Fresh Takes on Teaching Literary Elements: How to Teach What Really Matters About Character, Setting, Point of View, and Theme


Jeffrey D. Wilhelm - 2010
    Rich, original passages illuminate the intricacies of character, setting, point of view, and theme, and deeply engaging activities framed by inquiry enable students to transfer what they learn to new reading situations as well as to the way they think through problems and live their lives.

Conferring: The Keystone of Reader's Workshop


Patrick A. Allen - 2009
    Inside, he shows teachers how to overcome their perceived obstacles and shows them how they can make conferring tangible. Conferring lays the groundwork for effective reading instruction. Conferences with students are purposeful conversations that scaffold reading comprehension strategies to guide the reader’s progress. Ultimately, through the gradual release of responsibility, you will create engaged and independent readers. Starting with what conferring isn’t, Allen unpacks the essential components of the process:Intimacy: the social context of conferringRigor: the cognitive context of conferringInquiry: the analytical context of conferring With his guidance, you will be able to set goals for student conferring and elevate student reader conferences from start to finish.

Hacking Engagement: 50 Tips & Tools To Engage Teachers and Learners Daily (Hack Learning Series Book 7)


James Alan Sturtevant - 2016
    Many students are bored and disengaged Teachers are handcuffed by outdated textbooks, standardized curriculum, and disinterested students. What if you could solve these problems immediately and excite even your most reluctant learners daily? Read it Today and Engage tomorrow! 33-year veteran teacher, author, presenter, and engagement guru James Alan Sturtevant makes it easy, with incredible teacher tips and tools for both the veteran and student teacher--50 engagement tools that you can begin using right now, with no special training or boring professional development. Easily rebrand your class and connect with all students Are you the teacher students "hate"? Do kids groan when they walk into your classroom? Engaging learners is all about connecting and making education fun. With Sturtevant's education tips and creative teaching tools, students will rebrand you and your class as their favorites. Best of all, they'll engage with every lesson you teach, every single day! 50 Tips and Tools Unlike other education books that weigh you down with archaic research and impossible-to-implement strategies, Hacking Engagement, the 7th book in the popular Hack Learning Series, provides 50 unique, exciting, and actionable tips and tools that you can apply right now. And there's something here for every teacher--no matter what grade or subject you teach. Try one of these amazing engagement strategies tomorrow: Engage the Enraged Create Celebrity Couple Nicknames Hash out a Hashtag Empower Students to Help You Uncover Your Biases Avoid the Great War on Yoga Pants Let Your Freak Flag Fly Become a Proponent of the Exponent Trade Blah, Blah, Blah for Zen Transform Your Class into a Focus Group Commit to Engagement Try at least one tip or tool now and witness an amazing transformation in your classroom and school. Are you ready to engage? Scroll up and grab your copy of Hacking Engagement now.

What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy


James Paul Gee - 2003
    James Paul Gee begins his new book with 'I want to talk about vide games- yes, even violent video games - and say some positive things about them'. With this simple but explosive beginning, one of America's most well-respected professors of education looks seriously at the good that can come from playing video games. Gee is interested in the cognitive development that can occur when someone is trying to escape a maze, find a hidden treasure and, even, blasting away an enemy with a high-powered rifle. Talking about his own video-gaming experience learning and using games as diverse as Lara Croft and Arcanum, Gee looks at major specific cognitive activities: How individuals develop a sense of identity; How one grasps meaning; How one evaluates and follows a command; How one picks a role model; How one perceives the world.

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.

The Well-Balanced Teacher: How to Work Smarter and Stay Sane Inside the Classroom and Out


Mike Anderson - 2010
    This is true both in airplanes and in classrooms--you have to take care of yourself before you can help someone else. If teachers are stressed out and exhausted, how can they have the patience, positive energy, and enthusiasm to provide the best instruction for students? Author Mike Anderson asked that question as a teacher himself, and the answers he found form the basis of The Well-Balanced Teacher. He found that teachers need to take care of themselves in five key areas to keep themselves in shape to care for their students.In addition to paying proper attention to their basic needs for nutrition, hydration, sleep, exercise, and emotional and spiritual refreshment, teachers also needBelonging: Teachers need to feel positive connections with other people, both in school and outside school. Significance: Teachers want to know that they make a positive difference through the work they do.Positive engagement: When teachers enjoy their work, they have great energy and passion for their teaching.Balance: Healthy teachers set boundaries and create routines so that they can have rich lives both in the classroom and at home.Anderson devotes a chapter to each of these needs, describing in frank detail his own struggles and offering a multitude of practical tips to help readers find solutions that will work for them. When teachers find ways to take care of their own needs, they will be healthier and happier, and they will have the positive energy and stamina needed to help their students learn and grow into healthy adults themselves.

See Me After Class: Advice for Teachers by Teachers


Roxanna Elden - 2009
    And teachers, like the rest of the population, aren't perfect. Yet good teaching happens, and great teachers continue to inspire and educate generations of students. See Me After Class helps those great teachers of the future to survive the classroom long enough to become great.Fueled by hundreds of hilarious--and sometimes shocking--tales from the teachers who lived them, Elden provides tips and strategies that deal head-on with the challenges that aren't covered in new-teacher training. Lessons can go wrong. Parents may yell at you. Sunday evenings will sometimes be accompanied by the dreaded countdown to Monday morning. As a veteran teacher, Elden offers funny, practical, and honest advice, to help teachers walk through the doors of their classrooms day after day with clarity, confidence...and sanity!"You know how you've always thought that if you were a teacher you'd go insane? Well, this very funny book proves that you definitely would. But in a good way."--Dave Barry, Pulitzer Prize winning humor writer"A useful, empathetic guide to weathering the first-year lumps...a frothy, satisfying Guinness for the teacher's soul."--Dan Brown, NBCT, Director of the Future Educators Association, and author of The Great Expectations School"See Me After Class is a must-have book for any teacher's bookshelf. On second thought, you'll probably want to keep it on your classroom desk since you'll use it so much!"--Larry Ferlazzo, teacher and author of Helping Students Motivate Themselves"This is the kind of no-nonsense straight talk that teachers are starved for, but too rarely get...Roxanna Elden tells it like it is, with a heavy dose of practicality, a dash of cynicism, a raft of constructive suggestions, and plenty of wry humor."--Rick Hess, Director of Education Policy Studies at AEI, author of Education Week blog, "Rich Hess Straight Up"

Culturize: Every Student. Every Day. Whatever It Takes.


Jimmy Casas - 2017
     Average schools don’t inspire greatness—and greatness is what our world needs if we are going to produce world-changing learners. In Culturize, author and education leader Jimmy Casas shares insights into what it takes to cultivate a community of learners who embody the innately human traits our world desperately needs, such as kindness, honesty, and compassion. His stories reveal how these “soft skills” can be honed while meeting and exceeding academic standards of twenty-first-century learning. You’ll learn... * How to reach those who seem unreachable * What to do when students disengage or drop out of school * How to ensure your learners feel cared for and empowered * How to create an environment where all learners are challenged and inspired to be their best ______ “Jimmy Casas guides readers to understand that school culture must be a daily focal point for all school leaders.” —Beverly Hutton, Ed.D., Deputy Executive Director, National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP) “No matter your title or profession, page after page of this book will inspire you.” —Kayla Delzer, CEO, Top Dog Teaching Inc. “Read this book to culturize your school and to live your excellence—every day.” —Thomas C. Murray, Director of Innovation, Future Ready Schools

Better Than Carrots or Sticks: Restorative Practices for Positive Classroom Management


Dominique Smith - 2015
    But studies show that when educators empower students to address and correct misbehavior among themselves, positive results are longer lasting and more wide reaching. In Better Than Carrots or Sticks, longtime educators and best-selling authors Dominique Smith, Douglas Fisher, and Nancy Frey provide a practical blueprint for creating a cooperative and respectful classroom climate in which students and teachers work through behavioral issues together. After a comprehensive overview of the roots of the restorative practices movement in schools, the authors explain how to * Establish procedures and expectations for student behavior that encourage the development of positive interpersonal skills; * Develop a nonconfrontational rapport with even the most challenging students; and * Implement conflict resolution strategies that prioritize relationship building and mutual understanding over finger-pointing and retribution.Rewards and punishments may help to maintain order in the short term, but they're at best superficially effective and at worst counterproductive. This book will prepare teachers at all levels to ensure that their classrooms are welcoming, enriching, and constructive environments built on collective respect and focused on student achievement.

Embedded Formative Assessment - practical strategies and tools for K-12 teachers


Dylan Wiliam - 2011
    Dylan Wiliam faces this challenge head-on by making a case for the important role of formative assessment in increasing teacher quality and student learning. While there are many possible ways in which we could seek to develop the practice of serving teachers, attention to minute-by-minute and day-to-day formative assessment is likely to have the biggest impact on student outcomes. Wiliam s view of formative assessment differs from the popular view in that he regards formative assessment as a process rather than a tool.Wiliam outlines what formative assessment is, and what it is not, and presents the five key strategies of formative assessment:1. Clarifying, sharing, and understanding learning intentions and criteria for success2. Engineering effective classroom discussions, activities, and learning tasks that elicit evidence of learning3. Providing feedback that moves learning forward4. Activating learners as instructional resources for one another5. Activating learners as owners of their own learningThe book presents a summary of the research evidence that shows the impact of each strategy and offers a number of practical techniques that teachers have used to incorporate the strategy into their regular classroom practice.

The Writing Revolution: A Guide to Advancing Thinking Through Writing in All Subjects and Grades


Judith C. Hochman - 2017
    The Writing Revolution (TWR) provides a clear method of instruction that you can use no matter what subject or grade level you teach. The model, also known as The Hochman Method, has demonstrated, over and over, that it can turn weak writers into strong communicators by focusing on specific techniques that match their needs and by providing them with targeted feedback. Insurmountable as the challenges faced by many students may seem, TWR can make a dramatic difference. And the method does more than improve writing skills. It also helps: Boost reading comprehension Improve organizational and study skills Enhance speaking abilities Develop analytical capabilities TWR is as much a method of teaching content as it is a method of teaching writing. There's no separate writing block and no separate writing curriculum. Instead, teachers of all subjects adapt the TWR strategies and activities to their current curriculum and weave them into their content instruction. But perhaps what's most revolutionary about the TWR method is that it takes the mystery out of learning to write well. It breaks the writing process down into manageable chunks and then has students practice the chunks they need, repeatedly, while also learning content.

How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character


Paul Tough - 2012
    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.

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


Naomi O'Brien - 2020
    

The Passionate Teacher: A Practical Guide


Robert L. Fried - 1995
    The Passionate Teacher draws on voices, stories, and successes of teachers in urban, suburban, and rural classrooms to help you become, and remain, a passionate teacher despite the obstacles. This edition includes a new chapter for teachers beginning their careers

Setting the Standard for Project Based Learning


John Larmer - 2015
    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.