Teach the Best and Stomp the Rest


Book Description

This book is an experienced analysis of the failures of American schools to provide learning for a majority of its students including those known as the forgotten halfand the reasons for those failures. It explores who is being educated, and what is known about learning in terms of prerequisites, brain differences and cultures. The book describes the failed initiatives of more money, class size reduction, school choice, magnet schools, vouchers, and merit pay for teachers. Charter schools dont cut it for a majority of our children. No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and Race To the Top (RTT) are expensive, unmitigated disasters. The American schools have mostly missed the promise of change and technology and are now engaged in massive fallacious testing, resulting in little benefit to the nation and significant harm to the children. Outrageously priced Higher Education has little to offer to improve the national education malaise, and lumbers on in its dismal, disorderly state. However, American schools in their INNOCENCE are a product of and restricted by their governmental, economic, civic, and ecologic environment. As described in the closure of the book, The Future, the major structural changes needed to re-create our national learning system have overrun national planning and thinking capacity. Fortunately, there are promising patterns of change in progress.




Responsive Classroom for Music, Art, PE, and Other Special Areas


Book Description

Responsive Classroom practices have helped thousands of special area teachers for more than 30 years. Here you'll find practical suggestions, charts, planners, and examples from experienced special area teachers who use Responsive Classroom practices every day. You'll learn how to: Open and close each period in calm, orderly waysSet students up for success by modeling and practicing skills and routinesUse positive teacher languageEngage students more deeplyRefocus and recharge students with quick, fun, movement breaksRespond to misbehavior to get students back to learning




Teaching Critical Thinking


Book Description

Help students meet today’s literacy demands with this new book from Terry Roberts and Laura Billings. The authors show how a seminar approach can lead students deeper into a text and improve their speaking, listening, and writing skills, as recommended by the Common Core State Standards. Roberts and Billings provide easy-to-follow information on implementing Paideia Seminars, in which students discuss a text and ask open-ended questions about it. When teachers use this lesson format, students are exposed to a wide range of increasingly complex texts. They also learn how to collaborate, talk about, and reflect on what they’re reading, to make meaning independently and together. Seminars can be done in English class and across the curriculum, using social studies documents or math problems as the texts under discussion. Teaching Critical Thinking also offers an array of practical resources: teacher lesson plans student samples a list of possible ideas and values for discussion a guide to asking good questions during a seminar six full seminar plans (including the texts), covering literature, social studies, and science topics




The Grace of Kings


Book Description

One of the Time 100 Best Fantasy Books Of All Time Two men rebel together against tyranny—and then become rivals—in this first sweeping book of an epic fantasy series from Ken Liu, recipient of Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy awards. Hailed as one of the best books of 2015 by NPR. Wily, charming Kuni Garu, a bandit, and stern, fearless Mata Zyndu, the son of a deposed duke, seem like polar opposites. Yet, in the uprising against the emperor, the two quickly become the best of friends after a series of adventures fighting against vast conscripted armies, silk-draped airships, and shapeshifting gods. Once the emperor has been overthrown, however, they each find themselves the leader of separate factions—two sides with very different ideas about how the world should be run and the meaning of justice. Fans of intrigue, intimate plots, and action will find a new series to embrace in the Dandelion Dynasty.




One on One


Book Description

(Applause Acting Series). Over 75 monologues for women from the contemporary stage, written by these and other major dramatists: David Mamet * Brian Friel * Steve Tesich * Harold Pinter * Alan Ayckbourn * Timberlake Wertenbaker * Neil Simon * John Patrick Shanley * Jane Anderson * Elizabeth Swados * Ariel Dorfman * Craig Lucas.




All the Teacher's Prisoners


Book Description

I investigate a murder at a paranormal prison and end up behind bars with four psycho inmates. Flynn Native American, half vampire, half lion shifter, in prison for double homicide (and my student) Ronan Black, silver hair, violet eyes, treacherous fae, in prison for identity theft and possible murder Marco Dangerously sexy, bisexual Italian demon, and one of the devil's bastards, in prison for armed robbery Aedan HUGE Irish golden dragon, in prison for arson They will use me in ways I never thought possible. But they don't know who I really am. What I really am. My family has danced with the devil, and I inherited the darkness. When in danger, when my family is in danger, I don't just bite, I don't just kill, I'm more psycho than all of you, and I won't hesitate to bring the world upside down. Enjoy this 110k-word (500-page) standalone. You don't have to read the previous books in this universe first to read All the Teacher's Prisoners, but download the big finale, All the Teacher's Little Pets, next for the closure you'll seek after reading this book! You like vampires, shifters, monsters, devils and demons, faes, dragons and dark stories, this paranormal why choose romance is definitely for you. Download your copy now. Because you have to.




Using Music to Enhance Student Learning


Book Description

Integrating musical activities in the elementary school classroom can assist in effectively teaching and engaging students in Language Arts, Science, Math, and Social Studies, while also boosting mental, emotional and social development. However, many elementary education majors fear they lack the needed musical skills to use music successfully. Future elementary school teachers need usable, practical musical strategies to easily infuse into their curriculum. Written for both current and future teachers with little or no previous experience in music, Using Music to Enhance Student Learning, Second Edition offers strategies that are not heavily dependent on musical skills. While many textbooks are devoted to teaching music theory skills, this textbook is dedicated to pedagogy – the actual teaching of music – particularly in those schools without a separate music class in their curriculum. The ultimate goal is for future teachers to provide their elementary school classes with engaging learning experiences. These learning experiences are clearly presented to enable children to acquire knowledge in all subject areas within a joyful, creative environment rich with music activities. New to the second edition are the animated listening maps, more audio tracks, a new guitar unit, expanded coverage in the recorder unit, a connection with visual art and music, expanded activities in American history and math, and updated research and statistics. SPECIAL FEATURES Animated "Listening Maps" help listeners focus on music selections through clear visual representations of sound. Group Activities reinforce the social aspects of music-making, as well as the benefits of collaborative teaching and learning. A thorough integration of music in the curriculum establishes that music is essential in a child’s development, and that the incorporation of music will enhance all other subjects/activities in the classroom. Learning Aids include "Tantalizing Tidbits of Research," which provide the justifications for why these activities are important, as well as "Teaching Tips," and "Thinking It Through" activities. The Using Music Package Streamed listening selections from the Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and Contemporary Periods Get America Singing... Again! Volume 1 (developed in association with the Music Educators National Conference, now NAFME, and other music organizations) with 43 songs that represent America’s varied music heritage of folk, traditional, and patriotic themes Appendices include a songbook with Hispanic folksongs, a recorder music songbook and a guitar unit Companion website hosts various teaching and learning resources ISBN 978-0-367-11067-3 Using Music, Second Edition set includes: ISBN 978-0-415-70936-1 Using Music, Second Edition textbook Get America Singing... Again! Volume 1 songbook ISBN 978-0-429-02487-0 Using Music, Second Edition eBook is the textbok only. The songbook is only available with the print textbook and is not sold separately.




The Earth Is Enough


Book Description

In this touching memoir of his boyhood on a farm in the Ozark foothills, Harry Middleton joins the front rank of nature writers alongside Edward Hoagland and Annie Dillard. It is the year1965, a year rife with change in the world and in the life of a boy whose tragic loss of innocence leads him to the healing landscape of the Ozarks. Haunted by indescribable longing, twelve year old Harry is turned over to two enigmatic guardians, men as old as the hills they farm and as elusive and beautiful as the trout they fish for with religious devotion. Seeking strength and purpose from life, Harry learns from his uncle, grandfather, and their crazy Sioux neighbor, Elias Wonder, that the pulse of life beats from within the deep constancy of the earth, and from one’s devotion to it. Amidst the rhythm of an ancient cadence, Harry discovers his home: a farm, a mountain stream, and the eye of a trout rising.




Diligence


Book Description

What would you do to get the truth? Emma has spent her life steeped in secrets. She’s suffocating on lies and drowning in the depths of her secretive double-life. When the Guild splits, and Emma is separated from her only friends, she finds Obedience and Diligence stifling. After years of learning to hide in plain sight and obey without question, Emma has reached her limit. Diligence takes us on a roller-coaster of Emma’s angsty search for answers. From fistfights to fishnets, a new school brings challenges Emma has never faced. And if her regular teen life was not difficult enough, the appearance of the CIA complicates everything further. They tempt her with what she has always wanted: a family who loves her and accepts her the way she is. All she has to do to get it is betray Leader. Now, the secrets belong to Emma. If Leader won’t give her the truth she deserves, she will find out for herself. No matter the cost. When faced with the truth, will Emma finally find a way to get free, or will she once again succumb to Leader’s demand for Diligence? Buy Diligence today to delve deeper into Emma’s life in the mysterious and dangerous cult, The Guild




Re-Purposing Suzuki


Book Description

Re-Purposing Suzuki: A Hybrid Approach to Actor Training introduces a system of text analysis that synthesizes physical, psychological, and vocal components in order to truthfully embody heightened texts and contexts. By understanding how the author has re-purposed Suzuki and other physical training methods, as well as Stanislavski, readers will gain an awareness of how to analyze a particular training method by extrapolating its key components and integrating it into a holistic, embodied approach to text analysis. The book explores a method of physical scoring via Rules of the Body and Rules of Composition, as well as a method of approaching heightened texts from Greek drama to post-modern playwrights that draws on the individual actor’s imagination and experience and integrates voice, mind, and body. Readers will be able to either replicate this approach, or apply the logic of its building blocks to assemble their own personal creative process applicable to a variety of performance genres. This is a source book for actors, theatre students, practitioners, and educators interested in assembling tools derived from different sources to create alternative approaches to actor training. While the process outlined in the book evolves in a classroom setting, the components of the pedagogy can also be practiced by individuals who are interested in finding new ways to explore text and character and bring them into their own personal practice.