With so many demands and so much content available for teachers, we need to put a higher value on an often-overlooked skill: planning learning experiences that will both engage and inspire our students, by design, over time. "Planning Powerful Instruction" is your go-to guide for transforming student outcomes through stellar…

Discover how Lesson Study benefits both students and teachers. Unlike scripted curricula that strip teachers of professional decisionmaking, Lesson Study values teachers by expecting them to be agents of improvement in their own classrooms. This resource empowers readers to oppose reform efforts that minimize teacher agency by offering an…

This book provides more than 50 classroom-ready tools that make it easy to implement the nine categories of effective teaching strategies from McREL's bestselling book, "Classroom Instruction That Works" (2012) across grade levels and content areas. By incorporating these tools into your daily practice, you can turn your classroom into a…

In winter 2014, I came upon an opportunity to conduct a case study on a team of middle school math teachers who initiated a study group to examine how a set of learning progressions could help them with their planning, instruction, and assessment. Learning progressions are research-based hypotheses about how students develop more sophisticated…

By integrating the best of current research and practice in curriculum planning this book presents that comprehensive topic in a manageable form. Examples throughout are representative of different grade levels and subjects areas. It should be understood at the outset that the content offered for curriculum planning is not a rigid prescriptive…

Any school interested in preparing students for learning and working in 21st century academic and job settings needs this resource to explain to teachers the new skills students need and provide teachers with tools to teach and reinforce these skills. Based on the work of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, this action tool defines what…

Regardless of your stage at implementing the design tools and using the improved template for Understanding by Design[R] (UbD), this companion to "The UbD Guide to Creating High-Quality Units" is essential for taking your work to a higher plane. This volume features a set of hands-on modules containing worksheets, models, and self-assessments that…

Information skills instruction is a fundamental and vital part of K-12 education in the 21st century. "The Handy 5", a proven effective model for planning, teaching, and assessing information skills instruction, was written to help library media specialists and teachers to collaborate more effectively in the teaching of information skills. This…

While almost any educator would agree that students deserve access to equal educational opportunities, many schools still sort students based on test scores or other criteria. There's a better way: one built on offering all students access to the best curriculum. In this first-ever practical book that shows how educators can make detracking work,…

Intended to help teachers put early childhood theories and information into daily lesson planning, this guide provides a system for organizing lesson objectives, methods, and materials in order to write effective lesson plans. Chapter 1 introduces the guidebook and covers a lesson planning system, developmentally appropriate practice, standards in…

The book, designed for teachers of both beginning-level and transitional students of English as a Second Language (ESL), outlines the Guided Language Experience Process (GLEP) model for planning ESL instructional units using the whole language approach. The first section summarizes research that has influenced this model and its implications for…

This book about using the Big6 information problem solving process model in elementary schools is organized into two parts. Providing an overview of the Big6 approach, Part 1 includes the following chapters: "Introduction: The Need," including the information problem, the Big6 and other process models, and teaching/learning the Big6;…

This book, designed for teachers and trainee teachers, provides an introduction to basic techniques and procedures in the classroom. The book illuminates these techniques and provides help in understanding their purpose and how they can be best used. There are chapters on essential topics such as lesson planning, lesson presentation skills,…

Aimed at secondary school library media specialists who are undertaking the transition to block scheduling, this book examines the essential components of the library media program in a block-scheduled school and provides useful handouts, lesson plans, and the experiences of four practitioners through their case studies. The following chapters are…

As an administrator, new or experienced, you are faced with a myriad of administrative, curricular, and supervisory tasks, while at the same time expected to provide ongoing professional training for your staff. How well prepared are you to deal effectively with the day-to-day business of supervising teachers? What specific support and training…