The Architecture of Learning


Book Description

Become an Architect of Learning! (blueprints included). The brain constructs new learning, sorting and labeling new data, comparing it with prior experience, and using resulting understandings to interact with the environment. Written for teachers, educational leaders, and instructional designers, this guide presents tools for developing teaching that engages the student thinking needed to construct learning. With applied research from neuroscience and cognitive psychology, The Architecture of Learning introduces a series of blueprints that strategically direct a teacher s thinking and planning. The resulting instruction capitalizes on the brain s penchant for patterns and moves students from recognizing a reference point for constructing new understanding to using new learning to think about and act on the real world. The Architecture of Learning addresses: Understanding how students learn, building blocks of learning, subject matter types and focus processes of learning, aligning learning, teaching, and assessment, critical and creative thinking in teaching and learning, evaluating and revising instruction




The Mindup Curriculum - Grades Prek-2


Book Description

A comprehensive guide to helping all learners focus and reach their potential through brain-centered management and teaching strategies! Includes a full-color, innovative teaching poster with fascinating facts about the brain!




Transformative Ethnic Studies in Schools


Book Description

"Drawing on Christine Sleeter's review of research on the academic and social impact of ethnic studies commissioned by the National Education Association, this book will examine the value and forms of teaching and researching ethnic studies. The book employs a diverse conceptual framework, including critical pedagogy, anti-racism, Afrocentrism, Indigeneity, youth participatory action research, and critical multicultural education. The book provides cases of classroom teachers to 'illustrate what such conceptual framework look like when enacted in the classroom, as well as tensions that spring from them within school bureaucracies driven by neoliberalism.' Sleeter and Zavala will also outline ways to conduct research for 'investigating both learning and broader impacts of ethnic research used for liberatory ends'"--




Understanding by Design


Book Description

What is understanding and how does it differ from knowledge? How can we determine the big ideas worth understanding? Why is understanding an important teaching goal, and how do we know when students have attained it? How can we create a rigorous and engaging curriculum that focuses on understanding and leads to improved student performance in today's high-stakes, standards-based environment? Authors Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe answer these and many other questions in this second edition of Understanding by Design. Drawing on feedback from thousands of educators around the world who have used the UbD framework since its introduction in 1998, the authors have greatly revised and expanded their original work to guide educators across the K-16 spectrum in the design of curriculum, assessment, and instruction. With an improved UbD Template at its core, the book explains the rationale of backward design and explores in greater depth the meaning of such key ideas as essential questions and transfer tasks. Readers will learn why the familiar coverage- and activity-based approaches to curriculum design fall short, and how a focus on the six facets of understanding can enrich student learning. With an expanded array of practical strategies, tools, and examples from all subject areas, the book demonstrates how the research-based principles of Understanding by Design apply to district frameworks as well as to individual units of curriculum. Combining provocative ideas, thoughtful analysis, and tested approaches, this new edition of Understanding by Design offers teacher-designers a clear path to the creation of curriculum that ensures better learning and a more stimulating experience for students and teachers alike.




Teacher Proof


Book Description

‘Tom Bennett is the voice of the modern teacher.’ - Stephen Drew, Senior Vice-Principal, Passmores Academy, UK, featured on Channel 4’s Educating Essex Do the findings from educational science ever really improve the day-to-day practice of classroom teachers? Education is awash with theories about how pupils best learn and teachers best teach, most often propped up with the inevitable research that ‘proves’ the case in point. But what can teachers do to find the proof within the pudding, and how can this actually help them on wet Wednesday afternoon?. Drawing from a wide range of recent and popular education theories and strategies, Tom Bennett highlights how much of what we think we know in schools hasn’t been ‘proven’ in any meaningful sense at all. He inspires teachers to decide for themselves what good and bad education really is, empowering them as professionals and raising their confidence in the classroom and the staffroom alike. Readers are encouraged to question and reflect on issues such as: the most common ideas in modern education and where these ideas were born the crisis in research right now how research is commissioned and used by the people who make policy in the UK and beyond the provenance of education research: who instigates it, who writes it, and how to spot when a claim is based on evidence and when it isn’t the different way that data can be analysed what happens to the research conclusions once they escape the laboratory. Controversial, erudite and yet unremittingly entertaining, Tom includes practical suggestions for the classroom throughout. This book will be an ally to every teacher who’s been handed an instruction on a platter and been told, ‘the research proves it.’




What Do I Do When--


Book Description




Leading with Focus


Book Description

In his 2011 ASCD best-seller Focus: Elevating the Essentials to Radically Improve Student Learning, author Mike Schmoker described a fresh pproach 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.




Instruction Modeling


Book Description

"Instruction modeling" is a leading method for designing blended learning programs: carefully study high-quality offline instruction and create online programs to recreate it on a larger scale. Instruction Modeling is both a practical guide to developing and implementing blended learning programs, and a first-hand account of the creation of one such program, Reasoning Mind.




Outcomes of High-Quality Clinical Practice in Teacher Education


Book Description

For decades teacher education researchers, organizations, and policy makers have called for improving teacher education by creating clinically based preparation programs (e.g. CAEP, 2013; Goodlad, 1990; Holmes, 1986, 1995; National Association for Professional Development Schools, 2008; National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Educators, 2001, 2010; Zeichner, 1990). According to the NCATE Blue Ribbon Report (2010), this approach requires extensive opportunities for prospective teachers to connect and apply what they learn from school and university based teacher educators. Similar to preparing medical professionals, clinical practice in teacher education requires the complex and time intensive work of supporting teacher candidate ability to link theory, research, and practice as well as on-going inquiry into best pedagogical practices. Therefore, clinically intensive programs expect prospective teachers to blend practitioner and academic knowledge throughout their programs as "they learn by doing" (NCATE, 2010, p.ii). However, most of the literature to date on clinical practice has been conceptual and often relies on describing program design. The purpose of this book is move past description to study and understand what teacher education programs are learning from research about innovative clinical models of teacher education. Each book chapter highlights research about how programs are studying a variety of outcomes of clinical practice. After an introductory chapter that helps to define and situate clinical practice in teacher education, the book is organized into four sections: (1) Outcomes of New Roles, (2) Outcomes of New Practices, (3) Outcomes of New Coursework/Fieldwork Configurations, and (4) Outcomes of New Program Configurations. The book wraps up with a discussion that looks across the chapters to find common themes, share implications for teacher educators, and set the course for future research.




Phonics for Reading


Book Description

"Supplementary phonics program designed to teach phonemic decoding to students who have not yet mastered those skills. The program was originally conceived for students in grades 3-6, but may also be used for students in grades 1 and 3, for lower performing students in upper grades, and for adults learning to read English."--Curriculum Associates website, accessed 5/15/2009.