Rigorous Curriculum Design: How to Create Curricular Units of Study That Align Standards, Instruction, and Assessment


Larry Ainsworth - 2011
    Here is a brief overview of each part: Part 1, Seeing the Big Picture Connections First, defines curriculum in terms of rigor, provides the background of this model, connects curriculum design to the big picture of standards, assessments, instruction, and data practices, previews the step-by-step design sequence, and introduces end-of-chapter reader assignments. Part 2, Building the Foundation for Designing Curricular Units, explains the five steps that must first be taken to lay the foundation upon which to build the curricular units of study, and provides explicit guidelines for applying each step. Part 3, Designing the Curricular Unit of Study From Start to Finish, gives the nuts and bolts directions for designing a rigorous curricular unit of study, from beginning to end, and concludes with an overview of how to implement the unit in the classroom or instructional program. Formatively assessing students along the way, educators analyze resulting student data to diagnose student learning needs and then adjust ongoing instruction accordingly. Part 4, Organizing, Monitoring, and Sustaining Implementation Efforts, addresses the role of administrators in beginning and continuing the work of implementation. These final three chapters provide first-person narra - tives and advice to administrators from administrators who have personally led the implementation and sustainability efforts of curriculum redesign and related practices within their own school systems. I have endeavored to pull together all of the elements necessary for designing a rigorous curriculum, to position these elements in a sequential order, and to provide a step-by-step approach for constructing each one. My hope is that this road map will not only show you the way to design your own curriculum, but also allow you the flexibility of customizing it to fit your own purpose and needs. As with the realization of any lofty vision, it will take a great deal of time, thought, energy, and collaboration to create and revise a single curriculum, let alone multiple curricula. The best advice I can offer is to regard whatever you produce as a continual work in progress, to be accomplished over one, two, or three years, or even longer. As my friend and colleague Robert Kuklis points out, curriculum designers shape and modify the process as they move through it. It is important that they know this is not a rigid, prescriptive procedure, but rather an opportunity for learning, adapting, and improving. This preserves fidelity to the process, encourages flexibility, and promotes local ownership. Whenever people s spirits need lifting because the work seems so demanding, remind everyone that it is a process, not a one-time event. You are creating something truly significant a comprehensive body of work that is going to serve your educators, students, and parents for years to come!"

Reframing the Path to School Leadership: A Guide for Teachers and Principals


Lee G. Bolman - 2002
    A series of dialogues between a novice and a master teacher and between a new and a seasoned principal demonstrate how framing--and then reframing--challenges brings clarity.

Life on the Tenure Track: Lessons from the First Year


James M. Lang - 2005
    Engaging and accessible, Life on the Tenure Track will delight and enlighten faculty, graduate students, and administrators alike.

Read Write Teach: Choice and Challenge in the Reading-Writing Workshop


Linda Rief - 2014
    In ReadWriteTeach, Linda offers the what, how, and why of a year's worth of reading and writing for middle and high school students with a framework that is as flexible as it is comprehensive....This book isn't a compilation of tear-out reproducibles designed to help us replicate Linda's practices, writes Maja Wilson in the foreword. Instead, it's the most powerful gift that a master teacher can give us: the story of her thinking and feeling as she teaches. Linda's insights and beliefs are woven throughout a comprehensive overview of best literacy practices, which include:essentials in the reading-writing workshop grounding our choices in our beliefs getting to know ourselves and our students as readers and writers. Students' voices, through examples of their writing, drawing, and thinking, resonate throughout the book and characterize the thoughtful readers, writers, and citizens of the world that they become under Linda's guidance.Online companion resources include all of the handouts that Linda uses in her own classroom. Download a free sample chapter!

Grammar Keepers: Lessons That Tackle Students′ Most Persistent Problems Once and for All, Grades 4-12 (Corwin Literacy)


Gretchen S. Bernabei - 2015
    . . frequently and across the grades! The biggest issue? Most of our grades 4-12 students continue to make the same old errors year after year. Grammar Keepers to the rescue, with 101 lessons that help students internalize the conventions of correctness once and for all. Bernabei’s key ingredients include Daily journal writing to increase practice and provide an authentic context Minilessons and Interactive Dialogues that model how to make grammatical choices A “Keepers 101” sheet to track teaching and “Parts of Speech Sheet” for student reference

We Don't Know We Don't Know


Nick Lantz - 2010
    The result is a poetry that upends the deeply and dangerously assumed concepts of such a culture—that new knowledge is always better knowledge, that history is a steady progress, that humans are in control of the natural order. Nick Lantz’s poems hurtle through time from ancient theories of physics to the CIA training manual for the practice of torture, from the history of the question mark to the would-be masterpieces left incomplete by the deaths of Leonardo da Vinci, Nikolai Gogol, Bruce Lee, and Jimi Hendrix. Selected by Linda Gregerson for the esteemed Bakeless Prize for Poetry, We Don’t Know We Don’t

Unnatural Causes


Tober Charles - 2019
    Matt McRaid, whose ancestors left the island more than a century before, joins a team of ruthless treasure hunters in search of untold wealth. One of their number is killed within hours and others soon follow. At first their deaths are put down to freak accidents but after only a couple of days in this mysterious place it becomes apparent to Matt that the true cause is far more strange ... and much more dangerous both to them and the whole of humanity.

A Collection of Rumi: Quotes and Poetry


Alayna Miller - 2016
    Rumi is one of the greatest poetical geniuses and spiritual masters in human history. His name stands for Love and ecstatic flight into the infinite. Today, Rumi is one of the most widely read poets in the west and has been described to be on par with Beethoven, Shakespeare and Mozart. During a 25 year period, Rumi composed over 70,000 verses of poetry focusing on diverse and varied topics. Rumi’s influence goes beyond nationalities and ethnicities with his work having been translated in numerous languages around the world. His work is mystical and intensely philosophical, with poems of fiery soulful expression, to passionate love verses filled with yearning and desire. Rumi describes the life of mystics as a “gathering of lovers, where there is no high or low, smart or ignorant, no proper schooling required.” He believed in a life journey following a love-based principle free of guilt, fear and shame. The bringing together of a wealthy nobleman and a poor wanderer serve as a reminder to us all that inspiration can come from anywhere and anyone can aid us in advancing our growth.

Quotes of Wisdom - 99 Buddha's quotes


Raja Vishupadi - 2013
    These quotes are a source of inspiration and motivation.Read these quotes to meditate and think about all the wisdom they contain.

Using the Workshop Approach in the High School English Classroom: Modeling Effective Writing, Reading, and Thinking Strategies for Student Success


Cynthia D. Urbanski - 2005
    Take a peek into an effective workshop-based classroom and discover how you can enhance adolescents' technical and creative abilities in reading, writing, and thinking.

Dealing with Difficult Teachers


Todd Whitaker - 1999
    .This book provides tips and strategies to help school leaders improve, neutralize, or eliminate resistant and negative teachers. 1999.

Smarter Charts, K-2: Optimizing an Instructional Staple to Create Independent Readers and Writers


Marjorie Martinelli - 2012
    You don't even have to be able to draw. Just put the child before the chart.Marjorie Martinelli and Kristine Mraz Listen to an interview with Marjorie and Kristi, the Chartchums, on Education Talk Radio.Commercially available charts leave you hanging? Want the secret to jump-off-the-wall charts that stick with kids? Trust Smarter Charts.Did you ever want to know:What do great charts look like? How many is too many? Where are the best places for them in my classroom? How long do I keep them? How do I know if they are working? Then you'll want to meet Marjorie Martinelli and Kristine Mraz, the Chartchums. They struggled with the same questions, and Smarter Charts shares not only the answers, but the best practices they've discovered as well. Amp up the power of your charts with tips on design and language, instructional use, and self-assessment. Even better, discover surprising strategies that deepen engagement, strengthen retention, and heighten independence-all by involving students in chart making.Packed with full-color sample charts from real classrooms, Smarter Charts shares simple, brain-based strategies proven to make your classroom an even more active, effective space for literacy instruction and classroom management.

All the Whiskey in Heaven: Selected Poems


Charles Bernstein - 2010
    Yet despite the distinctive differences from poem to poem, Bernstein's characteristic explorations of how language both limits and liberates thought are present throughout. Modulating the comic and the dark structural invention with buoyant soundplay, these challenging works give way to poems of lyric excess and striking emotional range. This is poetry for poetry's sake, as formally radical as it is socially engaged, providing equal measures of aesthetic pleasure, hilarity, and philosophical reflection. Long considered one of America's most inventive and influential contemporary poets, Bernstein reveals himself to be both trickster and charmer.

Catching Readers Before They Fall: Supporting Readers Who Struggle, K-4


Pat Johnson - 2010
    They describe classroom environments that support all students and touch upon comprehension strategies and how to help children integrate them.This book is essential reading for all who work with struggling readers in any context and contains a wealth of resources, including a thorough explanation of all the sources of information readers use to solve words, examples and scenarios of teacher/student interactions, prompts to use with struggling readers, lessons on modeling, and assessment guidelines.

Writing Is an Aid to Memory


Lyn Hejinian - 1996
    Hejinian's important collection of poetry from 1978, available again.