It's not enough to just "do projects." Today's projects need to be rigorous, engaging, and in-depth, and they need to have student voice and choice built in. Such projects require careful planning and pedagogical skill. The authors -- leaders at the respected Buck Institute for Education -- take readers through the step-by-step process of how to create, implement, and assess PBL using a classroom-tested framework.

    Why is it that they can remember the smallest details from their favorite television program, yet miss the most obvious questions on their history test?Cognitive scientist Dan Willingham has focused his acclaimed research on the biological and cognitive basis of learning and has a deep understanding of the daily challenges faced by classroom teachers. this book will help teachers improve their practice by explaining how they and their students think and learn—revealing the importance of story, emotion, memory, context, and routine in building knowledge and creating lasting learning experiences.In this breakthrough book, Willingham has distilled his knowledge of cognitive science into a set of nine principles that are easy to understand and have clear applications for the classroom. Some of examples of his surprising findings are:“Learning styles” don't exist The processes by which different children think and learn are more similar than different.Intelligence is malleable Intelligence contributes to school performance and children do differ, but intelligence can be increased through sustained hard work.You cannot develop “thinking skills” in the absence of facts We encourage students to think critically, not just memorize facts. However thinking skills depend on factual knowledge for their operation.Why Don't Students Like School is a basic primer for every teacher who wants to know how their brains and their students’ brains work and how that knowledge can help them hone their teaching skills.

    Engineering professor Barbara Oakley knows firsthand how it feels to struggle with math. She flunked her way through high school math and science courses, before enlisting in the army immediately after graduation. When she saw how her lack of mathematical and technical savvy severely limited her options—both to rise in the military and to explore other careers—she returned to school with a newfound determination to re-tool her brain to master the very subjects that had given her so much trouble throughout her entire life. In A Mind for Numbers, Dr. Oakley lets us in on the secrets to effectively learning math and science—secrets that even dedicated and successful students wish they’d known earlier. Contrary to popular belief, math requires creative, as well as analytical, thinking. Most people think that there’s only one way to do a problem, when in actuality, there are often a number of different solutions—you just need the creativity to see them. For example, there are more than three hundred different known proofs of the Pythagorean Theorem. In short, studying a problem in a laser-focused way until you reach a solution is not an effective way to learn math. Rather, it involves taking the time to step away from a problem and allow the more relaxed and creative part of the brain to take over. A Mind for Numbers shows us that we all have what it takes to excel in math, and learning it is not as painful as some might think!

    The "Love and Logic" tecniques: Put teachers back in control of the classroomResult in students who are internalized in their discipline rather than dependent upon external controlsRaise the level of student responsibillityTeach students to think for themselvesPrepare students to function effectively in a world filled wiht temptations, decisions, and consequencesReturn a teacher's joy of teaching!

    Pose the same question to students and many will use words like "boring", "useless", and even "humiliating". In  Becoming the Math Teacher You Wish You'd Had , author Tracy Zager helps teachers close this gap by making math class more like mathematics. Tracy has spent years working with highly skilled math teachers in a diverse range of settings and grades. You'll find this book jam-packed with new ideas from these vibrant classrooms.  How to Teach Student-Centered Mathematics: Zager outlines a problem-solving approach to mathematics for elementary and middle school educators looking for new ways to inspire student learningBig Ideas, Practical Application: This math book contains dozens of practical and accessible teaching techniques that focus on fundamental math concepts, including strategies that simulate connection of big ideas; rich tasks that encourage students to wonder, generalize, hypothesize, and persevere; and routines to teach students how to collaborateKey Topics for Elementary and Middle School Teachers:  Becoming the Math Teacher You Wish You'd Had  offers fresh perspectives on common challenges, from formative assessment to classroom management for elementary and middle school teachersAll teachers can move towards increasingly authentic and delightful mathematics teaching and learning. This important book helps develop instructional techniques that will make the math classes we teach so much better than the math classes we took.

    That was in 2001; but even today, this tiny Nordic nation continues to amaze. How does Finnish education—with short school days, light homework loads, and little standardized testing—produce students who match the PISA scores of high-powered, stressed-out kids in Asia?When Timothy D. Walker started teaching fifth graders at a Helsinki public school, he began a search for the secrets behind the successes of Finland’s schools. Walker wrote about several of those discoveries, and his Atlantic articles on this subject became hot topics of conversation. Here, he gathers all he learned and reveals how any teacher can implement many of Finland's best practices.Remarkably, Finland is prioritizing the joy of learning in its newest core curricula and Walker carefully highlights specific strategies that support joyful K-12 classrooms and integrate seamlessly with educational standards in the United States.From incorporating brain breaks to offering a peaceful learning environment, this book pulls back the curtain on the joyful teaching practices of the world's most lauded school system. His message is simple but profound: these Finland-inspired strategies can be used in the U.S. and other countries. No educator—or parent of a school-aged child—will want to miss out on the message of joy and change conveyed in this book.

    Now a world-renowned expert gives us a substantially updated and augmented edition of her classic work: drawing on an additional fifteen years of cutting-edge research, offering new information on all aspects of dyslexia and reading problems, and providing the tools that parents, teachers, and all dyslexic individuals need. This new edition also offers:- New material on the challenges faced by dyslexic individuals across all ages - Rich information on ongoing advances in digital technology that have dramatically increased dyslexics' ability to help themselves - New chapters on diagnosing dyslexia, choosing schools and colleges for dyslexic students, the co-implications of anxiety, ADHD, and dyslexia, and dyslexia in post-menopausal women - Extensively updated information on helping both dyslexic children and adults become better readers, with a detailed home program to enhance reading - Evidence-based universal screening for dyslexia as early as kindergarten and first grade - why and how - New information on how to identify dyslexia in all age ranges - Exercises to help children strengthen the brain areas that control reading - Ways to raise a child's self-esteem and reveal her strengths - Stories of successful men, women, and young adults who are dyslexic

    It focuses on the specific things that great teachers do ... that others do not. Readers of author Todd Whitaker's best-selling WHAT GREAT PRINCIPALS DO DIFFERENTLY asked him for a companion volume focusing on great teachers and their classrooms. This book is his response to those requests.This book focuses on the specific things that great teachers do ... that others do not. It answers these essential questions: - Is it high expectations for students that matter?- How do great teachers respond when students misbehave?- Do great teachers filter differently than their peers?- How do the best teachers approach standardized testing? - How can your teachers gain the same advantages?

    He explores what parents, teachers, and employers must do to develop the capacities of young people to become innovators. In profiling compelling young American innovators such as Kirk Phelps, product manager for Apple’s first iPhone, and Jodie Wu, who founded a company that builds bicycle-powered maize shellers in Tanzania, Wagner reveals how the adults in their lives nurtured their creativity and sparked their imaginations, while teaching them to learn from failures and persevere. Wagner identifies a pattern—a childhood of creative play leads to deep-seated interests, which in adolescence and adulthood blossom into a deeper purpose for career and life goals. Play, passion, and purpose: These are the forces that drive young innovators. Wagner shows how we can apply this knowledge as educators and what parents can do to compensate for poor schooling. He takes readers into the most forward-thinking schools, colleges, and workplaces in the country, where teachers and employers are developing cultures of innovation based on collaboration, interdisciplinary problem-solving, and intrinsic motivation. The result is a timely, provocative, and inspiring manifesto that will change how we look at our schools and workplaces, and provide us with a road map for creating the change makers of tomorrow. Creating Innovators will feature its own innovative elements: more than sixty original videos that expand on key ideas in the book through interviews with young innovators, teachers, writers, CEOs, and entrepreneurs, including Thomas Friedman, Dean Kamen, and Annmarie Neal. Produced by filmmaker Robert A. Compton, the videos are embedded into the ebook edition in video-enabled eReaders and accessible in this print edition via QR codes placed throughout the chapters or via www.creatinginnovators.com.

    Drawing on groundbreaking research in neuroscience, economics, and psychology, Tough shows that the qualities that matter most have less to do with IQ and more to do with character: skills like grit, curiosity, conscientiousness, and optimism."How Children Succeed" introduces us to a new generation of scientists and educators who are radically changing our understanding of how children develop character, how they learn to think, and how they overcome adversity. It tells the personal stories of young people struggling to stay on the right side of the line between success and failure. And it argues for a new way of thinking about how best to steer an individual child – or a whole generation of children – toward a successful future.This provocative and profoundly hopeful book will not only inspire and engage readers; it will also change our understanding of childhood itself.

    Discusses ways to improve the American educational system, arguing that the art of teaching is far more important than increased spending.

    In her previous book, The Well-Trained Mind, the author provided a road map of classical education for parents wishing to home-school their children, and that book is now the premier resource for home-schoolers. In this new book, Bauer takes the same elements and techniques and adapts them to the use of adult readers who want both enjoyment and self-improvement from the time they spend reading.The Well-Educated Mind offers brief, entertaining histories of five literary genres—fiction, autobiography, history, drama, and poetry—accompanied by detailed instructions on how to read each type. The annotated lists at the end of each chapter—ranging from Cervantes to A. S. Byatt, Herodotus to Laurel Thatcher Ulrich—preview recommended reading and encourage readers to make vital connections between ancient traditions and contemporary writing.The Well-Educated Mind reassures those readers who worry that they read too slowly or with below-average comprehension. If you can understand a daily newspaper, there's no reason you can't read and enjoy Shakespeare's Sonnets or Jane Eyre. But no one should attempt to read the "Great Books" without a guide and a plan. Susan Wise Bauer will show you how to allocate time to your reading on a regular basis; how to master a difficult argument; how to make personal and literary judgments about what you read; how to appreciate the resonant links among texts within a genre—what does Anna Karenina owe to Madame Bovary?—and also between genres. Followed carefully, the advice in The Well-Educated Mind will restore and expand the pleasure of the written word.

    Gholdy E. Muhammad presents a four-layered equity framework—one that is grounded in history and restores excellence in literacy education. This framework, which she names, Historically Responsive Literacy, was derived from the study of literacy development within 19th-century Black literacy societies. The framework is essential and universal for all students, especially youth of color, who traditionally have been marginalized in learning standards, school policies, and classroom practices. The equity framework will help educators teach and lead toward the following learning goals or pursuits:  Identity Development—Helping youth to make sense of themselves and othersSkill Development— Developing proficiencies across the academic disciplinesIntellectual Development—Gaining knowledge and becoming smarterCriticality—Learning and developing the ability to read texts (including print and social contexts) to understand power, equity, and anti-oppression When these four learning pursuits are taught together—through the Historically Responsive Literacy Framework, all students receive profound opportunities for personal, intellectual, and academic success. Muhammad provides probing, self-reflective questions for teachers, leaders, and teacher educators as well as sample culturally and historically responsive sample plans and text sets across grades and content areas. In this book, Muhammad presents practical approaches to cultivate the genius in students and within teachers.

    In sharing lessons, anecdotes, and cautionary tales from his own experiences revamping assessment procedures in the classroom, Dueck offers a variety of practical strategies for ensuring that grades measure what students know without punishing them for factors outside their control; critically examining the fairness and effectiveness of grading homework assignments; designing and distributing unit plans that make assessment criteria crystal-clear to students; creating a flexible and modular retesting system so that students can improve their scores on individual sections of important tests.Grading Smarter, Not Harder is brimming with reproducible forms, templates, and real-life examples of grading solutions developed to allow students every opportunity to demonstrate their learning. Written with abundant humor and heart, this book is a must-read for all teachers who want their grades to contribute to, rather than hinder, their students' success.

    This results in “visible” learning because the effect is tangible. The framework is forged out of current research in mathematics combined with John Hattie’s synthesis of more than 15 years of education research involving 300 million students. Chapter by chapter, and equipped with video clips, planning tools, rubrics, and templates, you get the inside track on which instructional strategies to use at each phase of the learning cycle: Surface learning phase: When—through carefully constructed experiences—students explore new concepts and make connections to procedural skills and vocabulary that give shape to developing conceptual understandings.Deep learning phase: When—through the solving of rich high-cognitive tasks and rigorous discussion—students make connections among conceptual ideas, form mathematical generalizations, and apply and practice procedural skills with fluency.Transfer phase: When students can independently think through more complex mathematics, and can plan, investigate, and elaborate as they apply what they know to new mathematical situations. To equip students for higher-level mathematics learning, we have to be clear about where students are, where they need to go, and what it looks like when they get there. Visible Learning for Math brings about powerful, precision teaching for K-12 through intentionally designed guided, collaborative, and independent learning.