“Reading and writing float on a sea of talk” declared James Britton – and yet in our current education system, where the pressure is on for students to pass written exams, it is all too easily left adrift. How then, as teachers and educators, can we turn the tide and harness the power of talk in our classrooms? This is not just an educational choice but rather, given students’ vastly different experiences of language, a moral imperative. Amy Gaunt and Alice Stott’s must-read book serves as a detailed and engaging guide to get talking in class. It blends the academic research and evidence, with first-hand classroom experiences and practical strategies to enable you to unlock the power of oracy in your classroom and equip your students with the speaking skills they need to thrive in the twenty first century. Transform Teaching and Learning Through Talk describes how to: Identify and teach good talk (and listening!) Build a classroom culture which values talk Create meaningful and authentic contexts for oracy Support your quietest students to speak up too! This book is a rich resource for teachers, drawing upon key academic research and outlining what this could look like in your classroom. Throughout, the authors share personal insights, engaging anecdotes and tried-and-tested approaches drawn from their experience teaching in primary and secondary classrooms. Whether you teach college-age students or those just starting their journey through school, this book will challenge you to think deeply about what you can do integrate oracy into your practice.

Radically reimagine our ways of being, learning, and doing Education can be transformed if we eradicate our fixation on big data like standardized test scores as the supreme measure of equity and learning. Instead of the focus being on "fixing" and "filling" academic gaps, we must envision and rebuild the system from the student up—with classrooms, schools and systems built around students’ brilliance, cultural wealth, and intellectual potential. Street data reminds us that what is measurable is not the same as what is valuable and that data can be humanizing, liberatory and healing. By breaking down street data fundamentals: what it is, how to gather it, and how it can complement other forms of data to guide a school or district’s equity journey, Safir and Dugan offer an actionable framework for school transformation. Written for educators and policymakers, this book · Offers fresh ideas and innovative tools to apply immediately · Provides an asset-based model to help educators look for what’s right in our students and communities instead of seeking what’s wrong · Explores a different application of data, from its capacity to help us diagnose root causes of inequity, to its potential to transform learning, and its power to reshape adult culture Now is the time to take an antiracist stance, interrogate our assumptions about knowledge, measurement, and what really matters when it comes to educating young people.

Created by an international team of architects and designers concerned about our failing education system, The Third Teacher explores the critical link between the school environment and how children learn, and offers 79 practical design ideas, both great and small, to guide reader’s efforts to improve our schools. Written for anyone who has school-age children in their life, from educators and education decision-makers to parents and community activists, this book is intended to ignite a blaze of discussion and initiative about environment as an essential element of learning. Including a wealth of interviews, facts, statistics, and stories from experts in a wide range of fields, this book is a how-to guide to be used to connect with the many organizations, individuals, and ideas dedicated to innovating and improving teaching and learning. Contributors include children’s singer and advocate Raffi, author and creativity consultant Sir Ken Robinson, scientist and environmentalist David Suzuki, inventor James Dyson, and other experts who are working to create fresh solutions to problems and create a new blueprint for the future of education.

"A comprehensive look at how the arts (broadly conceived) can improve teaching, learning, and curriculum for all students, written in accessible language for non-academics and non-experts. It contains many evocative examples to illustrate the power of the arts to change education"--

Educators have many job descriptions. One of those descriptions includes the idea of customer service or professional communication, especially when engaging in difficult conversations. Difficult conversations are conversations that may be argumentative, combative, or otherwise contentious in some way. Every educator has or will have difficult conversations in their professional life. The difficult conversations may be with a family member, a student, a colleague, or an administrator. Regardless of the person, difficult conversations can influence relationships. While the idea of difficult conversations originated in the business profession, difficult conversations are also applicable and abundant in the field of education. Therefore, developing a toolkit of resources and strategies to engage in professional conversations with various stakeholders is imperative and the goal of this book. Throughout the toolkits introduced in this book, real-life examples and reflection questions are inserted. Overall, this book moves from defining difficult conversations, understanding the unconscious reactions to difficult conversations, and the tools to build positive relationships through communication.

How ed tech was born: Twentieth-century teaching machines--from Sidney Pressey's mechanized test-giver to B. F. Skinner's behaviorist bell-ringing box. Contrary to popular belief, ed tech did not begin with videos on the internet. The idea of technology that would allow students to "go at their own pace" did not originate in Silicon Valley. In Teaching Machines, education writer Audrey Watters offers a lively history of predigital educational technology, from Sidney Pressey's mechanized positive-reinforcement provider to B. F. Skinner's behaviorist bell-ringing box. Watters shows that these machines and the pedagogy that accompanied them sprang from ideas--bite-sized content, individualized instruction--that had legs and were later picked up by textbook publishers and early advocates for computerized learning. Watters pays particular attention to the role of the media--newspapers, magazines, television, and film--in shaping people's perceptions of teaching machines as well as the psychological theories underpinning them. She considers these machines in the context of education reform, the political reverberations of Sputnik, and the rise of the testing and textbook industries. She chronicles Skinner's attempts to bring his teaching machines to market, culminating in the famous behaviorist's efforts to launch Didak 101, the "pre-verbal" machine that taught spelling. (Alternate names proposed by Skinner include "Autodidak," "Instructomat," and "Autostructor.") Telling these somewhat cautionary tales, Watters challenges what she calls "the teleology of ed tech"--the idea that not only is computerized education inevitable, but technological progress is the sole driver of events.

While most educators believe working in teams is valuable, not all team efforts lead to instructional improvement. Through richly detailed case studies The Power of Teacher Teams demonstrates how schools can transform their teams into more effective learning communities that foster teacher leadership. The benefits of successful teacher teams include: improved performance for both teachers and students; meaningful professional development; group adoption of a new curriculum; shared insights into student work; better classroom management; support for new teachers; new roles for teacher leaders; and opportuniteis for mentor support.School leaders will find guidelines, methods, and concrete steps for building and sustaining effective teacher teams. Also included is a DVD with video case studies and one CD with reproducibles. The most important reason for building teacher teams is to enhance student learning through improved instruction, and that story is at the heart of this book.

All the Classroom’s a Stage reveals how teachers can apply theater skills to the craft of teaching and enhance their ability to engage and motivate students, cultivate collaborative learning, and become stronger and more dynamic ‘performers’ in the classroom. This bookillustrates how to use theater techniques to invigorate the craft of teaching in college classrooms across multiple disciplines. The book shows readers how to explore and apply improvisation, actor-training, and directing techniques to their classroom. By using discipline-specific examples, case studies, and a breadth of theater and teacher-training experience, the book reveals how theatre can strengthen teaching and learning, improve attendance, retention, and students’ commitment to their education and to each other. Whether a new teacher navigating the job for the first time or an experienced veteran hungry for new teaching methods, All the Classroom’s a Stage will transform a traditional classroom into a dynamic creative space built on collaborative sharing of the educational experience.

Becoming a Growth Mindset School explores the theories which underpin a growth mindset ethos and lays out how to embed them into the culture of a school. It offers step-by-step guidance for school leaders to help build an approach to teaching and learning that will encourage children to embrace challenge, persist in the face of setback, and see effort as the path to mastery. The book isn’t about quick fixes or miracle cures, but an evidence-based transformation of the way we think and talk about teaching, leading, and learning. Drawing upon his own extensive experience and underpinned by the groundbreaking scholarship of Carol Dweck, Angela Duckworth, and others, Chris Hildrew navigates the difficulties, practicalities, and opportunities presented by implementing a growth mindset, such as: forming a growth mindset curriculum launching a growth mindset with staff marking, assessing, and giving feedback with a growth mindset growth mindset misconceptions and potential mistakes family involvement with a growth mindset. Innovatively and accessibly written, this thoroughly researched guide shows how a growth mindset ethos benefits the whole school community, from its students and teachers to parents and governors. Becoming A Growth Mindset School will be of invaluable use to all educational leaders and practitioners.

"Gathering data and using it to inform instruction is a requirement for many schools, yet educators are not necessarily formally trained in how to do it. This book helps bridge the gap between classroom practice and the principles of educational psychology. Teachers will find cutting-edge advances in research and theory on human learning and teaching in an easily understood and transferable format. The text's integrated model shows teachers, school leaders, and district administrators how to establish a data culture and transform quantitative and qualitative data into actionable knowledge based on: assessment; statistics; instructional and differentiated psychology; classroom management."--Publisher's description.