Go beyond the walls of your classroom to build literacy and achievement. In this insightful book, you’ll discover how you can better meet the rigorous goals of the Common Core by opening new lines of communication with colleagues, parents, and students. Each chapter centers around an action project that was designed to help teachers improve literacy by moving beyond the typical class lessons and worksheets. The projects include... A book club for families of kindergarten and first grade students, to help students build foundational literacy skills A book club designed to engage middle school students with young adult literature using digital forums "Write with your child" evenings to help parents connect with their middle school children An instructional team’s challenge to use a range of mentor texts in their classrooms And much more! As you read each project, you’ll come away with ideas and inspiration that you can apply to your own teaching. By challenging yourself to connect with parents and colleagues on a deeper level, you will be better able to align your work, adjust for your students, and achieve your teaching goals.

School is easy. It's life that's the challenge. For Darryl W. Thomas Jr., school tests were simple, and exams a breeze. But even with academic success, the true tests for Darryl came from life. From a childhood wrought with hardship to physical and sexual abuse, drugs, poverty, and fatherlessness, his future looked bleak and the adversities impossible. In Today... I Win: When Tests Go Beyond the Classroom, Darryl shares his inspiring story of how he overcame the tests of life and succeeded. With practical, heartfelt advice for those suffering their own hardships, Darryl's story will empower, motivate, and challenge you to put his principles to work and push past every adversity you face. Today... I Win: When Tests Go Beyond The Classroom will show you that academic success is simple - but it's the tests of life that will make or break you.

Find the right strategies and tools to support students who experience trauma Studies show that 46-75% of children experience trauma, often resulting in challenging behavior, depression, and anxiety as well as long-term physical and mental health issues. Today’s educators, counselors, and clinicians need the right strategies to help. Written by experts with years of experience working with children and teens exposed to adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), Trauma-Informed Practices for the Classroom and Beyond describes the most effective tools available and walks you through how to implement them with compassion and fidelity. Inside, you’ll find Detailed and easy-to-implement interventions that alleviate the effects of trauma, including mindfulness, journaling, restorative justice, and more Trauma-informed practices to use with all students, regardless of their age or the duration or frequency of their trauma exposure Ways educators can prepare their classrooms and schools to support students who experience ACEs This how-to guide and its companion website with discussion points, recommended videos, and additional resources equips you with evidence-based techniques and instructions to support children and teens with ACEs and enhances your practice to better serve the students who need our help most.

This book has two primary goals. On the level of theory development, the book clarifies the nature of an emerging "models and modeling perspective" about teaching, learning, and problem solving in mathematics and science education. On the level of emphasizing practical problems, it clarifies the nature of some of the most important elementary-but-powerful mathematical or scientific understandings and abilities that Americans are likely to need as foundations for success in the present and future technology-based information age. Beyond Constructivism: Models and Modeling Perspectives on Mathematics Problem Solving, Learning, and Teaching features an innovative Web site housing online appendices for each chapter, designed to supplement the print chapters with digital resources that include example problems, relevant research tools and video clips, as well as transcripts and other samples of students' work: http://tcct.soe.purdue.edu/booksULandULjournals/modelsULandUL modeling/ This is an essential volume for graduate-level courses in mathematics and science education, cognition and learning, and critical and creative thinking, as well as a valuable resource for researchers and practitioners in these areas.

Prominent scholars in this book move boldly beyond critique to show how and why the critical functions of a democratically informed civic education (not merely professional training) must become the core of the university's mission. They show why higher education must address what it means to relate knowledge to public life, and social responsibility to the demands of critical citizenship. Moreover, they show why democratic forms of education and various elements of a critical pedagogy are vital not only to individual students, but also to our economy and our democratic institutions and future leadership. Visit our website for sample chapters!

The text explores the concept of innovation, and analyse and compare different dimensions of innovation found in the various case studies; the transfer of innovation and the mechanisms of change; on an innovative online case study database on education innovations that has been designed to be used by education practitioners to support organizational leadership, international collaboration and reflective practice in the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) eEducation Leadership initiative; on a project aimed to support the establishment of communities of practice for education practitioners facilitated through an extendable online database that can be used to contribute and share case studies of their own ICT-supported pedagogical innovations. It discusses roles of the teacher and the anticipated changes to the education profession at a system level, in the coming decade on the basis of emerging changes observed in the case studies, and leadership issues at the school level. The book analyses change mechanisms for different kinds of innovation and how different contextual and cultural factors interact to bring about the changes observed.

This book is the outcome of a research symposium sponsored by the Association for Educational Communications and Technology [AECT]. Consisting of twenty-four chapters, including an introduction and conclusion, it argues that informational content should not be the main element of education, and that to provide more for learners, it is necessary to go beyond content and address other skills and capabilities. It also discusses the false premise that learning is complete when the information is known, not when learners seek more: their own directions, answers, and ideas. The authors assert that the ability to synthesize, solve problems and generate ideas is not based on specific content, although education often focuses solely on teaching content. Further, they state that content can be separated from the learning process and that instructional design and educational technology must be about the skills, habits, and beliefs to be learned.

The emergence of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Standards in 1989 sparked a sea change in thinking about the nature and quality of mathematics instruction in U.S. schools. Much is known about transmission forms of mathematics teaching and the influence of this teaching on students' learning, but there is still little knowledge about the alternative forms of instruction that have evolved from the recent widespread efforts to reform mathematics education. Beyond Classical Pedagogy: Teaching Elementary School Mathematics reports on the current state of knowledge about these new instructional practices, which differ in significant ways from the traditional pedagogy that has permeated mathematics education in the past. This book provides a research-based view of the nature of facilitative teaching in its relatively mature form, along with opposing views and critique of this form of pedagogy. The focus is on elementary school mathematics classrooms, where the majority of the reform-based efforts have occurred, and on the micro level of teaching (classroom interaction) as a source for revealing the complexity involved in teaching, teachers' learning, and the impact of both on children's learning. The work in elementary mathematics teaching is situated in the larger context of research on teaching. Research and insights from three disciplinary perspectives are presented: the psychological perspective centers on facilitative teaching as a process of teachers' learning; the mathematical perspective focuses on the nature of the mathematical knowledge teachers need in order to engage in this form of teaching; the sociological perspective attends to the interactive process of meaning construction as teachers and students create intellectual communities in their classrooms. The multidisciplinary perspectives presented provide the editors with the necessary triangulation to provide confirming evidence and rich detail about the nature of facilitative teaching. Audiences for this book include scholars in mathematics education and teacher education, teacher educators, staff developers, and classroom teachers. It is also appropriate as a text for graduate courses in mathematics education, teacher education, elementary mathematics teaching methods, and methods of research in mathematics education.

Use popular fairy tales and fairy-tale characters as springboards for learning, and help students develop problem-solving abilities and creative-writing skills. Adaptable to virtually any fairy tale and to a variety of learning environments and levels, these activities will challenge students to move beyond the simplistic study of tales to develop in-depth writing skills.