"Why Won't You Just Tell Us the Answer?": Teaching Historical Thinking in Grades 7-12


Bruce Lesh - 2011
    Bruce Lesh believes that this is due to the way we teach history—lecture and memorization. Over the last fifteen years, Bruce has refined a method of teaching history that mirrors the process used by historians, where students are taught to ask questions of evidence and develop historical explanations. And now in his new book “Why Won’t You Just Tell Us the Answer?” he shows teachers how to successfully implement his methods in the classroom.Students may think they want to be given the answer. Yet, when they are actively engaged in investigating the past—the way professional historians do—they find that history class is not about the boring memorization of names, dates, and facts. Instead, it’s challenging fun. Historical study that centers on a question, where students gather a variety of historical sources and then develop and defend their answers to that question, allows students to become actual historians immersed in an interpretive study of the past.Each chapter focuses on a key concept in understanding history and then offers a sample unit on how the concept can be taught. Readers will learn about the following: • Exploring Text, Subtext, and Context: President Theodore Roosevelt and the Panama Canal • Chronological Thinking and Causality: The Rail Strike of 1877 • Multiple Perspectives: The Bonus March of 1932 • Continuity and Change Over Time: Custer’s Last Stand • Historical Significance: The Civil Rights Movement • Historical Empathy: The Truman-MacArthur DebateBy the end of the book, teachers will have learned how to teach history via a lens of interpretive questions and interrogative evidence that allows both student and teacher to develop evidence-based answers to history’s greatest questions.

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

The Impact Cycle: What Instructional Coaches Should Do to Foster Powerful Improvements in Teaching


Jim Knight - 2017
    His well is deep; he draws from it the best tools from practitioners, the wisdom of experience, and research-based insights. And he never loses sight of the bigger picture: the point of all this is to have more impact in this life we're lucky enough to live." --MICHAEL BUNGAY STANIER, Author of The Coaching Habit "Coaching done well may be the most effective intervention designed for human performance. Jim Knight's work has helped me understand the details of how effective coaching can and should be done." --DR. ATUL GAWANDE, surgeon, public health researcher, and author of The Checklist Manifesto Identify . . . Learn . . . Improve When it comes to improving practice, few professional texts can rival the impact felt by Jim Knight's Instructional Coaching. For hundreds of thousands of educators, Jim bridged the long-standing divide between staff room and classroom offering up a much a more collaborative, respectful, and efficient PD model for achieving instructional excellence. Now, one decade of research and hundreds of in-services later, Jim takes that work a significant step further with The Impact Cycle an all-new instructional coaching cycle to help teachers and, in turn, their students improve in clear, measurable ways. Quintessential Jim, The Impact Cycle comes loaded with every possible tool to help you reach your coaching goals, starting with a comprehensive video program, robust checklists, and a model Instructional Playbook. Quickly, you'll learn how to Interact and dialogue with teachers as partners Guide teachers to identify emotionally compelling, measurable, and student-focused goals Set coaching goals, plan strategies, and monitor progress for optimal impact Use documentary-style video and text-based case studies as models to promote maximum teacher clarity and proactive problem solving Streamline teacher enrollment, data collection, and deep listening Jim writes, "When we grow, improve, and learn, when we strive to become a better version of ourselves, we tap into something deep in ourselves that craves that kind of growth." Read The Impact Cycle and soon you'll discover how you can continually refine your practice to help teachers and students realize their fullest potential. View Jim Knight's Impact Cycle video trailer:

Unpack Your Impact: How Two Primary Teachers Ditched Problematic Lessons and Built a Culture-Centered Curriculum


Naomi O'Brien - 2020
    

Free Range Learning How Homeschooling Changes Everything


Laura Grace Weldon - 2010
    This data-from neurologists, child development specialists, anthropologists, educators, historians and business innovators-turns many current assumptions about school-based education upside down.The books factual approach is balanced by quotes and stories from over 100 homeschoolers from the U.S., Canada, Germany, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, Mexico, India and Singapore. These parents and kids are the true authorities on alternative learning. Free Range Learning demonstrates:that children and teens can best be nurtured outside of restrictive educational systems that we can restore what is heart-centered and meaningful back to a central place in education how networking with others enriches the learning experience for our kids how homeschooling has become a force of positive social change-making the community a better place for everyone.The simple choice to homeschool is much more significant than a homespun method of education. Laura Weldon asks us to consider this choice as participation in a cultural shift toward redefining success and as a form of collective intelligence with major implications for the future of education. Laura Grace Weldon writes for national publications about learning, sustainability and spirituality. She is a long-time columnist with Home Education Magazine, and an award-winning poet. Laura lives on a small farm with her husband and their four homeschooled children. Her background includes teaching conflict resolution and developing community enrichment workshops.

Literacy Is Not Enough: 21st Century Fluencies for the Digital Age


Lee Crockett - 2011
    If students are to thrive in their academic and 21st century careers, then independent and creative thinking hold the highest currency. The authors explain in detail how to add these new components of literacy:Solution Fluency Information Fluency Creativity Fluency Collaboration Fluency Students must master a completely different set of skills to succeed in a culture of technology-driven automation, abundance, and access to global labor markets. The authors present an effective framework for integrating comprehensive literacy or fluency into the traditional curriculum.

Happy Teachers Change the World: A Guide for Cultivating Mindfulness in Education


Thich Nhat Hanh - 2017
    Spanning the whole range of schools and grade levels, from preschool through higher education, these techniques are grounded in the everyday world of schools, colleges, and universities. Beginning firmly with teachers and all those working with students, including administrators, counselors, and other personnel, the Plum Village approach stresses that educators must first establish their own mindfulness practice since everything they do in the classroom will be based on that foundation. The book includes easy-to-follow, step-by-step techniques perfected by educators to teach themselves and to apply to their work with students and colleagues, along with inspirational stories of the ways in which teachers have made mindfulness practice alive and relevant for themselves and their students across the school and out into the community. The instructions in Happy Teachers Change the World are offered as basic practices taught by Thich Nhat Hanh, followed by guidance from educators using these practices in their classrooms, with ample in-class interpretations, activities, tips, and instructions. Woven throughout are stories from members of the Plum Village community around the world who are applying these teachings in their own lives and educational contexts.

The Design of Childhood: How the Material World Shapes Independent Kids


Alexandra Lange - 2010
    These objects and spaces encode decades, even centuries of changing ideas about what makes for good child-rearing--and what does not. Do you choose wooden toys, or plastic, or, increasingly, digital? What do youngsters lose when seesaws are deemed too dangerous and slides are designed primarily for safety? How can the built environment help children cultivate self-reliance? In these debates, parents, educators, and kids themselves are often caught in the middle.Now, prominent design critic Alexandra Lange reveals the surprising histories behind the human-made elements of our children's pint-size landscape. Her fascinating investigation shows how the seemingly innocuous universe of stuff affects kids' behavior, values, and health, often in subtle ways. And she reveals how years of decisions by toymakers, architects, and urban planners have helped--and hindered--American youngsters' journeys toward independence. Seen through Lange's eyes, everything from the sandbox to the street becomes vibrant with buried meaning. The Design of Childhood will change the way you view your children's world--and your own.

Pyramid Response to Intervention: RTI, Professional Learning Communities, and How to Respond When Kids Don't Learn


Chris Weber - 2008
    Written by award-winning educators from successful PLC schools, this book demonstrates how to create three tiers of interventions from basic to intensive to address student learning gaps. You will understand what a successful program looks like, and the many reproducible forms and activities will help your team understand how to make RTI work in your school."

Designs for Living and Learning: Transforming Early Childhood Environments


Debbie Curtis - 2003
    Full-color photographs of actual early childhood programs demonstrate that the spaces children learn and grow in can be comfortable for children, teachers, and parents alike.Margie Carter serves on the adjunct faculty at Pacific Oaks College Northwest, Seattle, Washington. Deb Curtis works as a child care teacher at the Burlington Little School in Seattle. Their other books include The Art of Awareness, The Visionary Director, Training Teachers, Spreading the News, and Reflecting Children’s Lives.

Summerhill: A Radical Approach to Child Rearing


A.S. Neill - 1960
    The effect of the book helped to promulgate Neill's educational theories, as well as reviving the flagging attendance at the long-running experimental school that he had founded in 1921 in Germany in conjunction with the Neue Schule, & then moved to England in 1923.

The Making of Americans: Democracy and Our Schools


E.D. Hirsch Jr. - 2009
    D. Hirsch, Jr. offers a masterful analysis of how American ideas about education have veered off course, what we must do to right them, and most importantly why. He argues that the core problem with American education is that educational theorists, especially in the early grades, have for the past sixty years rejected academic content in favor of “child-centered” and “how-to” learning theories that are at odds with how children really learn.  The result is failing schools and widening inequality, as only children from content-rich (usually better-off) homes can take advantage of the schools’ educational methods.Hirsch unabashedly confronts the education establishment, arguing that a content-based curriculum is essential to addressing social and economic inequality. A nationwide, specific, grade-by-grade curriculum established in the early school grades can help fulfill one of America’s oldest and most compelling dreams: to give all children, regardless of language, religion, or origins, the opportunity to participate as equals and become competent citizens. Hirsch not only reminds us of these inspiring ideals, he offers an ambitious and specific plan for achieving them.

The Secret Teacher: Dispatches from the Classroom


Anonymous - 2017
    I will teach them The Waste Land! I will be the Best Teacher Who Has Ever Lived! Or so The Secret Teacher thinks. On his first day at an inner-city state school he gets nuked. The class he is made to cut his teeth on are an unruly mob stuffed with behavioural issues. There is:Milosz, who is put in detention for committing the sin of Onan with a Pritt StickKieran, the class rebelDonnie, a hard-working kid desperate for approvalMercedes, a volatile rude girland Salim, who loves Bollywood and the number 5.Somehow, The Secret Teacher needs to enthuse this lot with a love of books. Or at least keep them sitting at their desks until the end of the lesson. And then he's got to deal with the Observations, marking, standardisations, book checks, OFSTED, Educational Consultants, spreadsheets, personal statements, school trips, strikes, class, race, love, death, birth, manhood, dry cleaning, the end of literary culture, the end of the Old World, the whole shebang ...In this vivid account of his first few years in the classroom, The Secret Teacher grapples with the complicated questions of how to teach, how we learn - and how little he actually knows. He celebrates the world's greatest stories, the extraordinary teachers he has worked with, and the kids: bolshy, bright, funny and absolutely electric. The result is a book brimful of wit, insight and tenderness.

The Four O’Clock Faculty: A Rogue Guide to Revolutionizing Professional Development


Rich Czyz - 2017
    In The Four O'Clock Faculty, Rich identifies ways to make PD meaningful, efficient, and, above all, personally relevant. This book is a practical guide that reveals why some PD is so awful and what you can do to change the model for the betterment of you and your colleagues.

A Theory of Objectivist Parenting


Roslyn Ross - 2015
    Objectivists idealize the former; most of America practices the latter. Though Objectivists are fundamentally against relating to their fellow human beings with various methods of control (bribery, threats, manipulation, slavery), many do not hesitate to relate in that way to the young human beings we temporarily refer to as children. In this short book, Ross examines the contradiction and proposes a theory of Objectivist parenting.