The Thinking Teacher's Toolkit


Book Description

Designed to provide a complete guide for teachers of thinking skills, reasoning and critical thinking to 14-19 age groups, everything you could need to be a thinking teacher is packed into The Thinking Teacher's Toolkit, including: • an introduction to what thinking skills are, why you are equipped to teach them and how you can apply your previous experience • clear approaches to preparing to teach, whether you are a coordinator seeking guidance on setting up a thinking skills course from scratch, a thinking teacher putting together thought-provoking lesson plans or a subject teacher looking for ideas on integrating critical thinking skills across the curriculum; and • advice on how to handle assessment, including information on a variety of qualifications available internationally. In addition, there is a companion website containing tools for developing your professional expertise, answers to frequently asked questions, handouts for pupils and PowerPoint's to use in the sample lessons. This is the ultimate toolkit for any teacher wanting to improve their students reasoning and problem-solving skills.




A Teacher's Toolbox for Gifted Education


Book Description

This book provides busy teachers with an adaptable toolbox of strategies for challenging gifted students that they can immediately put into practice in their classroom, school, or program. Chapters cover everything from makerspaces and project-based learning, to enrichment clubs, mentorships, creative thinking, and more. Each strategy includes an overview, resource guide, description of how it looks in the classroom, and all the information you need to put it into practice. With templates, charts, and links to videos illustrating the tools in action, A Teacher’s Toolbox for Gifted Education is your go-to guide for creative ways to support advanced learners.




Teacher Toolkit


Book Description

'This is a book by a teacher still in the classroom after 20 years. Want to know how to survive? Read this book; it's fizzing with ideas.' Ty Goddard, Co-founder of the Education Foundation A compendium of teaching strategies, ideas and advice, which aims to motivate, comfort, amuse and above all reduce your workload, by bestselling author Ross Morrison McGill, aka @TeacherToolkit. Teacher Toolkit is a must-read for newly qualified and early career teachers and will support you through your first five years in the primary or secondary classroom. It is packed with advice, tips and ideas for all aspects of teaching practice, from lesson planning to marking and assessment, behaviour management and differentiation. Ross believes that becoming a teacher is one of the best decisions you will ever make, but after more than two decades in the classroom, he knows that it is not an easy journey! He shares countless anecdotes from his own experience, from disastrous observations to marking in the broom cupboard, and offers a wealth of strategies to help you become a true Vitruvian teacher: one who is resilient, intelligent, innovative, collaborative and aspirational. Complete with a bespoke Five Minute Plan in every chapter, photocopiable templates, QR codes, a detachable bookmark and beautiful illustrations by renowned artist Polly Nor, Teacher Toolkit is everything you need to ensure you are the best teacher you can be, whatever the new policy or framework. Ross is the bestselling author of Mark. Plan. Teach., Just Great Teaching and 100 Ideas for Secondary Teachers: Outstanding Lessons. Vitruvian teaching will help you survive your first five years: Year 1: Be resilient (surviving your NQT year) Year 2: Be intelligent (refining your teaching) Year 3: Be innovative (taking risks) Year 4: Be collaborative (working with others) Year 5: Be aspirational (moving towards middle leadership) Start working towards Vitruvian today.




Tools of the Mind


Book Description

Now in its third edition, this classic text remains the seminal resource for in-depth information about major concepts and principles of the cultural-historical theory developed by Lev Vygotsky, his students, and colleagues, as well as three generations of neo-Vygotskian scholars in Russia and the West. Featuring two new chapters on brain development and scaffolding in the zone of proximal development, as well as additional content on technology, dual language learners, and students with disabilities, this new edition provides the latest research evidence supporting the basics of the cultural-historical approach alongside Vygotskian-based practical implications. With concrete explanations and strategies on how to scaffold young children’s learning and development, this book is essential reading for students of early childhood theory and development.




Potential Development Using Thinking Tools


Book Description

Educators need to empower learners to be prepared for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, to be thinkers with the ability to pioneer the future. This book cracks teaching and learning myths that led to learners being perceived as knowledge duplicators instead of being knowledge creators. Thinking tools move the focus of learning from mastering content to critical thinking. This requires the critical thinking toolkit, which is the mothership of all thinking. It engages learners’ forever-wandering minds with the learning task at hand, which is the substitute for the traditional expectations of “paying attention” and “memorising”. When employing thinking tools, learners become thinking engineers—taking ownership of what they must discover, create or solve. Within this paradigm of teaching, teachers directly engage with learners’ brains, which goes beyond learner-centred teaching and defining learning as visual, auditory or kinaesthetic. The book is based on examples of thinking tools sessions.




Ambitious Science Teaching


Book Description

2018 Outstanding Academic Title, Choice Ambitious Science Teaching outlines a powerful framework for science teaching to ensure that instruction is rigorous and equitable for students from all backgrounds. The practices presented in the book are being used in schools and districts that seek to improve science teaching at scale, and a wide range of science subjects and grade levels are represented. The book is organized around four sets of core teaching practices: planning for engagement with big ideas; eliciting student thinking; supporting changes in students’ thinking; and drawing together evidence-based explanations. Discussion of each practice includes tools and routines that teachers can use to support students’ participation, transcripts of actual student-teacher dialogue and descriptions of teachers’ thinking as it unfolds, and examples of student work. The book also provides explicit guidance for “opportunity to learn” strategies that can help scaffold the participation of diverse students. Since the success of these practices depends so heavily on discourse among students, Ambitious Science Teaching includes chapters on productive classroom talk. Science-specific skills such as modeling and scientific argument are also covered. Drawing on the emerging research on core teaching practices and their extensive work with preservice and in-service teachers, Ambitious Science Teaching presents a coherent and aligned set of resources for educators striving to meet the considerable challenges that have been set for them.




Making Thinking Visible


Book Description

A proven program for enhancing students' thinking and comprehension abilities Visible Thinking is a research-based approach to teaching thinking, begun at Harvard's Project Zero, that develops students' thinking dispositions, while at the same time deepening their understanding of the topics they study. Rather than a set of fixed lessons, Visible Thinking is a varied collection of practices, including thinking routines?small sets of questions or a short sequence of steps?as well as the documentation of student thinking. Using this process thinking becomes visible as the students' different viewpoints are expressed, documented, discussed and reflected upon. Helps direct student thinking and structure classroom discussion Can be applied with students at all grade levels and in all content areas Includes easy-to-implement classroom strategies The book also comes with a DVD of video clips featuring Visible Thinking in practice in different classrooms.




The Social Studies Teacher's Toolbox


Book Description

Social studies teachers will find classroom-tested lessons and strategies that can be easily implemented in the classroom The Teacher’s Toolbox series is an innovative, research-based resource providing teachers with instructional strategies for students of all levels and abilities. Each book in the collection focuses on a specific content area. Clear, concise guidance enables teachers to quickly integrate low-prep, high-value lessons and strategies in their middle school and high school classrooms. Every strategy follows a practical, how-to format established by the series editors. The Social Studies Teacher's Toolbox contains hundreds of student-friendly classroom lessons and teaching strategies. Clear and concise chapters, fully aligned to Common Core Social Studies standards and National Council for the Social Studies standards, cover the underlying research, technology based options, practical classroom use, and modification of each high-value lesson and strategy. This book employs a hands-on approach to help educators quickly learn and apply proven methods and techniques in their social studies courses. Topics range from reading and writing in social studies and tools for analysis, to conducting formative and summative assessments, differentiating instruction, motivating students, incorporating social and emotional learning and culturally responsive teaching. Easy-to-read content shows how and why social studies should be taught and how to make connections across history, geography, political science, and beyond. Designed to reduce instructor preparation time and increase relevance, student engagement, and comprehension, this book: Explains the usefulness, application, and potential drawbacks of each instructional strategy Provides fresh activities applicable to all classrooms Helps social studies teachers work with ELLs, advanced students, and students with learning differences Offers real-world guidance for addressing current events while covering standards and working with textbooks The Social Studies Teacher's Toolbox is an invaluable source of real-world lessons, strategies, and techniques for general education teachers and social studies specialists, as well as resource specialists/special education teachers, elementary and secondary educators, and teacher educators.




The Mindful Teacher′s Toolkit


Book Description

The Mindful Teacher’s Toolkit gives educators clear directions to develop their own mindful or awareness-based practice and ideas for how to embody and integrate these practices in their teaching. The combination of activities, guidance and real-life examples provide mindful teachers with a toolkit of everything they need to be able to develop their own mindful classroom.




Bringing Math Students Into the Formative Assessment Equation


Book Description

Make formative assessment work for you—and your math students! Finally, formative assessment that adds up! Bringing Math Students Into the Formative Assessment Equation is the ultimate resource for helping teachers implement formative assessment in the middle school mathematics classroom. And it’s much more than that. With this research-based, teacher-tested guide, you won’t just learn effective teaching strategies—you’ll turn your students into self-regulated learners. They’ll monitor and assess their own progress—and communicate to you about it! Features include: A clear and manageable six-aspect instructional model Detailed strategies for helping students own their successes Real-life examples from middle school mathematics teachers Useful resources and a companion website to help you implement formative assessment in your classroom Formative assessment isn’t just for teachers anymore. With the help of this essential resource, you’ll work together with your students toward a common goal of math success. "This book is outstanding. I would recommend it to any math educator. The depth of research integrated into practice is extensive and, as a result, it is the most practical book I have come across related to formative assessment and mathematics The self-regulation aspects, as well as the ownership and involvement emphasized in the book, went beyond the traditional cognitive strategies endorsed in most books." Marc Simmons, Principal Ilwaco Middle School, Ocean Beach School District, Long Beach, WA "The ideas in this book are brought to life with examples of teachers and students in the classroom. The teacher voices, comments, and quotes lend credibility and are a big component of the book’s strengths as well as the visuals and graphics." Rita Tellez, Math Coordinator Ysleta Independent School District, El Paso, TX