Presents nine strategies for increasing the learning potential of students and encouraging participation, covering techniques such as movement, novelty, socialization, and drama, and includes sample lesson plans.

Evidence has accumulated that shows that the quality of indoor environments can affect the health and productivity of adults and children. One consequence is that a movement has emerged to promote the design of schools that have fewer adverse environmental effects. To examine the potential of such design for improving education, several private organizations asked the NRC to review and assess the health and productivity benefits of green schools. This report provides an analysis of the complexity of making such a determination; and an assessment of the potential human health and performance benefits of improvements in the building envelope, indoor air quality, lighting, and acoustical quality. The report also presents an assessment of the overall building condition and student achievement, and offers an analysis of and recommendations for planning and maintaining green schools including research considerations.

Be the leader of a fresh, bold, enduring vision of education for your district or school. The future of learning has arrived, and it requires bold educational leadership and a dramatic redefinition of what it means to be a successful student today. Redefining Student Success invites you to lead this transformation with audacity. It engages leaders with the concepts and actions needed to reimagine schools, address inequities, and help today’s students develop the skills they need for personal, economic, and civic success. This vital guide supports transformative leadership with Concrete guidance on how to create a Portrait of a Graduate and Portrait of an Educator which will help ensure teachers have a unified vision for professional growth and student success. Reflection prompts that help you recognize your strengths, spark discussion among stakeholders, and identify next steps for inspired action. Compelling examples of students already engaged in creative, self-directed problem-solving around issues that matter to them and their communities, together with stories that illustrate how districts and schools have arrived at their own vision of what education must become. Companion guides to 21st century learning for parents and students available online. The time is now to reset educational outcomes, sync schools with the demands of 21st century society, and meet the needs of every learner, in every community.

All day and night the traffic signal blinks its messages of stop and go.

Features 10 lift-the flap traffic signs.

Learn what a flipped classroom is and why it works, and get the information you need to flip a classroom. You’ll also learn the flipped mastery model, where students learn at their own pace, furthering opportunities for personalized education. This simple concept is easily replicable in any classroom, doesn’t cost much to implement, and helps foster self-directed learning. Once you flip, you won’t want to go back!

A New York Times Notable Book "A must-read book for every American teacher and taxpayer." —Amanda Ripley, author of The Smartest Kids in the World Launched with a hugely popular New York Times Magazine cover story, Building a Better Teacher sparked a national conversation about teacher quality and established Elizabeth Green as a leading voice in education. Green's fascinating and accessible narrative dispels the common myth of the "natural-born teacher" and introduces maverick educators exploring the science behind their art. Her dramatic account reveals that great teaching is not magic, but a skill—a skill that can be taught. Now with a new afterword that offers a guide on how to identify—and support—great teachers, this provocative and hopeful book "should be part of every new teacher’s education" (Washington Post).

"The best book on high school dynamics I have ever read."--Jay Mathews, Washington Post An award-winning professor and an accomplished educator take us beyond the hype of reform and inside some of America's most innovative classrooms to show what is working--and what isn't--in our schools. What would it take to transform industrial-era schools into modern organizations capable of supporting deep learning for all? Jal Mehta and Sarah Fine's quest to answer this question took them inside some of America's most innovative schools and classrooms--places where educators are rethinking both what and how students should learn. The story they tell is alternately discouraging and hopeful. Drawing on hundreds of hours of observations and interviews at thirty different schools, Mehta and Fine reveal that deeper learning is more often the exception than the rule. And yet they find pockets of powerful learning at almost every school, often in electives and extracurriculars as well as in a few mold-breaking academic courses. These spaces achieve depth, the authors argue, because they emphasize purpose and choice, cultivate community, and draw on powerful traditions of apprenticeship. These outliers suggest that it is difficult but possible for schools and classrooms to achieve the integrations that support deep learning: rigor with joy, precision with play, mastery with identity and creativity. This boldly humanistic book offers a rich account of what education can be. The first panoramic study of American public high schools since the 1980s, In Search of Deeper Learning lays out a new vision for American education--one that will set the agenda for schools of the future.

Help middle schoolers engage in the classroom before it’s too late! For many educators, middle school is the last chance to put in place strong, positive learning patterns that will last through high school and beyond. Based on Rich Allen’s “Green Light” education strategies, this book takes what researchers have discovered about how the adolescent brain learns best and shows how those discoveries directly relate to effective classroom teaching. Now you can engage all students, even unmotivated ones, by applying these four principles of brain-based learning: Build and maintain trust Create a collaborative community Take a TEAMing approach Prime the positive environment

An inspiring account of teachers in ordinary circumstances doing extraordinary things, showing us how to transform education What School Could Be offers an inspiring vision of what our teachers and students can accomplish if trusted with the challenge of developing the skills and ways of thinking needed to thrive in a world of dizzying technological change. Innovation expert Ted Dintersmith took an unprecedented trip across America, visiting all fifty states in a single school year. He originally set out to raise awareness about the urgent need to reimagine education to prepare students for a world marked by innovation--but America's teachers one-upped him. All across the country, he met teachers in ordinary settings doing extraordinary things, creating innovative classrooms where children learn deeply and joyously as they gain purpose, agency, essential skillsets and mindsets, and real knowledge. Together, these new ways of teaching and learning offer a vision of what school could be—and a model for transforming schools throughout the United States and beyond. Better yet, teachers and parents don't have to wait for the revolution to come from above. They can readily implement small changes that can make a big difference. America's clock is ticking. Our archaic model of education trains our kids for a world that no longer exists, and accelerating advances in technology are eliminating millions of jobs. But the trailblazing of many American educators gives us reasons for hope. Capturing bold ideas from teachers and classrooms across America, What School Could Be provides a realistic and profoundly optimistic roadmap for creating cultures of innovation and real learning in all our schools.