipulating techniques: sentence unscrambling, sentence imitating, sentence combining, and sentence expanding. It's demonstrably true that Sentence Composing can work anywhere--in any school, with any student.

    Judy Willis responds with an emphatic yes in this informative guide to getting better results in math class. Tapping into abundant research on how the brain works, Willis presents a practical approach for how we can improve academic results by demonstrating certain behaviors and teaching students in a way that minimizes negativity.With a straightforward and accessible style, Willis shares the knowledge and experience she has gained through her dual careers as a math teacher and a neurologist. In addition to learning basic brain anatomy and function, readers will learn how to* Improve deep-seated negative attitudes toward math.* Plan lessons with the goal of achievable challenge in mind.* Reduce mistake anxiety with techniques such as errorless math and estimation.* Teach to different individual learning strengths and skill levels.* Spark motivation.* Relate math to students' personal interests and goals.* Support students in setting short-term and long-term goals.* Convince students that they can change their intelligence.With dozens of strategies teachers can use right now, Learning to Love Math puts the power of research directly into the hands of educators. A Brain Owner's Manual, which dives deeper into the structure and function of the brain, is also included--providing a clear explanation of how memories are formed and how skills are learned. With informed teachers guiding them, students will discover that they can build a better brain . . . and learn to love math!

    Rather, a combination of causes can create a perfect storm of failure.” —Wiley BlevinsPicture a class of kindergarteners singing the alphabet song, and teaching phonics  seems as easy as one-two, three, A, B, C, right? In a Fresh Look at Phonics, Wiley Blevins explains why it can get tricky, and then delivers a plan so geared for success, that teachers, coaches, and administrators will come to see owning this book as a before and after moment in their professional lives. In this amazing follow up to his renowned resource Phonics From A-Z, Wiley uses the data he has collected over two decades to share which approaches truly work, which have failed, and how teachers can fine-tune their daily instruction for success. You will learn to focus on the seven critical ingredients of phonics teaching that produce the greatest student learning gains— readiness skills, scope and sequence, blending, dictation, word awareness, high frequency words, and reading connected texts. Then, for each ingredient, Wiley shares:   Activities, routines, word lists, and lessons that develop solid foundations for reading Ideas for differentiation, ELL, and advanced learners to ensure adequate progress for all learners Help on decodable texts, what not to over-do, and what you can’t do enough of for your students’ achievement Interactive “Day Clinic” activities that facilitate teacher self-reflection and school wide professional learning In a final section, Wiley details the ten common reasons instruction fails and shows teachers how to correct these missteps regarding lesson pacing, transitions, decodable texts, writing activities, assessment and more. A Fresh Look at Phonics is the evidence-based solution you have been seeking. Wiley Blevins, Ph.D., is a world-renowned expert on early reading, and author of the seminal book Phonics From A-Z among many other works. He has taught in both the United States and South America, and regularly trains teachers throughout Asia. He holds a Doctorate in Education from Harvard University, and has worked with numerous educational scholars, including Jeanne Chall, Isabel Beck, Marilyn Adams, Louisa Moats, and Dianne August, and others.

    A how-to guide to classroom inquiry that takes educators through the research process step by step, answering each critical question from where do I begin? through publishing the results.