Are you ready to plan your best lessons ever? 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

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.

Are you ready to plan your best lessons ever? 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

This book demonstrates a five-part framework for teachers, reading specialists, and literacy coaches who want to help their least engaged students become powerful readers. Merging theory and practice, the guide offers successful strategies to reach your “struggling” learners. The authors show how teachers can “turn-around” their instructional practice, beginning with reading materials, lessons, and activities matching their students’ interests. Chapters include self-check exercises that will help teachers analyze their reading instruction, as well as specific advice for working with English Language Learners. Book Features: Effective methods for differentiating reading instruction in Grades 2–5.Real-life classroom vignettes and examples of student work.Helpful teacher self-evaluation exercises.Strategies to use with English Language Learners.And much more! “This is a masterwork that is simultaneously practical and groundbreaking. . . . The model these authors use to familiarize teachers with the essential elements of reading practice is clear and beautifully illustrated with stories of children you’ll swear you know.” —From the Foreword by Ellin Oliver Keene, national staff developer “This deeply intelligent and compassionate book provides teachers with detailed classroom scenarios and dozens of teaching tools for engaging all readers. The authors demonstrate how to help all students become motivated and powerful meaning-makers of a wide variety of texts.” —Katherine Bomer, Literacy Consultant, K–12

"Powerful Lesson Planning is an important book, offering essential guidance in the highly complex task of lesson planning. In this age of content standards and the high-stakes assessment of those standards, the teacher′s challenge in planning for instruction is more profound than ever." --From the Foreword by Charlotte Danielson Revitalize your current practices, expand your repertoire of approaches, and improve learning for students! Every teacher′s goal is to create a rich instructional environment for their students, and thoughtful, informed lesson planning is a key element in that process. Janice Skowron′s jump-start of a book offers novice and experienced teachers step-by-step, essential guidance in this challenging and oftentimes highly complex task. It brings into focus the decisions teachers face as they plan instruction and provides four progressively complex and nuanced models: basic, integrated, differentiated, and problem-based instruction. Descriptive information, numerous examples, and tools such as key questions, planning guides, and templates help educators develop proficiency in planning instruction. This revised edition will: Help teachers incorporate the best practices for lesson planning Build the lesson-planning skills and repertoire of new teachers Revitalize instruction for veteran teachers Strengthen teachers′ abilities to plan standards-based lessons Help teachers focus on assessment in the initial phases of lesson planning Powerful Lesson Planning will increase teachers′ competence and confidence--and help them master the skills needed to advance their practice and improve learning for all students.

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.

"Now revised and updated, with many new lesson plans and a new chapter on writing instruction, this trusted book guides upper-elementary teachers to design and implement a research-based literacy program. The expert authors show how to teach and assess students in differentiated small groups, and explain how instruction works in a tiered response-to-intervention model. Included are extensive reproducible lesson plans and other tools for building students' skills in word recognition, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, and writing. The convenient large-size format facilitates photocopying; purchasers also get access to a Web page where they can download and print the reproducible materials. Prior edition title: Differentiated Reading Instruction in Grades 4 and 5. Subject Areas/Key Words: differentiated reading instruction, intermediate grades, upper elementary students, teaching reading, small-group, differentiating instruction, differentiation, lesson plans, planning, lessons, assessments, response to intervention, RTI, comprehension, curriculum, fluency, interventions, elementary reading methods, struggling readers, teachers, vocabulary, word recognition, words, writing, decoding"--

The Daily 5, Second Edition retains the core literacy components that made the first edition one of the most widely read books in education and enhances these practices based on years of further experience in classrooms and compelling new brain research. The Daily 5 provides a way for any teacher to structure literacy (and now math) time to increase student independence and allow for individualized attention in small groups and one-on-one. Teachers and schools implementing the Daily 5 will do the following: Spend less time on classroom management and more time teaching Help students develop independence, stamina, and accountability Provide students with abundant time for practicing reading, writing, and math Increase the time teachers spend with students one-on-one and in small groups Improve schoolwide achievement and success in literacy and math. The Daily 5, Second Edition gives teachers everything they need to launch and sustain the Daily 5, including materials and setup, model behaviors, detailed lesson plans, specific tips for implementing each component, and solutions to common challenges. By following this simple and proven structure, teachers can move from a harried classroom toward one that hums with productive and engaged learners. What's new in the second edition: Detailed launch plans for the first three weeks Full color photos, figures, and charts Increased flexibility regarding when and how to introduce each Daily 5 choice New chapter on differentiating instruction by age and stamina Ideas about how to integrate the Daily 5 with the CAFE assessment system New chapter on the Math Daily 3 structure

Jackson details what great teachers do to ensure students not only pass big tests but also become engaged learners, effective problem solvers, and critical thinkers.

Forget waiting for the district, state, or national test to find out how your instruction impacts student outcomes. If you are ready to — rethink how you plan lessons and measure student learning outcomes this planning guide is for you. Did you ever wonder why the process of linking your lesson plans to student outcomes remains shrouded in mystery? This eye-opening planning guide rips off that shroud and exposes the links for all to see. There is a way for you to link instruction to student outcomes and this planning guide provides access to that process. The easy-to-follow guide leads you through the steps for developing lesson plans that link instruction with student learning. This step-by-step guide exposes seven diverse types of links from pre-planning through summative assessment. They are: Reflections on how-to develop, change, or improve your practice Pre-planning links that connect prior student achievement, standards, and objectives Lesson plan links that connect three types of assessments and learning activities Grade book links that connect assessment and activities to objectives and standards Professional learning extensions that expand your professional knowledge An On-Going support plan that provides a “Plan B” option A self-assessment that links instruction with student outcomes