Aimed at teachers of all kinds, busy people working in complex environments with little time to spare, it is a celebration of great teaching - the joy of it and the intellectual and personal rewards that teaching brings.The core of the book is a guide to making teaching both effective and manageable; it provides an accessible summary of key contemporary evidence-based ideas about teaching and learning and the debates that all teachers should be engaging in. It's a book packed with strategies for making great teaching attainable in the context of real schools.The Learning Rainforest metaphor is an attempt to capture various different elements of our understanding and experience of teaching. Tom's ideas about what constitutes great teaching are drawn from his experiences as a teacher and a school leader over the last 30 years, alongside everything he has read and all the debates he's engaged with during that time.An underlying theme of this book is that a career in teaching is a process of continual personal development and professional learning as is engaging in fundamental debates rage on about the kind of education we value. As you meet each new class and move from school to school, your perspectives shift; your sense of what seems to work adjusts to each new context.In writing this book, Tom is trying to capture some of the journey he's been on. He has learned that it is ok to change your mind. More than that - sometimes it is simply necessary to get your head out of the sand, to change direction; to admit your mistakes.

    The authors acknowledge both the structural and sociological issues that contribute to low-performing schools and offer multiple tools and strategies to assess and improve classroom management, increase literacy, establish academic vocabulary, and contribute to a healthier school culture.

    They can Google the answer to any question at lightning speed. If a teen forgets his homework, a quick call to mom or dad has it hand-delivered in minutes. Fueled by the rapid pace of technology, the Instant Gratification Generation not only expects immediate solutions to problems—they're more dependent than ever on adults. Today's kids are being denied opportunities to make mistakes, and more importantly, to learn from them. They are being taught not to think.In Teaching Kids to Think, Dr. Darlene Sweetland and Dr. Ron Stolberg offer insight into the social, emotional, and neurological challenges unique to this generation. They identify the five parent traps that cause adults to unknowingly increase their children's need for instant gratification, and offer practical tips and easy-to-implement solutions to address topics relevant to children of all ages.A must-read for parents and educators, Teaching Kids to Think will help you understand where this sense of entitlement comes from—and how to turn it around in order to raise children who are confident, independent, and thoughtful.

    But how do you work those skills into the curriculum? Learn how to use the content you already teach to challenge students to think critically, collaborate with others, solve new problems, and adapt to change across new learning contexts. Help students build the seven habitudes habits of disciplined decisions and specific attitudes they need to succeed."

    The book discusses clearly and concisely how to deal with tantrums, meltdowns and difficult behaviour from children and young people with Asperger Syndrome, looking in particular at the role of antecedent behaviours, which signal the beginning of a meltdown, as identified through functional assessment. Topics covered include:* the characteristics of Asperger Syndrome and their impact on behaviour* stages of the meltdown cycle* the role of antecedent behaviours* functional assessment* strategies promoting social skills development, including self-awareness, self-calming and self-management* solutions for parents, including organization and support, and daily routines.The book's main focus is on the various stages of the meltdown cycle and functional analysis as a means of determining why behaviours occur. This is followed by a set of practical strategies that promote social skills development, including self-awareness, self-calming and self-management. The book concludes with a chapter written specifically for parents, which offers concrete and easy-to-follow steps for developing a home plan that addresses agreement on the causes of problem behaviours, family organization and support, the LASTING word and designing a daily routine. Accompanying the clear and user-friendly writing style are a number of helpful reporting forms and other instruments that may be used by schools and parents as they work to reduce or eliminate such behaviour in children and young people with Asperger Syndrome.

    The early formal years of education are the key to reversing the reading gap and setting up children for success. But K-4 education seems to widen the gap between stronger and weaker readers, not close it. Today, the Common Core further increases the pressure to reach high levels of rigor. What can be done?This book includes the strategies, systems, and lessons from the top classrooms that bring the habits of reading to life, creating countless quality opportunities for students to take one of the most complex skills we as people can know and to perform it fluently and easily.Offers clear teaching strategies for teaching reading to all students, no matter what levelIncludes more than 40 video examples from real classroomsWritten by Paul Bambrick-Santoyo, bestselling author of "Driven by Data" and "Leverage Leadership""Great Habits, Great Readers" puts the focus on: learning habits, reading habits, guided reading, and independent reading.NOTE: Content DVD and other supplementary materials are not included as part of the e-book file, but are available for download after purchase

    Key changes to this edition include a new chapter on dynamic assessment, separate and expanded chapters on developmental accomplishments of infants and toddlers, preschool/kindergarten, and primary grades and on supporting those accomplishments, and elaborations of Vygotsky's ideas from neo-Vygotskians from Russia. FEATURES Written for the beginning student, the book provides a clear discussion of Vygotskian principles including...a historical overview and a complete chapter on the "Zone of Proximal Development," (ZPD). Each section of the book builds on the other...framework, strategies, and applications of the Vygotskian approach. The work of Vygotsky is compared in a fair and balanced way with the work of Piaget. Examples and activities have been class-tested in a variety of classroom environments including a Head Start program, private preschool, and in the Denver Public Schools.

    This book will incite controversy, wonderful debate, and dialogue among nurses and others. It is a must-read for every nurse educator and for every nurse that yearns for nursing to acknowledge and reach for the real difference that nursing can make in safety and quality in health care." --Beverly Malone, chief executive officer, National League for Nursing"This book describes specific steps that will enable a new system to improve both nursing formation and patient care. It provides a timely and essential element to health care reform." --David C. Leach, former executive director, Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education"The ideas about caregiving developed here make a profoundly philosophical and intellectually innovative contribution to medicine as well as all healing professions, and to anyone concerned with ethics. This groundbreaking work is both paradigm-shifting and delightful to read." --Jodi Halpern, author, From Detached Concern to Empathy: Humanizing Medical Practice"This book is a landmark work in professional education! It is a must-read for all practicing and aspiring nurse educators, administrators, policy makers, and, yes, nursing students." --Christine A. Tanner, senior editor, Journal of Nursing Education"This work has profound implications for nurse executives and frontline managers." --Eloise Balasco Cathcart, coordinator, Graduate Program in Nursing Administration, New York University

    In a large-size format for easy photocopying, the book features more than two dozen reproducibles. It covers all the essentials of planning, administering, scoring, and interpreting a wide range of formal and informal assessments. Helpful examples illustrate effective ways to evaluate K/n-/8 students' strengths and weaknesses in each of the core competencies that good readers need to master.See also Reading Assessment in an RTI Framework, which offers systematic guidance for conducting assessments in all three tiers of RTI.

    **Please see the NEW EDITION titled "Reaching All by Creating Tribes Learning Communities" by Jeanne Gibbs ISBN:0932762417 Copyright 2006

    All of the authors in this book know what classrooms are like. This means that authenticity and integrity pervade every chapter in the book. Teachers will immediately sense this authenticity on their way to realizing that the book offers an endless supply of useful suggestions."-From the Coda by P. David PearsonFor those of us who teach comprehension strategies, Comprehension Going Forward is as near to the ultimate PD experience as we can get. Imagine a professional learning community where you could sit in as...Ellin Keene and Debbie Miller swap best practicesStephanie Harvey and Harvey "Smokey" Daniels compare instruction across the gradesAnne Goudvis and Tanny McGregor share ways to infuse comprehension into every subject areaCris Tovani and Nancy Commins apply the strategies to help struggling readers, English learners, and special-needs students. In Comprehension Going Forward, you'll meet up with 17 leading practitioners and researchers for an energetic, personal, and frequently irreverent conversation on what great comprehension instruction looks like, what an amazing range of applications it has for all students, and what we can do better. Not only do figures such as Susan Zimmerman and P. David Pearson include their own chapters, but, like any exciting conversation, they point out their favorite parts of one another's chapters-highlighting discussion topics for teacher study groups along the way. Read Comprehension Going Forward and RSVP to a get-together that no one who teaches reading will want to miss. Enter this powerful, lively conversation about how we can improve all readers' comprehension today and join some of your favorite authors as they reach for a tomorrow where every child reads with deep understanding."Each author takes the comprehension strategies as a starting point, and then reaches out toward a different set of applications, extensions, and practices. But everyone is connected by the research base on comprehension instruction and by our common goal: to provide every child in America with an "All-Access Pass" to literacy."-From the editor's introduction by Harvey "Smokey" Daniels

    Lifelong readers need passion, agency, and a sense of inquiry in their reading lives. They also need books.In It's All About the Books, Tammy Mulligan and Clare Landrigan share the systems they have developed over the last 15 years to create classroom libraries and book rooms that support both student choice and instructional goals.Getting started with designing and provisioning classroom libraries and bookrooms to support lifelong readers involves collaboration, planning, and some elbow grease! It's All About the Books is a practical yet detailed guide to creating a system where classroom libraries and bookrooms work seamlessly together to make it easy for teachers to find books to engage and scaffold all students in a school community. Each chapter includes photos, resources, book lists, and a step-by-step outline of the process so you can get started right away. From design, to inventory, to organizing, purchasing, and using these books in the classroom-they demonstrate how to make the most of what you have, and how to get what need on a budget.Every child deserves the opportunity to become a lifelong reader. It's All About the Books will help you transform how you organize books across the entire school to make each teacher's book supply seem endless in the eyes of a reader. Teachers must have easy access to what they need, when they need it, because in the life of a reader the right book at the right time makes all the difference.-Tammy and Clare want this book to impact the lives of teachers and students directly so they are donating all author royalties it generates to the Book Love Foundation.Book Love is a not-for-profit organization founded by Penny Kittle with one goal: to put books in the hands of teenagers. Our book will now expand that goal and put books into the hands of elementary and middle grade students as well. Thank you, Penny, for allowing us to bring the heart of this book to life through your hard work and vision.-Tammy and Clare

    As teacher and writer Jessica Lahey explains, even though these parents see themselves as being highly responsive to their children’s well-being, they aren’t giving them the chance to experience failure—or the opportunity to learn to solve their own problems.Overparenting has the potential to ruin a child’s confidence and undermine their education, Lahey reminds us. Teachers don’t just teach reading, writing, and arithmetic. They teach responsibility, organization, manners, restraint, and foresight—important life skills children carry with them long after they leave the classroom. Providing a path toward solutions, Lahey lays out a blueprint with targeted advice for handling homework, report cards, social dynamics, and sports. Most importantly, she sets forth a plan to help parents learn to step back and embrace their children’s failures. Hard-hitting yet warm and wise, The Gift of Failure is essential reading for parents, educators, and psychologists nationwide who want to help their children succeed.

    Now this new edition of The Read-Aloud Handbook imparts the benefits, rewards, and importance of reading aloud to children of a new generation. Supported by delightful anecdotes as well as the latest research, The Read-Aloud Handbook offers proven techniques and strategies—and the reasoning behind them—for helping children discover the pleasures of reading and setting them on the road to becoming lifelong readers.

    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: