Fully updated, the text engages the reader in its discussion of both technical and non-technical models of curriculum development.

    Drawing on feedback from thousands of educators around the world who have used the UbD framework since its introduction in 1998, the authors have revised and expanded their original work to guide educators across the K16 spectrum in the design of curriculum, assessment, and instruction. With an improved UbD Template at its core, the book explains the rationale of backward design and explores in greater depth the meaning of such key ideas as essential questions and transfer tasks. Readers will learn why the familiar coverage- and activity-based approaches to curriculum design fall short, and how a focus on the six facets of understanding can enrich student learning. With an expanded array of practical strategies, tools, and examples from all subject areas, the book demonstrates how the research-based principles of Understanding by Design apply to district frameworks as well as to individual units of curriculum. Combining provocative ideas, thoughtful analysis, and tested approaches, Understanding by Design, Expanded 2nd Edition, offers teacher-designers a clear path to the creation of curriculum that ensures better learning and a more stimulating experience for students and teachers alike.

    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.

    Academic conversations push students to think and learn in lasting ways. Academic conversations are back-and-forth dialogues in which students focus on a topic and explore it by building, challenging, and negotiating relevant ideas.In Academic Conversations: Classroom Talk that Fosters Critical Thinking and Content Understandings authors Jeff Zwiers and Marie Crawford address the challenges teachers face when trying to bring thoughtful, respectful, and focused conversations into the classroom. They identify five core communications skills needed to help students hold productive academic conversation across content areas:Elaborating and ClarifyingSupporting Ideas with EvidenceBuilding On and/or Challenging IdeasParaphrasingSynthesizingThis book shows teachers how to weave the cultivation of academic conversation skills and conversations into current teaching approaches. More specifically, it describes how to use conversations to build the following:Academic vocabulary and grammarCritical thinking skills such as persuasion, interpretation, consideration of multiple perspectives, evaluation, and applicationLiteracy skills such as questioning, predicting, connecting to prior knowledge, and summarizingAn academic classroom environment brimming with respect for others' ideas, equity of voice, engagement, and mutual supportThe ideas in this book stem from many hours of classroom practice, research, and video analysis across grade levels and content areas. Readers will find numerous practical activities for working on each conversation skill, crafting conversation-worthy tasks, and using conversations to teach and assess. Academic Conversations offers an in-depth approach to helping students develop into the future parents, teachers, and leaders who will collaborate to build a better world.

    . . . This must-have book will help teachers learn to implement improved, equity-focused grading for impact." --Zaretta Hammond, Author of Culturally Responsive Teaching & The Brain Crack open the grading conversation Here at last--and none too soon--is a resource that delivers the research base, tools, and courage to tackle one of the most challenging and emotionally charged conversations in today's schools: our inconsistent grading practices and the ways they can inadvertently perpetuate the achievement and opportunity gaps among our students.With Grading for Equity, Joe Feldman cuts to the core of the conversation, revealing how grading practices that are accurate, bias-resistant, and motivational will improve learning, minimize grade inflation, reduce failure rates, and become a lever for creating stronger teacher-student relationships and more caring classrooms. Essential reading for schoolwide and individual book study or for student advocates, Grading for Equity providesA critical historical backdrop, describing how our inherited system of grading was originally set up as a sorting mechanism to provide or deny opportunity, control students, and endorse a "fixed mindset" about students' academic potential--practices that are still in place a century later A summary of the research on motivation and equitable teaching and learning, establishing a rock-solid foundation and a "true north" orientation toward equitable grading practices Specific grading practices that are more equitable, along with teacher examples, strategies to solve common hiccups and concerns, and evidence of effectiveness Reflection tools for facilitating individual or group engagement and understanding As Joe writes, "Grading practices are a mirror not just for students, but for us as their teachers." Each one of us should start by asking, "What do my grading practices say about who I am and what I believe?" Then, let's make the choice to do things differently . . . with Grading for Equity as a dog-eared reference.

    "A thought-provoking and practical new vision for inclusion built on five disruptions to the status quo necessary to move inclusive schooling practices to the next level and realize the promise of meaningful educational experience for all students, including students with disabilities"--

    Useful reading for teachers who are eager to find stimulating ways to engage students' interests and boost academic performance, this volume outlines the principles of social emotional learning (SEL) that educators can follow to help all students to achieve in the math and science classroom.

    Authors Ruth Parker and Cathy Humphreys introduce  Making Number Talks Matter: Developing Mathematical Practices and Deepening Understanding, Grades 3-10 , taking the readers into classrooms where their Number Talks routines are taught.Parker and Humphreys apply their 15 minute lessons to inspire and initiate math talks. Through vignettes in the book, you'll meet other teachers learning how to listen closely to students and how to prompt them into figuring out solutions to problems. You will learn how to make on-the-spot decisions, continually advancing and deepening the conversation.  Making Number Talks Matter  includes:Sample Problems: Making Number Talks Matter is filled with a range of Number Talks problems, 10-15 minute warm-up routines that lend themselves to mental math and comparison of strategiesNavigating Rough Spots: Learn how to create a safe environment for tricky, problematic, or challenging student discussions that can arise when talking through problems and sharing ideasResponding to Mistakes: Ways to handle misconceptions and mathematical errors that come up during the course of Number Talk conversations Making Number Talks Matter  is filled with teaching tips for honoring student contributions while still correcting errors, and teaching concepts while nudging independent thinking. Through daily practice and open conversation, you can build a solid foundation for the study of mathematics and make Number Talks Matter.

    In his new book, Well Spoken, veteran teacher and education consultant Erik Palmer shares the art of teaching speaking in any classroom. Teachers will find thoughtful and engaging strategies for integrating speaking skills throughout the curriculum. Palmer stresses the essential elements of all effective oral communication, including: • Building a Speech: Audience, Content, Organization, Visual Aids, and Appearance • Performing a Speech: Poise, Voice, Life, Eye Contact, Gestures, and Speed • Evaluating a Speech: Creating Effective Rubrics,  Guiding Students to ExcellenceWell Spoken contains a framework for understanding the skills involved in all effective oral communication, offers practical steps and lesson ideas that any teacher needs to successfully teach speaking in a variety of situations—from classroom discussions to  formal presentations—and includes a set of tools for students—from how to grab the audience’s attention to how to use emphatic hand gestures and adjust speed for effect.Discover why, year after year, students returned to Palmer’s classroom to thank him for teaching them how to be well spoken. You may find, after reading this book, that you have become a better speaker, too.

    These 6 Things is all about streamlining your practice so that you’re teaching smarter, not harder, and kids are learning, doing, and flourishing in ELA and content-area classrooms. In this essential resource, teachers will receive: Proven, classroom-tested advice delivered in an approachable, teacher-to-teacher style that builds confidence Practical strategies for streamlining instruction in order to focus on key beliefs and literacy-building activities Solutions and suggestions for the most common teacher and student “hang-ups” Numerous recommendations for deeper reading on key topics

    As Rick has focused on bringing the professional learning community process to life in schools, he has relied heavily on Bob's vast research on effective teaching and effective leadership. Bob has come to the conclusion that the best environment for great teaching and leading is a powerful PLC. In Leaders of Learning: How District, School, and Classroom Leaders Improve Student Achievement, the authors have combined their passions into one book to articulate how effective leaders foster continuous improvement at the district, school, and classroom levels. Rick and Bob argue that no single person has all the knowledge, skills, and talent to lead a district, improve a school, or meet all the needs of every child in his or her classroom. They assert that it will take a collaborative effort and widely dispersed leadership to meet the challenges confronting schools. Leaders of Learning focuses on district leadership, principal leadership, and team leadership, as well as addressing how individual teachers can be most effective in leading their students by learning with their colleagues how to implement the most promising pedagogy in their classrooms.The first part of the book focuses on how district and school leaders create the conditions to support the collaborative culture of a professional learning community. In the second part, the authors turn their attention to the specific work that teachers undertake as members of PLCs. They discuss:The district's role in supporting the PLC process and five characteristics of effective district leadersThe principal's role in leading a PLC, including fostering shared leadership, training team leaders, and building capacityHow to create collaborative culture and collective capacity, specifically by fostering reciprocol accountability through meaningful teaming, time for collaboration, supportive structures for teaming, clarifying work, monitoring and providing direction and support to teams, avoiding shortcuts, and celebrating success and confronting those who do not contributeHow leaders in a PLC develop a guaranteed and viable curriculum, from identifying objectives to designing proficiency scales, and then montitor student learning in an ongoing way with specific guidance for designing and scoring assessments and reporting gradesHow teams of instructors design and deliver lessons that maximize the probability that all students will acquire the intended knowledge and skillsHow leaders and the system respond when students do not learn

    Veteran educator Allen Mendler organizes the discussion around four core challenges:Managing difficult students.Working with unappreciative and irritating adults.Making the best of an imperfect environment.Finding time to take top-notch care of yourself.When Teaching Gets Tough is there when you need help to reclaim and sustain your energy and enthusiasm for teaching. Written with a deep understanding of the issues that teachers face every day, the book also includes sections for administrators who want to help teachers stay at the top of their game.

    Troy Hicks explores the questions of how to teach digital writing by examining author's craft, demonstrating how intentional thinking about author's craft in digital texts engages students in writing that is grounded in their digital lives. Troy draws on his experience as a teacher, professor, and National Writing Project site director to show how the heart of digital composition is strong writing, whether it results in a presentation, a paper, or a video. Throughout the book, Troy offers: in-depth guidance for helping students to compose web texts (such as blogs and wikis), presentations, audio, video, and social media mentor texts that give you a snapshot into what professionals and students are doing right now to craft digital writing suggestions for using each type of digital text to address the narrative, informational, and argument text types identified in the Common Core State Standards a wealth of student-composed web texts for each digital media covered, along with links to them on the web technology tips and connections, as well as numerous tools for creating a digital writing assignment. To preview a sample of Crafting Digital Writing click here.

    This practical book features chapters on the five powerful reading/thinking strategies — connecting, questioning, visualizing, inferring, and transforming. It offers techniques for helping children recognize what happens in their heads while they read, with simple applications that can be incorporated into any classroom routine. A valuable handbook that promotes reading independence with sequential lessons, teacher-modeling tips, and suggestions for guided practice.

    Includes professional development guide.