Search results for ""Association for Supervision Curriculum Development""

Your students may recognize words like determine, analyze, and distinguish, but do they understand these words well enough to quickly and completely answer a standardized test question? For example, can they respond to a question that says ""determine the point of view of John Adams in his 'Letter on Thomas Jefferson' and analyze how he distinguishes his position from an alternative approach articulated by Thomas Jefferson""?Students from kindergarten to 12th grade can learn to compare and contrast, to describe and explain, if they are taught these words explicitly. Marilee Sprenger has curated a list of the critical words students must know to be successful with the Common Core State Standards and any other standardized assessment they encounter.Fun strategies such as jingles, movements, and graphic organizers will engage students and make learning these critical words enjoyable and effective. Learning the critical vocabulary will help your students with testing and college and career readiness, and will equip them with confidence in reading, writing, and speaking.Marilee Sprenger is also the author of How to Teach So Students Remember, Learning and Memory, and Brain-Based Teaching in the Digital Age.

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A new concept on human diversity has emerged over the past 10 years that promises to revolutionize the way educators provide services to students with special needs: neurodiversity. Just as we celebrate diversity in nature and cultures, so too do we need to honor the diversity of brains among our students who learn, think, and behave differently. In Neurodiversity in the Classroom, best-selling author Thomas Armstrong argues that we should embrace the strengths of such neurodiverse students to help them and their neurotypical peers thrive in school and beyond.This innovative book focuses on five categories of special needs: learning disabilities, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, autism, intellectual disabilities, and emotional and behavioral disorders. For each category, Armstrong provides an in-depth discussion of: The positive attributes associated with that category. Acclaimed neurodiverse adults who have excelled in their chosen fields. Computer programs and applications that allow students with special needs to overcome obstacles and achieve success. Rich networks of human resources both inside and outside of school that educators can draw upon to support the social and emotional lives of neurodiverse students. Innovative learning strategies that are tailored to each student's unique strengths. Future career paths for which a student's particular gifts might be a good fit. Modifications in the school environment that allow for seamless inclusion of neurodiverse students in the regular classroom. Timely information about how to integrate the strategies and assessments for each category with the Common Core State Standards. It's time that we focused on celebrating rather than pathologizing our students with special needs so that they can fully realize their potential in school and life. This practical and thought-provoking book will inspire teachers and administrators everywhere to make sure that all students with special needs get the support and strength-based instruction they deserve.

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Odds are, your state has adopted the Common Core State Standards. You know how the standards emerged, what they cover, and how they are organized. But how do you translate the new standards into practice?Enter the Core Six: six research-based, classroom-proven strategies that will help you and your students respond to the demands of the Common Core. Thanks to more than 40 years of research and hands-on classroom testing, the authors know the best strategies to increase student engagement and achievement and prepare students for college and career. Best of all, these strategies can be used across all grade levels and subject areas.The Core Six include: 1. Reading for Meaning. 2. Compare & Contrast. 3. Inductive Learning. 4. Circle of Knowledge. 5. Write to Learn. 6. Vocabulary's CODE. For each strategy, this practical book provides: Reasons for using the strategy to address the goals of the Common Core. The research behind the strategy. A checklist for implementing the strategy in the classroom. Multiple sample lessons that illustrate the strategy in action. Planning considerations to ensure your effective use of the strategy. Any strategy can fall flat in the classroom. By offering tips on how to capture students' interest, deepen students' understanding of each strategy, use discussion and questioning techniques to extend student thinking, and ask students to synthesize and transfer their learning, The Core Six will ensure that your instruction is inspired rather than tired.

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What exactly is an ""assignment,"" and why does it matter? How can educators ensure that their teaching meets the rigorous demands of the Common Core State Standards, so that all students are well prepared for college or careers? Drawing from her extensive experience as a teacher coach, author Eleanor Dougherty answers these questions and many more, with two aims in mind: (1) to guide teachers and administrators in crafting high-quality assignments, and (2) to help educators understand the powerful impact that assignments can have on teaching and learning.The book explains the critical differences among ""assignments,"" ""activities,"" and ""assessments"" and thoroughly describes the key elements of an assignment: prompts, rubrics, products, and instructional plans. Readers will learn how to: Follow a seven-step process for crafting effective assignments. Link assignments to units and courses. Devise ""Anchor"" assignments for collaboration and consistency across grades. Tap into instructional ""touchstones"" that can enrich any assignment. Create classroom and school environments that support assignment-making. Use assignments as a source of data about teaching and learning. Equipped with the knowledge and expertise gained from Assignments Matter, readers will be able to create meaningful learning experiences for their students and come to appreciate the author's belief that ""assignments may well be the missing link in school reform efforts to improve student achievement.

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The benefits of collaborative learning are well documented—and yet, almost every teacher knows how group work can go wrong: restless students, unequal workloads, lack of accountability, and too little learning for all the effort involved. In this book, educators Nancy Frey, Douglas Fisher, and Sandi Everlove show you how to make all group work productive group work: with all students engaged in the academic content and with each other, building valuable social skills, consolidating and extending their knowledge, and increasing their readiness for independent learning.The key to getting the most out of group work is to match research-based principles of group work with practical action. Classroom examples across grade levels and disciplines illustrate how to: Create interdependence and positive interaction. Model and guide group work. Design challenging and engaging group tasks. Ensure group and individual accountability. Assess and monitor students' developing understanding (and show them how to do the same). Foster essential interpersonal skills, such as thinking with clarity, listening, giving useful feedback, and considering different points of view. The authors also address the most frequently asked questions about group work, including the best ways to form groups, accommodate mixed readiness levels, and introduce collaborative learning routines into the classroom. Throughout, they build a case that productive group work is both an essential part of a gradual release of responsibility instructional model and a necessary part of good teaching practice.

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One of the most vexing problems confronting educators today is the chronic achievement gap between black male students and their peers. In this inspiring and thought-provoking book, veteran educator Baruti K. Kafele offers a blueprint for lifting black males up and ensuring their success in the classroom and beyond.Motivating Black Males to Achieve in School and in Life offers proven strategies for getting black male students in middle school and high school to value learning, improve their grades, and maintain high standards for themselves. The author shows how simple but powerful measures to instill self-worth in young black males can not only raise these students' achievement, but also profoundly alter their lives for the better. This book will help you to help students: Reverse the destructive effects of negative influences, whether among peers or in the popular culture. Surmount adverse conditions at home or in their communities. Participate in mentorship programs with successful black male adults. Take pride in their heritage by learning about great figures and achievements in black history. Whether your school is urban or rural, all-black or mixed, you'll find this book to be an insightful resource that addresses the root causes of low achievement among young black males and offers a clear path to overcoming them.

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Teachers struggle every day to bring quality instruction to their students. Beset by lists of content standards and accompanying ""high-stakes"" accountability tests, many educators sense that both teaching and learning have been redirected in ways that are potentially impoverishing for those who teach and those who learn. Educators need a model that acknowledges the centrality of standards but also ensures that students truly understand content and can apply it in meaningful ways. For many educators, Understanding by Design addresses that need.Simultaneously, teachers find it increasingly difficult to ignore the diversity of the learners who populate their classrooms. Few teachers find their work effective or satisfying when they simply ""serve up"" a curriculum—even an elegant one—to students with no regard for their varied learning needs. For many educators, Differentiated Instruction offers a framework for addressing learner variance as a critical component of instructional planning.In this book the two models converge, providing readers fresh perspectives on two of the greatest contemporary challenges for educators: crafting powerful curriculum in a standards-dominated era and ensuring academic success for the full spectrum of learners. Each model strengthens the other. Understanding by Design is predominantly a curriculum design model that focuses on what we teach. Differentiated Instruction focuses on whom we teach, where we teach, and how we teach. Carol Ann Tomlinson and Jay McTighe show you how to use the principles of backward design and differentiation together to craft lesson plans that will teach essential knowledge and skills for the full spectrum of learners.Connecting content and kids in meaningful ways is what teachers strive to do every day. In tandem, UbD and DI help educators meet that goal by providing structures, tools, and guidance for developing curriculum and instruction that bring to students the best of what we know about effective teaching and learning.

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What is the purpose of education? What kind of people do we want our children to grow up to be? How can we design schools so that students will acquire the skills they'll need to live fulfilled and productive lives?These are just a few of the questions that renowned educator Dennis Littky explores in The Big Picture: Education Is Everyone's Business. The schools Littky has created and led over the past 35 years are models for reformers everywhere: small, public schools where the curriculum is rich and meaningful, expectations are high, student progress is measured against real-world standards, and families and communities are actively engaged in the educational process.This book is for both big ""E"" and small ""e"" educators: For principals and district administrators who want to change the way schools are run. For teachers who want students to learn passionately. For college admissions officers who want diverse applicants with real-world learning experiences. For business leaders who want a motivated and talented workforce. For parents who want their children to be prepared for college and for life. For students who want to take control over their learning . . . and want a school that is interesting, safe, respectful, and fun. For anyone who cares about kids. Here, you'll find a moving account of just what is possible in education, with many of the examples drawn from the Metropolitan Regional Career and Technical Center (""The Met"") in Providence, Rhode Island—a diverse public high school with the highest rates of attendance and college acceptance in the state. The Met exemplifies personalized learning, one student at a time.The Big Picture is a book to reenergize educators, inspire teachers in training, and start a new conversation about kids and schools, what we want for both, and how to make it happen.

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A guide to the intersection of trauma and special needs, featuring strategies teachers can use to build resilience and counter the effects of trauma on learning and behavior.Childhood trauma is a national health crisis. As many as two out of every three children in any classroom across the country have experienced some form of trauma. Meanwhile, a recent study in Washington State showed that 80 percent of the children eligible for special education services were exposed to early childhood trauma, which has been linked to developmental disabilities. Add in the fact that Black children are four times more likely to be classified with intellectual disabilities and five times more likely than white students to be classified with an emotional or behavioral disorder, and the already daunting complexity of effectively serving kids with an individualized education program (IEP) becomes overwhelming.This is a whole school problem that requires a whole school solution. All educators in both general and special education should learn how trauma affects the brain and how any resulting atypical neurological and psychological development affects learning and behavior.In Trauma-Informed Teaching and IEPs, trauma expert Melissa Sadin presents strategies for supporting the most vulnerable students in general or special education settings, across grade levels, and across the curriculum. You'll learn to* Understand the effects of childhood trauma on the brain, learning, and behavior.Weave caring into trauma-informed instruction.Apply a trauma-informed lens to crafting IEPs.Conduct trauma-informed functional behavior assessments.Once you understand the effects of trauma on learning and development, you will explore classroom strategies and IEP goals and modifications that can actually help to heal your students.With rich examples and helpful strategies, Trauma-Informed Teaching and IEPs gives teachers the most effective tools to help build resilience for every student, no matter their needs.

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In this galvanizing book for all educators, Kristin Souers and Pete Hall explore an urgent and growing issue—childhood trauma—and its profound effect on learning and teaching.Grounded in research and the authors' experience working with trauma-affected students and their teachers, Fostering Resilient Learners will help you cultivate a trauma-sensitive learning environment for students across all content areas, grade levels, and educational settings. The authors—a mental health therapist and a veteran principal—provide proven, reliable strategies to help you: Understand what trauma is and how it hinders the learning, motivation, and success of all students in the classroom. Build strong relationships and create a safe space to enable students to learn at high levels. Adopt a strengths-based approach that leads you to recalibrate how you view destructive student behaviors and to perceive what students need to break negative cycles. Head off frustration and burnout with essential self-care techniques that will help you and your students flourish. Each chapter also includes questions and exercises to encourage reflection and extension of the ideas in this book. As an educator, you face the impact of trauma in the classroom every day. Let this book be your guide to seeking solutions rather than dwelling on problems, to building relationships that allow students to grow, thrive, and—most assuredly—learn at high levels.

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Your school is a lot more than a center of student learning—it represents a self-contained culture with traditions and expectations that reflect its unique mission and demographics.In School Culture Rewired, education experts Steve Gruenert and Todd Whitaker offer strategies and advice for defining, assessing, and transforming your school's culture into one that is positive, productive, and actively working to enrich students' lives.Drawing from decades of research on organizational cultures and school leadership, the authors provide everything you need to optimize both the culture and climate of your school. In this revised and retooled second edition of their bestselling book, Gruenert and WhitakerExplore the difference between school culture and school climate.Show how to ensure developmentally appropriate culture change.Contrast collaborative and toxic school cultures.Address the symbiotic relationship between culture management and leadership.* Present a framework for pinpointing the type of culture you have, the type you want, and how to bridge the two.Though often invisible to the naked eye, a school's culture influences everything that takes place under its roof. Whether your school is urban or rural, proficient or struggling, School Culture Rewired helps you make sure its culture is guided by what's best for your students.

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The single greatest authority on student learning is the student doing the learning—but the right structures must be in place for students' voices to be clearly heard and truly valued.Conventional formative and summative assessment are most often conducted through one-size-fits-all quizzes and tests that yield narrow, predetermined categories of data about students' academic progress. But if we want a truly accurate look at what, how, and to what extent students are learning, who better to consult than the obvious experts on the matter: the students themselves.In this lively and comprehensive guide, veteran teacher and author Starr Sackstein provides the tools needed to help students compile and present evidence of learning through portfolios and student-led conferences—from templates and rubrics to personal testimonials, reflection questions, and activities.The book features* Forms—applicable across grade levels and content areas—for unpacking standards, co-constructing success criteria with students, evaluating current classroom practices, and more.* Real-life perspectives and scenarios from educators in the field who have embraced portfolios and student-led conferences over standardized tests and letter grades.* Practical, experience-based guidance for building classroom and schoolwide learning cultures that promote both learner agency and academic achievement.The resources, recommendations, and reflections in Student-Led Assessment allow educators at all levels to develop systems and protocols for ensuring student ownership of—and pride in—their own hard-won achievement.

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A practical way forward for those who refuse to accept the status quo as the best we can do.In 1966, the Coleman report assessed conditions in U.S. schools and identified barriers that prevented Black students from accessing high-quality education. Since that time—and despite federal efforts to close gaps in achievement between students who are Black, Indigenous, or people of color (BIPOC) and their White peers—not much has changed. Racial gaps exist in almost every school-related outcome measure, from attendance and graduation rates, out-of-school suspensions, honors and Advanced Placement course enrollment and passing rates, identification for special education, and college enrollment and graduation.In The Antiracist Roadmap to Educational Equity, award-winning school leaders Avis Williams and Brenda Elliott shine the spotlight on the education system's various stakeholders—teachers, school and district leaders, the central office team, and the wider community—and identify what the members of each group can do to replace the structures that hold back so many BIPOC students from academic success and overall well-being.This is an essential book for anyone interested in, curious about, or committed to creating antiracist schools and school districts—ones where academic outcomes can't be predicted by race and students of color are seen, heard, and empowered to bring their whole selves into the classroom. Whether you are already a champion for equity or new to the work, you will find the practical guidance you need to make key changes to curriculum and instruction, navigate the expected roadblocks and objections, and accelerate your school or school system's progress toward educational equity.

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A one-stop shop to answer your most pressing questions about what it takes to facilitate.Workshops, committees, teams, and study groups are a regular part of an educator's professional life, and any educator can find themselves in the facilitator role, with a responsibility to aid the group in achieving its goals. The Effective Facilitator's Handbook is here to help.Professional development expert Cathy A. Toll has written a guide for busy facilitators, starting with four simple rules for successful facilitation: listen, start with the end in mind, lead with productive tools, and stay organized. The processes, tools, and templates in each chapter are easy to apply and offer advice about how to create a welcoming environment, set the right tone, understand the group's dynamics, improve communication, and more.This book walks you through the unique purposes, pitfalls, and needs of specific types of groups, whether it's a professional development workshop, a committee focused on one decision or problem, a team that regularly collaborates for student success, or a study group learning about a specific issue. But Toll also considers the bigger picture and connects the patterns behind different types of facilitation skills that will serve you in a variety of situations and settings.As an effective facilitator, you'll be able to increase the value of group time, foster engagement, and help teachers improve their practice so that they can bring their best to the classroom each day.

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Learn how to increase students' skills as writers and storytellers with an innovative, inclusive, and empowering framework for teaching writing that centers student voice.Tell Your Story: Teaching Students to Become World-Changing Thinkers and Writers explores how to help students see themselves as writers and storytellers who are developing the skills and techniques to communicate in ways that resonate with various audiences. When students make that shift and see themselves as active and valued participants in their own communities, cultures, and literary journeys, they become powerful writers eager to explore and share ideas.With the strategies in this book, you canCreate an environment of belonging that fosters creativity and confidence.Demonstrate the value of oral and visual storytelling.Teach story structure, both old and new and in a variety of genres.Offer a variety of role models and exemplars through mentor texts.Assess and confer with student writers to help them improve their skills.Value students' voices as future agents of change.When you help students unlock the stories they want to tell, you'll see writing anxieties and resistance fade as students come alive to the multitude of ways in which they can make their voices heard. Storytelling can be a wellness practice, a tool for empowerment, and a method for self-understanding and self-expression. For all students, storytelling is a path to lifelong learning and to realizing the full power of their voice and their potential to change the world.

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Want to make your instruction more equitable and effective, more interesting, and more fun? It's time to try flexible grouping.Unlike traditional grouping, which typically puts like with like or combines students without regard to the best way to promote their individual growth, flexible grouping is both purposeful and fluid, regularly combining and recombining different students in different ways to pursue a wide range of academic and affective goals.In this comprehensive guide to flexible grouping, author Kristina J. Doubet shares a staged implementation approach that takes students from simple partner set-ups designed to build cooperative skills to complex structures ideal for interest and readiness-informed academic exploration. She covers the key factors to consider when forming groups and highlights how this approach to organizing learning can help you disrupt rigid tracking, deliver targeted instruction, connect to student interests, boost collaboration, and build community.Focused, practical, and written for teachers of all subjects and grade levels, The Flexibly Grouped Classroom provides: Dozens of strategies to expand your instructional repertoire, along with links to additional models and resources; Guidance on setting the tone and expectations for group tasks, ideas for student role distribution, and tips for monitoring progress, noise, and time; A planning template and sample grouping plans for an elementary and secondary classroom; and Specific troubleshooting advice to help you navigate common complications.Choosing to make your classroom a flexibly grouped one means positioning every student to learn better—without feeling superior or inferior, without being overburdened or underchallenged—and to discover for themselves how much farther they can go together than they ever could alone.

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How do some high schools produce graduates that consistently achieve at high levels? Would you believe there's a set of proven strategies that could help you deliver similar impressive results and better prepare students for the world after high school?High schools in the United States face a startling reality: many graduates are unprepared for success in postsecondary studies or for high-demand, well-paying jobs in a rapidly changing economy. Although this situation is alarming, the high schools that have embraced new ways of learning show us what is possible.Drawing from his experience with the High Schools That Work initiative, Gene Bottoms offers educators a path forward by urging them to pursue bold goals and outlining bold actions for achieving those goals. His vision is clear: replace the traditional model of secondary education with one that engages students in a rigorous curriculum that combines a solid academic core with intellectually demanding career pathway courses.The notion that nearly all students can achieve at high levels is borne out by numerous examples of high schools—including those with traditionally underperforming student populations—that have used key strategies to help all students realize their potential.Bottoms explains the root causes of the current shortcomings in high school education and then specifies critical components of successful transformation:Shared leadership;Powerful assignments—especially in math, literacy, and career/technical education—planned and executed by academic and career pathway teachers working together;Strengthened connections between middle school and high school;A redesigned senior year; andComprehensive counseling and advisory programs.Provocative and persuasive in its sense of urgency, Tomorrow's High School offers proven and practical solutions to finally make high schools a rich and rewarding experience for all students, whatever their future college and career goals may be.This book is a copublication of ASCD and SREB. It includes access to nine downloadable appendixes.

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A four-step process for effective equity practices in schools, with an array of professional development activities, leadership tips, and downloadable tools.Recent years have brought new calls to dismantle discriminatory policies and practices in U.S. schools. But adopting an equity focus doesn't guarantee the desired results. There's a risk that doing equity will be toothless—surface level and designed more to avoid tension and blame than to build a better educational system.In Leading Your School Toward Equity, veteran educator Dwayne Chism shows district, school, and teacher leaders a four-step process for taking equity work beyond talk and into effective action. You'll learn concrete ways to: Define and clarify equity. Guide even reluctant staff to a consensus understanding of what equity is, why it's necessary, and what it will look like.Create productive discomfort. Use intentional dialogue to lead staff to a place where they can talk frankly about privilege, bias, racial inequality, and how these affect students' experience of schooling.Build efficacy. Help staff develop higher levels of individual and shared professional efficacy—the number one factor influencing equitable educational outcomes—and create an empowered group of educational equity allies united for results.Normalize action. Support the day-to-day use of an equity lens, a mindset that empowers all teachers to counteract stereotypes and rectify conditions that negatively affect students of color.To make this complicated work a little easier, Chism provides an array of assessments, coaching guides, and activities to use with staff. If you're committed to creating a true equity-driven culture, if you're ready for courageous leadership, this book is for you.

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What role does empathy play in your success as a school leader?A principal's skills, knowledge, and experience are important when it comes to leading schools. But whether interacting with staff, students, or parents, principals also need empathy—a key social-emotional skill—to be effective and drive continuous improvement. In this book, veteran school leader Thomas R. Hoerr makes the case for why schools need a Chief Empathy Officer as principal and how to become one.Discover how to grow your own empathy, as well as that of others, and the enormous positive effect this can have on your school. Explore how to view differences of opinion as opportunities to learn. And learn how empathy can help you:Build strong relationships with and among staff members; Better connect with students' parents; Reduce conflict by eliminating problems before they get out of hand; Model and pursue the crucial issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion; Improve instructional leadership.Hoerr includes self-assessment and feedback tools, strategies for incorporating empathy schoolwide, and lively anecdotes that will walk you through the do's and don'ts of empathic leadership. If you're interested in taking your leadership skills up a notch (or two or three), The Principal as Chief Empathy Officer is for you!

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Noted leadership coach Jill Harrison Berg offers a comprehensive guide to help school and teacher leaders amplify the power of collaborative inquiry as a means for identifying, interrogating, and addressing instructional inequity.At the center of the book is Berg's i3PD Planning Map, an invaluable tool for enhancing inquiry-based professional development experiences so that they become engines for schoolwide transformation. The map guides teachers to recognize and reform ways their instructional practice may be contributing to inequity, bolsters facilitators' abilities to help their colleagues become more effective agents of their own learning, and cultivates a culture of organizational learning in schools. Berg lays out the process in four parts: 1. Establishing a solid foundation for your improvement cycle with a deep understanding of the three components of your instructional core: content, participants, and facilitators.2. Attending to the three Rs—relevance, rigor, and relationships—representing the connections among the core components. 3. Designing your improvement cycle and planning it out as a series of session agendas. 4. Planning for impact by thinking through what you will accept as evidence of success and how you will use that information to take your school to the next level.If you're ready to see your school start to work smarter toward instructional equity, and if you're eager to be a part of that change, Uprooting Instructional Inequity provides the design principles and sample tools you need to get the transformation started.

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Packed with practical strategies you can use to create a culture of self-motivation in your school!Teachers use traditional incentive and reward systems with the best of intentions. We're trying to support students' positive behavior and learning. We're hoping to motivate and inspire students to work hard and do well in school. If everyone behaves, we'll have a pizza party. The more books you read, the more stickers you'll receive. On the surface, these systems seem to make sense. They may even seem to work. But in the long term, they do not foster intrinsic motivation or a love of learning. In fact, they often have the opposite effect.In Tackling the Motivation Crisis: How to Activate Student Learning Without Behavior Charts, Pizza Parties, or Other Hard-to-Quit Incentive Systems, award-winning educator and best-selling author Mike Anderson explains* The damage done by extrinsic motivation systems and why they are so hard for us to give up.* What intrinsic motivation looks like and the six high-impact motivators—autonomy, belonging, competence, purpose, fun, and curiosity—that foster it.* How to teach the self-management and self-motivation skills that can make a difference for kids.* How to use intrinsic motivation in curricula and instructional strategies, feedback and assessment, and discipline and classroom management.Ultimately, our job as teachers is not to motivate our students. It's to make sure that our classrooms and schools are places that inspire their intrinsic motivation and allow it to flourish. Anderson shows how you can better do that right away—no matter what grade level or subject area you teach.

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At the heart of education are two fundamental questions: What should we teach? and How should we teach it? Educators striving to design and deliver the best-possible learning experiences can feel overwhelmed by the possibilities. To help them make these critical decisions, Angela Di Michele Lalor identifies five key priorities of a curriculum that matters—practices, deep thinking, social and emotional learning, civic engagement and discourse, and equity.Emphasizing the importance of schools' determining their own path forward, Lalor provides a framework for action by* Describing how each element contributes to a rigorous, meaningful curriculum,* Providing strategies for incorporating each element into daily instruction and assessment, and* Offering reflection activities to identify strengths, needs, and possible next steps.With insightful observations, research-based background information, and real-world examples from a variety of schools and districts, Making Curriculum Matter presents teachers and administrators with a path for reaching their most important overall goal: to provide comprehensive, meaningful learning to all students.

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Today's school principals face unprecedented challenges that can overwhelm even the most dedicated among them. What can they do when their initial enthusiasm for the job begins to deflate, when the demands of the job seem to outnumber the rewards? How can they regain the energy that propelled them early in their career? The Principal Reboot answers these questions with specific advice on how to reignite passion in addressing the many aspects of the principalship, including: Defining a school's values and mission through rebranding. Strengthening relationships with staff, students, and communit. Leading renewed efforts to improve instruction. Developing teacher leadership. Using data effectively and innovatively. Improving operational procedures and processes. Sharing the wisdom gained from colleagues and her own experience as a principal, author Jen Schwanke offers an engaging, accessible account of the ups and downs of the job, along with helpful, step-by-step suggestions for how to reinvigorate a flagging career and restore the joy that comes with making a school the best that it can be.

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What's the secret to making schoolwide SEL work?Growing numbers of people recognize that social-emotional learning (SEL) is central to a well-rounded education and to success in life outside and beyond the school building. What's missing is the know-how and framework for weaving SEL into the fabric of the school.In this highly practical and eminently readable book, Thomas R. Hoerr shows teachers, administrators, and other school staff how to integrate the Formative Five success skills (empathy, integrity, self-control, embracing diversity, and grit) with school culture essentials by answering these questions: 1. How can you ensure that your school or district is helping students develop their SEL skills across disciplines? Address your values, vision, mission. 2. What effective programs and activities support student development of SEL skills at the classroom, school, and district levels? Consider your practices. 3. How can you leverage personal relationships within the school and in the community to cultivate students' appreciation of how the differences among us make us stronger? Involve your people. 4. How can you weave an SEL narrative into your school's culture? Live your narrative. 5. What can you do to establish and nurture a welcoming school environment as you strive to enhance students' SEL skills? Embrace your place. Replete with real-life examples from the author's years as a school leader, relevant findings from the research, and helpful strategies for use at all levels and with all K-12 populations, Taking Social-Emotional Learning Schoolwide is the ultimate blueprint for making sure students and staff are equipped to thrive.

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Aimed at the growing number of educators who are looking to move beyond covering the curriculum, Designing Authentic Performance Tasks and Projects provides a comprehensive guide to ensuring students' deeper learning—in which they can transfer their knowledge, skills, and understandings to the world beyond the classroom. Readers will learn how to: Create authentic tasks and projects to address both academic standards and 21st century skills. Apply task frames to design performance tasks that allow voice and choice for students. Design and use criterion-based evaluation tools and rubrics for assessment, including those for students to use in self-assessment and peer assessment. Incorporate performance-based instructional strategies needed to prepare students for authentic performance. Differentiate tasks and projects for all students, including those needing additional support or challenge. Effectively manage the logistics of a performance-based classroom. Use project management approaches to facilitate successful implementation of tasks and projects. Develop performance-based curriculum at the program, school, and district levels. Authors Jay McTighe, Kristina J. Doubet, and Eric M. Carbaugh provide examples and resources across all grade levels and subject areas. Teachers can use this practical guidance to transform their classrooms into vibrant centers of learning, where students are motivated and engaged and see relevance in the work they are doing.

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Nearly three-quarters of public schools in the United States enroll English language learners (ELLs). That means teachers at all grade levels need to know how to help these students achieve full academic English language proficiency.In Dispelling Misconceptions About English Language Learners, Barbara Gottschalk dispels 10 common misconceptions about ELLs and gives teachers the information they need to help their ELLs succeed in the classroom.From her perspective as a teacher of English as a second language, Gottschalk answers several key questions: Just who is an English language learner? Why is it important to support home language maintenance and promote family engagement? What are the foundational principles for instruction that help educators teach ELLs across the content areas? How can teachers recognize and incorporate the background knowledge and experiences ELLs bring to class? Why is it important to maintain high standards and expectations for all students, including ELLs? How can a teacher tell when an ELL needs special education versus special teaching? By answering these questions, and more, Gottschalk gives teachers a crystal-clear understanding of how to reach ELLs at each stage of English language acquisition. Her expert guidance reinforces for teachers what they are already doing right and helps them understand what they might need to be doing differently.

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In this latest installment to his series of best-selling self-reflection guides, celebrated educator, author, and motivational speaker Baruti Kafele offers school leaders 35 thought-provoking questions to ponder from one fundamental overarching query: ""Is my school a better school because I lead it?""Musing deeply on discrete leadership matters is an essential component of success for anybody overseeing the day-to-day operations of a school, and doubly so in communities plagued by drugs, violence, or other markers of societal dysfunction. In this book, Kafele offers those seeking to improve the quality of instruction in their institutions hard-won wisdom on such critical issues as ensuring an optimal culture and climate, engaging in parent and community outreach, confirming emergency preparedness, rallying staff, and much more.Because the sheer volume of responsibilities for a principal or assistant principal can leave you with very little time for developing an effective and consistent self-reflection regimen, Kafele has done the work for you. You need only open the book and begin reading to embark upon a penetratingly insightful journey destined to transform your practice, boost teacher satisfaction, and—most important of all—inspire students to excel academically.

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You have a daily to-do list consisting of several dozen items. You're always busy, but you never really feel productive. You know what you need to get done, but you can't figure out where to start. You routinely agree to help others with their tasks but can't make headway with your own work. Sound familiar?If you've ever felt (or been told) that you have a time management problem, award-winning educator PJ Caposey has a revelation to share: you probably don't. Sure, you may struggle to meet deadlines or stay on top of your myriad responsibilities as an educator, but these aren't signs that you can't manage time—they're symptoms of underlying issues you may never have noticed or thought to address.In Manage Your Time or Time Will Manage You, Caposey identifies eight root causes of ""time management difficulties"" and provides treatment in the form of advice, support, and coping techniques for teachers and leaders who are: Work Avoidant. People Pleasers. Prisoners of the Moment. Checklist Dependent. Disorganized. Technology Avoidant. Self-Servers. Perpetually Imbalanced. Time management is a complex and personal issue best addressed through deep self-reflection or caring and thoughtful coaching. This book offers a blueprint for both. It will help you better understand yourself and the behaviors of those you work with or lead, promoting more productive teaching and leadership—and greater peace of mind.

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Some great teachers are born, but most are self-made. And the way to make yourself a great teacher is to learn to think and act like one.In this updated second edition of the best-selling Never Work Harder Than Your Students, Robyn R. Jackson reaffirms that every teacher can become a master teacher. The secret is not a specific strategy or technique, nor it is endless hours of prep time. It's developing a master teacher mindset—rigorously applying seven principles to your teaching until they become your automatic response: Start where you students are. Know where your students are going. Expect to get your students there. Support your students along the way. Use feedback to help you and your students get better. Focus on quality rather than quantity. Never work harder than your students. In her conversational and candid style, Jackson explains the mastery principles and how to start using them to guide planning, instruction, assessment, and classroom management. She answers questions, shares stories from her own practice and work with other teachers, and provides all-new, empowering advice on navigating external evaluation. There's even a self-assessment to help you identify your current levels of mastery and take control of your own practice.Teaching is hard work, and great teaching means doing the right kind of hard work: the kind that pays off. Join tens of thousands of teachers around the world who have embarked on their journeys toward mastery. Discover for yourself the difference that Jackson's principles will make in your classroom and for your students.

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Research on the brain has shown that emotion plays a key role in learning, but how can educators apply that research in their day-to-day interactions with students? What are some teaching strategies that take advantage of what we know about the brain?Engage the Brain answers these questions with easy-to-understand explanations of the brain's emotion networks and how they affect learning, paired with specific suggestions for classroom strategies that can make a real difference in how and what students learn. Readers will discover how to design an environment for learning that: Makes material relevant, relatable, and engaging. Accommodates tremendous variability in students' brains by giving them multiple options for how to approach their learning. Incorporates Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles and guidelines. Uses process-oriented feedback and other techniques to spark students' intrinsic motivation. Author Allison Posey explains how schools can use the same ""emotional brain"" concepts to create work environments that reduce professional stress and the all-too-common condition of teacher burnout.Real-world classroom examples, along with reflection and discussion questions, add to the usefulness of Engage the Brain as a practical, informative guide for understanding how to capture the brain's incredible power and achieve better results at all grade levels, in all content areas.

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How can today's teachers, whose classrooms are more culturally and linguistically diverse than ever before, ensure that their students achieve at high levels? How can they design units and lessons that support English learners in language development and content learning—simultaneously? Authors Amy Heineke and Jay McTighe provide the answers by adding a lens on language to the widely used Understanding by Design® framework (UbD® framework) for curriculum design, which emphasizes teaching for understanding, not rote memorization.Readers will learn: The components of the UbD framework. The fundamentals of language and language development. How to use diversity as a valuable resource for instruction by gathering information about students' background knowledge from home, community, and school. How to design units and lessons that integrate language development with content learning in the form of essential knowledge and skills. How to assess in ways that enable language learners to reveal their academic knowledge. Student profiles, real-life classroom scenarios, and sample units and lessons provide compelling examples of how teachers in all grade levels and content areas use the UbD framework in their culturally and linguistically diverse classrooms. Combining these practical examples with findings from an extensive research base, the authors deliver a useful and authoritative guide for reaching the overarching goal: ensuring that all students have equitable access to high-quality curriculum and instruction.

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Design is the rendering of intent."" What if education leaders approached their work with the perspective of a designer? This new perspective of seeing the world differently is desperately needed in schools and begins with school leadership.Alyssa Gallagher and Kami Thordarson, widely recognized experts on Design Thinking, educational leadership, and innovative strategies, call this new perspective design-inspired leadership—one of the most powerful ways to ignite positive change and address education challenges using the same design and innovation principles that have been so successful in private industry.Design Thinking for School Leaders explores the changing landscape of leadership and offers practical ways to reframe the role of school leader using Design Thinking, one step at a time. Leaders can shift from ""accidental designers"" to ""design-inspired leaders,"" acting with greater intention and achieving greater impact. You'll learn how viewing the world through a more empathetic lens—a critical first step on the path to becoming a design-inspired leader—can raise your awareness of the uniqueness of your teachers and students and prompt you to question the ways in which they experience your school. Gallagher and Thordarson detail five specific roles to help you identify opportunities for positively impacting students, teachers, districts, parents, and the community: Opportunity Seeker. Shifts from problem solving to problem finding. Experience Architect. Designs and curates learning experiences. Rule Breaker. Challenges the way things are ""always"" done. Producer. Gets things done and creates rapid learning cycles for teams. Storyteller. Captures the hearts and minds of a community. Full of examples of Design Thinking in action in schools across the country, Design Thinking for School Leaders can help you guide your school to the forefront of the new design and education movement, one that will move traditional education into the modern world and drive the future of learning.

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Educational coaches—whether math, literacy, instructional, or curriculum coaches—vary in the content of the work they do and in the grade range of the teachers with whom they work. But ""good coaching is good coaching,"" as coaching expert Cathy A. Toll affirms in this, her newest book. All coaches seek to help solve problems and increase teacher success, and they all depend on effective collaboration to do so.This practical guide shows readers how to get the most out of educational coaching. It details: Models of coaching that enhance teachers' thinking, help them overcome obstacles to success, and lead to lasting change. Three phases of the problem-solving cycle. Characteristics of effective coaching conversations. Components of CAT—connectedness, acceptance, and trustworthiness—that are essential to the partnership. Practices that support teamwork. Toll also tackles the obstacles that hinder a coach's success—administrators who don't understand coaching and teachers who don't want to engage. Full of insights and answers, Educational Coaching is for all coaches and those who lead them.

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In the decades since it was first introduced, Howard Gardner's multiple intelligences (MI) theory has transformed how people think about learning the world over. Educators using the theory have achieved remarkable success in helping all students, including those who learn in nontraditional ways, to navigate school (and life outside it) with confidence and success. Within the context of classroom instruction, no author besides Gardner has done more to popularize MI theory than Thomas Armstrong, whose best seller Multiple Intelligences in the Classroom has become a bona fide education classic in its own right. This expanded fourth edition provides educators at all levels with everything they need to apply MI theory to curriculum development, lesson planning, assessment, special education, cognitive skills, career development, educational policy, and more.In addition to the many strategies, templates, and examples that have made Armstrong's book so enduringly popular, this edition is updated to examine how emerging neurodiversity research, trends toward greater instructional personalization, and rapidly evolving virtual learning tools have affected the use of MI theory to enhance student achievement. It also includes brand-new lesson plans aligned to nationwide standards and a revised list of resources for further study.

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Assessment is messy. Day-to-day, in-the-moment assessments not only reveal information that drives future instruction but also offer a comprehensive picture of students' abilities and dispositions toward learning. As teachers, we might know what this looks and feels like, yet it can be hard to put into action—hence the messiness.Say hello to digital student portfolios—dynamic, digital collections of authentic information from different media, in many forms, and with multiple purposes. Using digital portfolios to capture student thinking and progress allows us to better see our students as readers, writers, and learners—and help students see themselves in the same way!Matt Renwick's Digital Portfolios in the Classroom is a guide to help teachers sort through, capture, and make sense of the messiness associated with assessment. By shining a spotlight on three types of student portfolios—performance, process, and progress—and how they can be used to assess student work, Renwick helps educators navigate the maze of digital tools and implement the results to drive instruction.

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In this comprehensive resource for elementary school teachers, Kristina J. Doubet and Jessica A. Hockett explore how to use differentiated instruction to help students be more successful learners—regardless of background, native language, learning preference, or motivation. They explain how to: Create a healthy classroom community in which students' unique qualities and needs are as important as the ones they have in common. Translate curriculum into manageable and meaningful learning goals that are fit to be differentiated. Use pre-assessment and formative assessment to uncover students' learning needs, tailor tasks accordingly, and ensure that students are ""getting it."" Provide interactive learning experiences that encourage students to engage with both the content and one another. Present students with avenues to take in, process, and produce knowledge that appeal to their varied interests and learning preferences. Navigate potential roadblocks to differentiation. Each chapter provides a plethora of practical tools, templates, and strategies for a variety of subject areas developed by and for real teachers. Whether you're new to differentiated instruction or looking to expand your repertoire of DI strategies, Differentiation in the Elementary Grades will show you classroom-tested ways to better engage students and help them succeed every day. Includes URL and password for free downloadable forms.

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Imagine a school with a diverse student body where everyone feels safe and valued, and all—regardless of race, culture, home language, sexual orientation, gender identity, academic history, and individual challenges—have the opportunity to succeed with interesting classes, projects, and activities. In this school, teachers notice and meet individual instructional needs and foster a harmonious and supportive environment. All students feel empowered to learn, to grow, and to pursue their dreams.This is the school every student needs and deserves.In Building Equity, Dominique Smith, Nancy Frey, Ian Pumpian, and Douglas Fisher, colleagues at San Diego's innovative Health Sciences High & Middle College, introduce the Building Equity Taxonomy, a new model to clarify the structural and interpersonal components of an equitable and excellent schooling experience, and the Building Equity Review and Audit, survey-based tools to help school and teacher leaders uncover equity-related issues and organize their efforts to achieve: Physical integration. Social-emotional engagement. Opportunity to learn. Instructional excellence. Engaged and inspired learners. Built on the authors' own experiences and those of hundreds of educators throughout the United States, this book is filled with examples of policy initiatives and practices that support high-quality, inclusive learning experiences and deliver education that meets critical standards of equality and equity.

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Collaborative teaching, or co-teaching, is a powerful way to support the learning of students with diverse learning needs. But how do you know when you're doing it right? And if you're not, what can you do about that? Authors Wendy W. Murawski and Wendy W. Lochner introduce the Collaborative Teaching Improvement Model of Excellence (CTIME), a continuous improvement model that embraces personalized professional learning to ensure that teachers meet the core competencies for co-teaching without burning out along the way. Incorporating a systematic application of collaborative groups, data analysis, microteaching, feedback, and collegial support, CTIME is the culmination of the best research in the field.As Murawski and Lochner walk you through their data-driven, no-fail model of co-teaching, you’ll learn about: The CTIME process and how it works. Co-teaching core competencies measured schoolwide and at the classroom level. Assessment of progress toward mastery. Co-teaching action plans. Professional learning communities and schoolwide improvement. Co-teaching facilitation, feedback, and reflection. Offering a practical approach to achieving mastery of the co-teaching core competencies, this book provides dozens of strategies, resources, and templates that can be used by district-level administrators, principals, and co-teaching teams. If you're ready to examine your co-teaching practices to make sure you're achieving the best possible outcomes for your students, then Beyond Co-Teaching Basics is for you.

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Educators' most important work is to help students develop the intellectual and social strength of character necessary to live well in the world. The way to do this, argue authors Bena Kallick and Allison Zmuda, is to increase the say students have in their own learning and prepare them to navigate complexities they face both inside and beyond school. This means rethinking traditional teacher and student roles and re-examining goal setting, lesson planning, assessment, and feedback practices. It means establishing classrooms that prioritize: Voice—Involving students in “the what” and “the how” of learning and equipping them to be stewards of their own education. Co-creation—Guiding students to identify the challenges and concepts they want to explore and outline the actions they will take. Social construction—Having students work with others to theorize, pursue common goals, build products, and generate performances. Self-discovery—Teaching students to reflect on their own developing skills and knowledge so that they will acquire new understandings of themselves and how they learn. Based on their exciting work in the field, Kallick and Zmuda map out a transformative model of personalization that puts students at the center and asks them to employ the set of dispositions for engagement and learning known as the Habits of Mind. They share the perspectives of educators engaged in this work; highlight the habits that empower students to pursue aspirations, investigate problems, design solutions, chase curiosities, and create performances; and provide tools and recommendations for adjusting classroom practices to facilitate learning that is self-directed, dynamic, sometimes messy, and always meaningful.

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What is FIT Teaching? What is a FIT Teacher?The Framework for Intentional and Targeted Teaching®—or FIT Teaching®—is a research-based, field-tested, and experience-honed process that captures the essentials of the best educational environments. In contrast to restrictive pedagogical prescriptions or formulas, FIT Teaching empowers teachers to adapt the most effective planning, instructional, and assessment practices to their particular context in order to move their students' learning from where it is now to where it should be. To be a FIT Teacher is to make a heroic commitment to learning—not just to the learning of every student in the classroom, but to the professional learning necessary to grow, inspire, and lead.This book introduces the powerful FIT Teaching Tool, which harnesses the FIT Teaching approach and presents a detailed continuum of growth and leadership. It's a close-up look at what intentional and targeting teaching is and what successful teachers do to: Plan with purpose. Cultivate a learning climate. Instruct with intention. Assess with a system. Impact student learning. Designed to foster discussion among educators about what they are doing in the classroom, the FIT Teaching Tool can be used by teachers for self-assessment; by teacher peers for collegial feedback in professional learning communities; by instructional coaches to focus on the skills teachers need both onstage and off; and by school leaders to highlight their teachers' strengths and value. Join authors Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey, and Stefani Arzonetti Hite for an examination of what makes great teachers great, and see how educators at all grade levels and all levels of experience are taking intentional steps toward enhanced professional practice.

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In his 2011 ASCD best-seller Focus: Elevating the Essentials to Radically Improve Student Learning, author Mike Schmoker described a fresh approach to K-12 teaching built on three core elements: a focused and coherent curriculum; clear, prioritized lessons; and purposeful reading and writing, or authentic literacy. Now, in Leading with Focus, he shows administrators, principals, and other education leaders how to apply his model to the work of running schools and districts. In this companion to his previous book, Schmoker offers: An overview of the case for simple, focused school and district leadership—demonstrating its power for vastly improving the work of teachers and leaders. Examples of real schools and districts that have embraced focused leadership—and the incredible results for student learning. A practical, flexible, and easy-to-follow implementation guide for ensuring focused leadership in schools and districts. All students deserve to learn in schools where educators eschew distractions and superfluous activities to concentrate on what's most important. To that end, this book is an essential resource for leaders ready to streamline their practice and focus their efforts on radically improving student learning.

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In How to Make Decisions with Different Kinds of Student Assessment Data, best-selling author Susan M. Brookhart helps teachers and administrators understand the critical elements and nuances of assessment data and how that information can best be used to inform improvement efforts in the school or district.Readers will learn: What different kinds of data can—and cannot—tell us about student learning. What different analyses reveal about changes in student achievement. How to interpret, use, and share relevant data. How to create a model to go from problem to solution in a data-based decision-making process. With easy-to-understand explanations, supplemented by examples and scenarios from actual schools, this book offers a path to better understanding, more accurate interpretation of assessment results, and—most important—more effective use of data to improve teaching and learning.

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To differentiate instruction is to act on the belief that all kids deserve access to the richest, most compelling learning experiences and to provide the scaffolding they need to seize that opportunity. While a handful of teachers in a school might be using differentiation to great success, it takes a collaborative, schoolwide approach to maximize differentiation's effectiveness and improve outcomes for all students.Leading for Differentiation lays out the reflective thinking and action-oriented steps necessary to launch a system of continuous professional learning, culture building, and program assessment that will allow differentiation to flourish in every classroom. Incorporating their own experienced insights, real-world examples, and practical tools, world-renowned differentiated instruction expert Carol Ann Tomlinson and change leadership authority Michael Murphy explore: Why a move to schoolwide differentiation makes so much sense for today's students and today's standards- and accountability-focused climate. How to transform a vision for schoolwide differentiation into manageable, year-by-year plans to achieve it. How to incorporate the principles of differentiation, motivation, and adult learning into respectful, responsive, and truly effective professional learning throughout all stages of the change initiative. How to foster and recognize growth in teachers' differentiation practices, and how to chart the impact differentiation is having on student learning. How to recognize, understand, and respond to resistance—in both its predictable forms and surprising ones. What schoolwide differentiation looks like when it's fully established, and how to tend to it for long-term success. Leading the change to a differentiated school means creating an environment in which each individual feels valued, challenged, supported, and part of a team working together for success. In this book, school leaders will learn how to set the course for positive change and create the structural supports that will help teachers grow as differentiators so that their students will thrive as learners.

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Too often, students who fail a grade or a course receive remediation that ends up widening rather than closing achievement gaps. According to veteran classroom teacher and educational consultant Suzy Pepper Rollins, the true answer to supporting struggling students lies in acceleration. In Learning in the Fast Lane, she lays out a plan of action that teachers can use to immediately move underperforming students in the right direction and differentiate instruction for all learners—even those who excel academically. This essential guide identifies eight high-impact, research-based instructional approaches that will help you: Make standards and learning goals explicit to students. Increase students' vocabulary—a key to their academic success. Build students' motivation and self-efficacy so that they become active, optimistic participants in class. Provide rich, timely feedback that enables students to improve when it counts. Address skill and knowledge gaps within the context of new learning. Students deserve no less than the most effective strategies available. These hands-on, ready-to-implement practices will enable you to provide all students with compelling, rigorous, and engaging learning experiences.

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All the talk of closing the achievement gap in schools obscures a more fundamental issue: do the grades we assign to students truly reflect the extent of their learning? In this lively and eye-opening book, educator Myron Dueck reveals how many of the assessment policies that teachers adopt can actually prove detrimental to student motivation and achievement and shows how we can tailor policies to address what really matters: student understanding of content. 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.

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Language has always been the medium of instruction, but what happens when it becomes a barrier to learning? In this book, Jane Hill and Kirsten Miller take the reenergized strategies from the second edition of Classroom Instruction That Works and apply them to students in the process of acquiring English. New features in this edition include: The Thinking Language Matrix, which aligns Bloom's taxonomy with the stages of language acquisition and allows students at all levels to engage in meaningful learning. The Academic Language Framework, an easy-to-use tool for incorporating language-development objectives into content instruction. Suggestions for helping students develop oral language that leads to improved writing. Tips for Teaching that emphasize key points and facilitate instructional planning. Whether your students are learning English as a second language or are native English speakers who need help with their language development, this practical, research-based book provides the guidance necessary to ensure better results for all.

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What are ""essential questions,"" and how do they differ from other kinds of questions? What's so great about them? Why should you design and use essential questions in your classroom?Essential questions (EQs) help target standards as you organize curriculum content into coherent units that yield focused and thoughtful learning. In the classroom, EQs are used to stimulate students' discussions and promote a deeper understanding of the content.Whether you are an Understanding by Design (UbD) devotee or are searching for ways to address standards—local or Common Core State Standards—in an engaging way, Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins provide practical guidance on how to design, initiate, and embed inquiry-based teaching and learning in your classroom.Offering dozens of examples, the authors explore the usefulness of EQs in all K-12 content areas, including skill-based areas such as math, PE, language instruction, and arts education. As an important element of their backward design approach to designing curriculum, instruction, and assessment, the authors: Give a comprehensive explanation of why EQs are so important. Explore seven defining characteristics of EQs. Distinguish between topical and overarching questions and their uses. Outline the rationale for using EQs as the focal point in creating units of study. Show how to create effective EQs, working from sources including standards, desired understandings, and student misconceptions. Using essential questions can be challenging—for both teachers and students—and this book provides guidance through practical and proven processes, as well as suggested ""response strategies"" to encourage student engagement. Finally, you will learn how to create a culture of inquiry so that all members of the educational community—students, teachers, and administrators—benefit from the increased rigor and deepened understanding that emerge when essential questions become a guiding force for learners of all ages.

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In Learning Targets, Connie M. Moss and Susan M. Brookhart contend that improving student learning and achievement happens in the immediacy of an individual lesson--what they call ""today's lesson""—or it doesn't happen at all.The key to making today's lesson meaningful? Learning targets. Written from students' point of view, a learning target describes a lesson-sized chunk of information and skills that students will come to know deeply. Each lesson's learning target connects to the next lesson's target, enabling students to master a coherent series of challenges that ultimately lead to important curricular standards.Drawing from the authors' extensive research and professional learning partnerships with classrooms, schools, and school districts, this practical book: Situates learning targets in a theory of action that students, teachers, principals, and central-office administrators can use to unify their efforts to raise student achievement and create a culture of evidence-based, results-oriented practice. Provides strategies for designing learning targets that promote higher-order thinking and foster student goal setting, self-assessment, and self-regulation. Explains how to design a strong performance of understanding, an activity that produces evidence of students' progress toward the learning target. Shows how to use learning targets to guide summative assessment and grading. Learning Targets also includes reproducible planning forms, a classroom walk-through guide, a lesson-planning process guide, and guides to teacher and student self-assessment.What students are actually doing during today's lesson is both the source of and the yardstick for school improvement efforts. By applying the insights in this book to your own work, you can improve your teaching expertise and dramatically empower all students as stakeholders in their own learning.

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