Students Taking Charge in Grades 6–12


Book Description

Discover how to design innovative learning environments that increase student ownership so they can achieve at high levels and meet rigorous standards. Students Taking Charge shows you how to create student-centered classrooms that empower learners through problem-based learning and differentiation, where students pose questions and actively seek answers. Technology is then used seamlessly throughout the day for information, communication, collaboration, and product generation. You’ll find out how to: Design an Authentic Learning Unit, which is at the core of the Learner-Active, Technology-Infused Classroom, aimed at engaging students; Understand the structures needed to support its implementation and empower students; Build the facilitation strategies that will move students from engagement to empowerment to efficacy. This new 6–12 edition offers a more detailed look into secondary school implementation. With the book’s practical examples and step-by-step guidelines, you’ll be able to start designing your innovative classroom immediately!




Students Taking Charge Implementation Guide for Leaders


Book Description

Lead your organization to implement innovative learning environments in which students take ownership so they can achieve at high levels and meet rigorous standards. Students Taking Charge Implementation Guide for Leaders shows you how to inspire, coach, and support teachers to create student-driven classrooms that empower learners through problem-based learning and differentiation, where students pose questions and actively seek answers. Technology is then used seamlessly throughout the day for information, communication, collaboration, and product generation. You’ll find out how to: Inspire the adaptive change at the core of the Learner-Active, Technology-Infused Classroom, aimed at engaging students; Understand the structures needed to support its implementation and empower teachers and students; Employ leadership strategies that will move teachers and students from engagement to empowerment to efficacy. This new implementation guide for school leaders offers a more detailed look into the key mindset shifts that are critical for leaders of a Learner-Active, Technology-Infused School. With the book’s practical examples and step-by-step guidelines, you’ll be able to help your teachers implement innovative classrooms immediately.




Students Taking Charge in Grades K-5


Book Description

Discover how to design innovative learning environments that increase student ownership so they can achieve at high levels and meet rigorous standards. Students Taking Charge shows you how to create student-driven classrooms that empower learners through problem-based learning and differentiation, where students pose questions and actively seek answers. Technology is then used seamlessly throughout the day for information, communication, collaboration, and product generation. You’ll find out how to: Design an Authentic Learning Unit, which is at the core of the Learner-Active, Technology-Infused Classroom, aimed at engaging students; Understand the structures needed to support its implementation and empower students; Build the facilitation strategies that will move students from engagement to empowerment to efficacy. This new K–5 edition offers a more detailed look into elementary school implementation. With the book’s practical examples and step-by-step guidelines, you’ll be able to start designing your innovative classroom immediately!




Let's Stop Teaching and Start Designing Learning


Book Description

How can you shift from a focus on content to the creation of active learning experiences? In this practical resource, author Jason Kennedy provides a blueprint to help you stop "teaching" and start designing learning, so you can improve students’ critical thinking, decision making, problem solving, and collaboration with others, preparing them for their futures beyond school doors. The framework for learning design covers components of planning (learning targets), of instruction (the opening, learning task, skills, tools, and success criteria), and of the work session (choices, pathways, feedback, and assessment). Appropriate for teachers of any subject area, the book also offers wide variety of tools to help you implement the ideas in your own setting.




Building Executive Function


Book Description

If students haven’t developed the brain-based skills to focus, catch and correct errors, identify cause-and-effect relationships, and more, they can't make sense of lessons. Executive function is the missing link to student achievement. But how can you develop this in the classroom? Bestselling author Nancy Sulla has the answers. She explains how building executive function requires a combination of activities, structures, and teacher facilitation strategies aimed at six increasingly complex life skills that should be the goal of any school: conscious control, engagement, collaboration, empowerment, efficacy, and leadership. This updated new edition includes information on how and why to build executive function skills in the post-pandemic, AI world, as well as modifications for English language learners. There are also Efficacy Notebook sections throughout—spaces for you to pause and reflect as you’re reading. In addition, there are examples across grade levels and templates for your own use. With these powerful tools, you will be inspired, armed, and ready to establish a clear framework for building executive function in all your students.




Reinventing the Classroom Experience


Book Description

Learn how to design versatile learning environments in which instruction is as effective virtually as it is in person. Bestselling author and consultant Nancy Sulla shows how you can reinvent the classroom experience and provide high-quality instruction that works as well at home as it does in school. You will discover how to help students build strong work habits and empower them to take responsibility for their learning; five key types of instructional activities; the power of PBL to increase student engagement and motivation; and five types of synchronous engagement between teachers and students. You will also gain strategies for building social and emotional learning, positioning the teacher as the facilitator of learning and parents as partners, and keeping equity at the forefront. No matter what grade level you teach or whether you are teaching fully in school, remotely, or a combination of both, this essential book will help you understand the key structures and strategies that work so students are positioned to learn anywhere, anytime.




Over-Tested and Under-Prepared


Book Description

Pressured by standardized testing and rigid pacing guidelines, many schools are forced to cover too much content too quickly, without being able to meet the needs of individual students. In this powerful book from acclaimed author and presenter Bob Sornson, you’ll learn how shifting from curriculum-based instruction to competency based, personalized learning can help students become more successful, confident, and engaged learners. Each chapter is easy to digest and provides compelling research, strategies, and anecdotes to inspire conversation and action. This second edition provides updated statistics and examples of schools successfully using competency based learning models to help you bring about meaningful change. Teachers, administrators, and community leaders will all find practical resources and a clear rationale for transforming our current educational system into a new, dynamic model of teaching and learning.




Where Is the Teacher?


Book Description

Kids today can learn more from a five-minute YouTube video or AI chatbot than they can from a full day of lectures. So what then is our role as classroom teachers? In this groundbreaking book, seasoned educator Kyle Wagner explains the new role of the teacher in the 4th industrial revolution. You will learn how to shift from being a deliverer of content, to a thoughtful designer and facilitator of student-centered learning experiences who gently guides from behind the scenes. Kyle, a veteran co-learning experience designer, former classroom teacher, and school leader, unpacks each of the 12 shifts required to build these student-centered environments. Chapters cover how to shift from a content-based to inquiry-based approach; develop relevant, interdisciplinary skills; cultivate meaningful student reflection; curate beautiful, real-world work; facilitate student-led discussion; and more. Through stories from real student-centered classrooms around each shift, and anecdotes from the author’s experience teaching and leading micro-academies, you will come away ready to unleash student creativity, build thoughtful inquirers, and develop self-directed learners within your own context.




"These Kids Are Out of Control"


Book Description

Today’s classrooms reimagined If you’re looking for a book on how to "control" your students, this isn’t it! Instead, this is a book on what classroom learning could be if we aspire to co-create more culturally responsive and equitable environments—environments that are safe, affirming, learner-centered, intellectually challenging, and engaging. If we create the kind of places where our students want to be . . . A critically important resource for teachers and administrators alike, "These Kids Are Out of Control" details the specific practices, tools, beliefs, dispositions, and mindsets that are essential to better serving the complex needs of our diverse learners, especially our marginalized students. Gain expert insight on: What it means to be culturally responsive in today’s classroom environments, even in schools at large How to decide what to teach, understand the curriculum, build relationships in and outside of school, and assess student development and learning The four best practices for building a classroom culture that is both nurturing and rigorous, and where all students are seen, heard, and respected Alternatives to punitive disciplinary action that too often sustains the cradle-to-prison pipeline Classroom "management" takes care of itself when you engage students, help them see links and alignment of the curriculum to their lives, build on and from student identity and culture, and recognize the many ways instructional practices can shift. "These Kids Are Out of Control" is your opportunity to get started right away!




Points of Disruption in the Music Education Curriculum, Volume 2


Book Description

For decades, scholars in the field of music education have recognized the need for growth and change in our approach to teaching music, yet despite these calls for change, the music education curriculum today remains remarkably similar to that of a century ago. Points of Disruption in the Music Education Curriculum, Volume 2: Individual Changes is one of two volumes that bring together applied suggestions, analyses, and best practices for disrupting cycles of replication in the curriculum of K-12 and collegiate music education programs in the United States and beyond, considering disruption as a force for positive change. Identifying specific strategies for interrupting or reimagining traditional practices, the contributors provide music teachers and music educators with a variety of potential practical approaches to creating changes that foster a better musical education at all levels of the curriculum. This second volume focuses on changes that can be implemented by individual educators, covering topics including transcultural approaches, student-teacher power relations, methods courses, integrated music education, and administrator support of teacher agency, student–teacher power relations, and reimagining music education. Bringing together 6 thought-provoking chapters, this book offers a diverse set of concrete strategies that will be useful to a wide range of music education stakeholders, including teachers, administrators, and curriculum designers.