The best way to help students succeed is through deliberate and careful lesson planning focused on the end result of increasing student achievement. Whether you are a new teacher or an experienced educator, this book will help you get started by providing a practical, step-by-step guide to designing lessons that will lead to student mastery of any objective.

In today's high-stakes world, ready-made lessons and teacher's guides are no longer enough to guarantee achievement. The best way to help students succeed is through deliberate and careful lesson planning focused on the end result of increasing student achievement. Whether you are a new teacher or an experienced educator, this book will help you get started by providing a practical, step-by-step guide to designing lessons that will lead to student mastery of any objective. You'll learn the essential components of lessons that are Common Core-aligned and grounded in best practices. Topics include: tailoring your lessons to meet your state standards while ensuring high student achievement; writing a strong objective to stay focused on the goal of a lesson; creating an end-of-lesson assessment to gauge the lesson's success; constructing a lesson plan that combines direct instruction, guided practice, and independent practice. Along the way, you'll find plenty of helpful examples from math and English Language Arts. You'll also find end-of-chapter FAQs and activities to try, to help you make these concepts a reality for your own classroom.

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.

Jake's bragging is really starting to get to his neighbor Tyler. Tyler can't show Jake a basketball move, a school assignment, or a new toy without Jake saying he can do better. Tyler starts to wonder: Is something wrong with him? Is he really such a loser? Is Jake really better than him at everything? Or is Jake the one with the problem? With the help of his uncle Kevin, Tyler begins to understand that Jake's bragging has nothing to do with Tyler's own abilities and that puffing yourself up leaves little room for friends.

Effective and practical coaching strategies for new educators plus valuable online coaching tools Many teachers are only observed one or two times per year on average—and, even among those who are observed, scarcely any are given feedback as to how they could improve. The bottom line is clear: teachers do not need to be evaluated so much as they need to be developed and coached. In Get Better Faster: A 90-Day Plan for Coaching New Teachers, Paul Bambrick-Santoyo shares instructive tools of how school leaders can effectively guide new teachers to success. Over the course of the book, he breaks down the most critical actions leaders and teachers must take to achieve exemplary results. Designed for coaches as well as beginning teachers, Get Better Faster is an integral coaching tool for any school leader eager to help their teachers succeed. Get Better Faster focuses on what's practical and actionable which makes the book's approach to coaching so effective. By practicing the concrete actions and micro-skills listed in Get Better Faster, teachers will markedly improve their ability to lead a class, producing a steady chain reaction of future teaching success. Though focused heavily on the first 90 days of teacher development, it's possible to implement this work at any time. Junior and experienced teachers alike can benefit from the guidance of Get Better Faster while at the same time closing existing instructional gaps. Featuring valuable and practical online training tools available at http://www.wiley.com/go/getbetterfaster, Get Better Faster provides agendas, presentation slides, a coach's guide, handouts, planning templates, and 35 video clips of real teachers at work to help other educators apply the lessons learned in their own classrooms. Get Better Faster will teach you: The core principles of coaching: Go Granular; Plan, Practice, Follow Up, Repeat; Make Feedback More Frequent Top action steps to launch a teacher’s development in an easy-to-read scope and sequence guide It also walks you through the four phases of skill building: Phase 1 (Pre-Teaching): Dress Rehearsal Phase 2: Instant Immersion Phase 3: Getting into Gear Phase 4: The Power of Discourse Perfect for new educators and those who supervise them, Get Better Faster will also earn a place in the libraries of veteran teachers and school administrators seeking a one-stop coaching resource.

Discover new, practical methods for teaching literacy skills in your early childhood classroom. Has teaching early literacy skills become a stumbling block to getting your preschool students kindergarten ready? Break out of the tired “letter of the week” routine and learn how to transform your lessons with fun and effective techniques. Teach Smarter: Literacy Strategies for Early Childhood Teachers will equip teachers to infuse every aspect of their teaching with exciting hands-on literacy teaching methods that engage students and help them build authentic connections with books, so that 100% of their students will have a strong literacy foundation and will be fully prepared for success in kindergarten and beyond. Respected author Vanessa Levin, veteran early childhood educator and author of the “Pre-K Pages” blog, breaks down the research and translates it into realistic, actionable steps you can take to improve your teaching. Features specific examples of teaching techniques and activities that engage students in hands-on, experiential learning during circle time, centers, and small groups. Offers a simple, four-step system for teaching literacy skills, based on the foundational principles of early literacy teaching Demonstrates how to build your confidence in your ability to get 100% of your students ready for kindergarten, long before the end of the school year Understand the problems with traditional literacy teaching and identify gaps in your current teaching practice with this valuable resource.

Are you ready to plan your best lessons ever? 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 instructional planning. Its seven-step framework—the EMPOWER model—gives you techniques proven to help students develop true insight and understanding. You’ll have at your fingertips: the real reasons why students engage—and what you must do to ensure they do a framework to help you create, plan, and teach the most effective units and lessons in any subject area more than 50 actionable strategies to incorporate right away suggestions for tailoring units for a wide range of learners downloadable, ready-to-go tools for planning and teaching Whether you are a classroom teacher, an instructional leader, or a pre-service teacher, Planning Powerful Instruction will forever change the way you think about how you teach and the unique value you bring to your learners.

"Jeffrey Benson guides K-12 teachers in incorporating SEL into their existing lesson plans as a means to educate the whole child and address inequities"--

Better Learning Through Structured Teaching describes how teachers can help students develop stronger learning skills by ensuring that instruction moves from modeling and guided practice (situations where the teacher has most of the responsibility) to collaborative learning and, finally, to independent tasks. You'll find out how to use the four components of this approach to help meet critical challenges, including differentiating instruction and making effective use of class time: 1. Focus Lessons: Establishing the lesson’s purpose and then modeling your own thinking for students.2. Guided Instruction: Working with small groups of students who have similar results on performance assessments. 3. Collaborative Learning: Enabling students to discuss and negotiate with one another to create independent work, not simply one project. 4. Independent Tasks: Requiring students to use their previous knowledge to create new and authentic products. The authors explore each component using student dialogues and examples from a variety of disciplines and grade levels. They provide tips and tools for successfully implementing this instructional approach in your own classroom, including checklists for classroom setup and routines, critical questions, real-world lesson plans, and more. No matter what grade level you teach, Better Learning Through Structured Teaching is your essential guide to helping students develop and expand their capacity for authentic and long-lasting learning.

In today’s high-stakes world, ready-made lessons and teacher’s guides are no longer enough to guarantee achievement. The best way to help students succeed is through deliberate and careful lesson planning focused on the end result of increasing student achievement. Whether you are a new teacher or an experienced educator, this book will help you get started by providing a practical, step-by-step guide to designing lessons that will lead to student mastery of any objective. You’ll learn the essential components of lessons that are Common Core-aligned and grounded in best practices. Topics include: Tailoring your lessons to meet your state standards while ensuring high student achievement. Writing a strong objective to stay focused on the goal of a lesson. Creating an end-of-lesson assessment to gauge the lesson’s success. Constructing a lesson plan that combines direct instruction, guided practice, and independent practice. Along the way, you’ll find plenty of helpful examples from math and English Language Arts. You’ll also find end-of-chapter FAQs and activities to try, to help you make these concepts a reality for your own classroom. Many of the tools from the book are also available as free downloads from our website (www.routledge.com/books/details/9781138838871/).