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!"

    Based on the popular blog, Smart Classroom Management, the book progresses step-by-step through 46 keys, showing you how to manage your classroom in a way that inspires your students to want to behave. By the end, you will have the knowledge to take over any K-8 classroom and create the kind of peaceful buy joyous learning experience your students will always remember.

    A special emphasis on the needs of new and struggling teachers includes practical actions for earning student respect and teaching them behavior management skills. The author also introduces a real-time coaching model and explains how to establish a schoolwide Assertive Discipline(r) program.

    This practical resource shows teachers how to be effective and have a life! Author and educator Maia Heyck-Merlin explores the key habits of Together Teachers—how they plan ahead, organize work and their classrooms, and how they spend their limited free time. The end goal is always strong outcomes for their students. So what does Together, or Together Enough, look like? To some teachers it might mean neat filing systems. To others it might mean using time efficiently to get more done in fewer minutes. Regardless, Together Teachers all rely on the same skills. In six parts, the book clearly lays out these essential skills. Heyck-Merlin walks the reader through how to establish simple yet successful organizational systems. There are concrete steps that every teacher can implement to achieve greater stability and success in their classrooms and in their lives. Contains templates and tutorials to create and customize a personal organizational system and includes a companion website: www.thetogetherteacher.com Recommends various electronic or online tools to make a teacher's school day (and life!) more efficient and productive Includes a Reader's Guide, a great professional development resource; teachers will answer reflection questions, make notes about habits, and select tools that best match individual needs and preferences Ebook customers can access CD contents online.  Refer to the section in the Table of Contents labeled, Download CD/DVD Content, for detailed instructions.

     Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics, Grades K-12 helps teachers implement 14 optimal practices for thinking that create an ideal setting for deep mathematics learning to occur. This guideProvides the what, why, and how of each practice Includes firsthand accounts of how these practices foster thinking Offers a plethora of macro moves, micro moves, and rich tasks to get started

    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.

     In this book, his priority is to help kids who don’t have the advantage of going to his school, Capital Prep.  He wants to save your kid, and the kid next door, and the kid down the street from getting a typical third-rate American education.  If you’re a parent who has worried recently about how depressed your child seems when he dresses for school in the morning…or how little of what happens during the school day seems to sink into her brain… or how much of your child’s homework is busywork, you need this book.   If you’re a teacher who is putting your heart and soul into the job but are surrounded by colleagues who are “phoning it in,” you need this book.  If you’re a committed, forward-thinking principal who wants to get rid of the faculty bad apples, but are continually stymied by Mafia-style teachers-unions, you need this book. *If you’re a citizen who worries about the $1 trillion-plus GDP loss that America suffers every year because our system of education doesn’t measure up, you need this book. In this solution-oriented manifesto, Steve Perry covers the full range of issues holding back today’s students.  He shows parents how to find great teachers (and get rid of the bad ones)…how to make readers out of kids who hate to read…how to make the school curriculum thrilling rather than sleep-inducing…how to conduct an all-important education “home audit”… how to “e-organize” if school boards and administrators aren’t getting the message…how to build a “school of the future,” and much more. The era of third-rate education is over.  Steve Perry isn’t going to let the fools and scoundrels get away with it any longer.  Push has come to shove!

    

    An Off the Grid lodge owner in Fish Lakes, Alaska, Tom enthralls roomfuls of guests every year from the Lower 48 and around the world with tales of his adventures, foibles, and SNAFUs in 44 years living in the Alaskan wilderness. From his start as a Pennsylvania farmboy who ran off to join the United States Air Force, to his arrival in Alaska with less than a hundred dollars in his wallet and a growing family in his back seat, to his forty years as a Bush pilot and his accidental introduction to the fishing lodge business, to his multiple brushes with death, hardship, and questionable characters, Tom Brion has a story to cover it all. A pioneer in sustainable homesteading and off-the-Grid living, Tom Brion built his first lodge in Alaska on five acres in the Lake Creek area, in 1979, and continues to this day building and working heavy machinery 60 miles from any road. Born in 1941, Tom has collected 74 years of humorous, heart-wrenching, and sometimes mind-blowing stories of traveling, hunting, and exploring the backcountry of Alaska in the pilot’s seat of a Vietnam-era Cessna Birddog. A biography in the form of short life stories, Tom Brion’s memoir takes us to a rural Bush life where people live off the land, drill their own wells, put out their own forest fires, and depend on their neighbors to pick up their mail. Surrounded by nature, Tom continues to fly, plow, run his bulldozer, and wrangle his subsistence fishwheel up the river every year in the Skwentna area of Alaska, where temperatures in winter drop to 45 below zero and summers can see entire months without rain. Follow him in this (mostly) nonfiction anthology of (somewhat) true stories from the Last Frontier as he gives the straight scoop about bears, outhouses, farming, flooding, fishing, moose, guns, and aviation in the 49th State.An avid hunter, outdoorsman, fisherman, and jack of all trades, Tom documents his life with photos and illustrations that detail an epic adventure from start to finish.

    Think again. Many-headed monsters, temperamental gods, landscape-changing battles, and a little bit of cannibalism thrown in for good measure: the gruesome world of Greek mythology is not for the fainthearted. From the primordial chaos to the birth of the first humans, this thrilling book retells the stories of the early gods in their full skull-splitting, baby-eating glory. Featuring thunder-wielding world-class jerk, Zeus, at the heart of the narrative, this is a hilarious, if a bit macabre, introduction to Greek mythology as you’ve never heard it before.

    That’s all the notice America gets of a fast-approaching solar storm so unprecedented in scale it sets the geomagnetic scientists in a panic. Many citizens don’t have the resources, or even the concern, to take preparatory measures for the overhyped-sounding warnings that life as they know it is about to be over. Joel McConnell, a self-made Washington DC businessman and survival hobbyist, is not one of those. But bugging out with his culture-loving girlfriend before the solar flare hits proves to be a too much of a challenge on such short notice. With the power grid suddenly destroyed, most modern electronics fried, and cities quickly descending into utter turmoil, they find the 500-mile journey to Joel’s well-stocked rural retreat a maze littered with opportunistic criminals and increasing hostility. That isn’t all. It soon becomes evident the sun storm did more than plunge the western world into darkness and civil unrest. It left something equally sinister behind. Something that feeds the human compulsion for disunity to such extremes it makes the recent political divisiveness in America look like harmonic brotherhood by comparison. With the effects worsening daily, Joel learns the highway is but one treacherous adversary he must defeat. Others can sprout where you least expect them.

    He thought the small, peaceful valley miles away from the busy resort town of Hawthorn would be the perfect setting for his work. He invites two of his closest friends to stay a few weeks to do some hunting in the rugged and remote area. After their arrival, Troy gives them a tour around the property and plans are made to get an early start the next day. Morning arrives quickly and the eager hunters head out to their tree stands to settle in for a long hunt. Soon, an unexpected storm front moves in, and they are forced off the mountain. As they begin making their way down, they are suddenly and viciously attacked by a beast they can't believe is real. Separated from the others, badly injured and desperate to escape, Troy attempts to go for help. The winter storm makes the drive down the mountain road extremely treacherous and with his injuries making it more difficult, he loses control and wrecks his Jeep. He is found unconscious by a snow plow driver and wakes up days later in a hospital bed. Troy tells the unbelievable and horrifying story of the cryptid encounter on the mountain and desperately pleads for help for the friends he was forced to leave behind. Believing it to be a sensationalized story geared at publicity, the sheriff all but dismisses Troy's unbelievable claims, but when a search uncovers the body of one of the men and the other one missing, Troy becomes the prime suspect. How can he prove his innocence when the real killer isn't supposed to exist?

    

    I was their best friend's little sis.  Now I'm all grown up - and they've taken notice. After a plane crash, we're left stranded on an island. But danger lurks in the lush green forest... And I'm left wondering if my fantasy will turn into a nightmare.    Despite the fear of never being rescued, I can't help but be excited.  I want them.  All of them.  And from the looks of it, they want me too.  They're more than just my brother's best friends. They're the stars of my teenage dreams.  And now, my four hot bosses. But this tropical oasis is filled with dangerous secrets. And I might not live to play out my greatest fantasy ever. Can we survive paradise and find our way home to true bliss?

     The Duke of Ruin When Lord Greene wagers his daughter's hand in marriage in a card game, no one is less surprised the woman herself. The only thing that shocks Olive is that the man that he has gambled her away to is none other than The Duke of Ruin. Rumours abound that the Sixth Duke of Everleigh callously murdered his late wife and killed her lover in a duel --and now Olive is to become his bride. Ruan Ashford took one look at Olive Greene and knew that he had to have her in his bed. The beautiful, auburn-haired temptress will make a perfect Duchess; there's only one problem - his new wife despises him. When a chance arises for Olive to disappear she readily grabs hold of it, and soon the Duke of Ruin is hunting the Cornish countryside for his runaway bride. When he finds her can he convince her that he's not the dreadful villain the world thinks him to be and that his love for her is real? The Lord of Heartbreak Miss Jane Deveraux is in a bind; her brother, Viscount Jarvis, has married and his new wife does not want her bookish sister-in-law encroaching on their wedded bliss. The Viscountess makes it very clear that Jane must find a husband, but at five and twenty the confirmed spinster doesn’t have many suitors lining up to claim her hand. What Jane needs is a large sum of money, so that she can buy the local boarding house, and live out her days holding intellectual saloons for the egalitarian set. Though where she’ll find this money is anyone’s guess… James Fairweather, Lord Payne is the heir to the Ducal seat of Hawkfield. Tall, handsome and with a roguish charm that has women falling at his feet, he should be living the easy life of an entitled bachelor. The only problem is that his father has tired of his rakish ways and declares that unless Payne cleans up his act he will be disinherited. What Payne needs is a respectable —dare he say boring— woman whom he can parade around for a season to convince his father that he has changed his ways. The only person who fits the bill is his friend’s sister Jane, who reluctantly agrees to go along with the charade —for a price, of course. The Marquess of Temptation Since her father’s death, Miss Hestia B. Stockbow has been living a lie. Working as a companion, under an assumed name, all she wants to do is keep her head down and forget about the scandalous tragedy that haunts her past. There’s only one problem… After two delicious, stolen kisses, the usually icy and aloof Alexander Delaney, Marquess of Falconbridge, finds himself entranced by Belinda Bowstock, a lowly paid companion. When he discovers that she is, in fact, his missing ward, Alex realises there's only one thing he can do: Marry the chit and help her solve the mystery of her father's suspicious death. The Captain of Betrayal At the age of eight and twenty, Polly Jenkins has happily resigned herself to the life of a spinster. Many years ago, a young man broke her heart, and she has guarded it fiercely ever since. Polly's life, on the coast of Cornwall, is one of peaceful happiness--until, that is, Captain James Black arrives at her door. The young man she once knew is gone, replaced by a dashing Captain--one who is determined to marry her, and who won't take no for an answer...