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.
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.
These new model core teaching standards outline what all teachers across all content and grade levels should know and be able to do to be effective in today's learning contexts. They are a revision of the 1992 model standards, in response to the need for a new vision of teaching to meet the needs of next generation learners. This document incorporates changes from a public feedback period in July 2010.
The consensus among educators nationwide is that in-depth instruction paired with focused assessment of essential concepts and skills are far more effective than superficially covering every concept and skill in the standards. Educators are faced with the task of teaching all standards while meeting the extraordinary range of student learning needs. Prioritizing the Common Core offers common sense solutions to the dilemmas teachers face today in implementing the new, more rigorous national standards. Chapters present a rationale for prioritizing the Common Core, a step-by-step process for prioritizing standards in language arts and mathematics, strategies for soliciting feedback and input from everyone in the district or school prior to the final determination of the Priority Standards, and detailed summaries of the process schools in six different districts used to identify their Priority Standards, with accompanying commentary by those who directed the work.
Get to know which practices related to curriculum, instruction, and assessment are essential to make learning the goal for every student! You’ll learn how to Create learning targets that are scalable and transferable within and across units Develop instructional scales for each learning target Design non-scored practice activities and assessments Introduce and model skills that will be assessed and design tasks that allow students to use these skills Differentiate instruction and activities based on data from various types of assessments Maintain a gradebook that tracks summative achievement of learning targets, and score assessments accordingly Communicate progress clearly and efficiently with students and families
Focused on physical literacy and measurable outcomes, empowering physical educators to help students meet the Common Core standards, and coming from a recently renamed but longstanding organization intent on shaping a standard of excellence in physical education, National Standards & Grade-Level Outcomes for K-12 Physical Education is all that and much more. Created by SHAPE America — Society of Health and Physical Educators (formerly AAHPERD) — this text unveils the new National Standards for K-12 Physical Education. The standards and text have been retooled to support students’ holistic development. This is the third iteration of the National Standards for K-12 Physical Education, and this latest version features two prominent changes: •The term physical literacy underpins the standards. It encompasses the three domains of physical education (psychomotor, cognitive, and affective) and considers not only physical competence and knowledge but also attitudes, motivation, and the social and psychological skills needed for participation. • Grade-level outcomes support the national physical education standards. These measurable outcomes are organized by level (elementary, middle, and high school) and by standard. They provide a bridge between the new standards and K-12 physical education curriculum development and make it easy for teachers to assess and track student progress across grades, resulting in physically literate students. In developing the grade-level outcomes, the authors focus on motor skill competency, student engagement and intrinsic motivation, instructional climate, gender differences, lifetime activity approach, and physical activity. All outcomes are written to align with the standards and with the intent of fostering lifelong physical activity. National Standards & Grade-Level Outcomes for K-12 Physical Education presents the standards and outcomes in ways that will help preservice teachers and current practitioners plan curricula, units, lessons, and tasks. The text also • empowers physical educators to help students meet the Common Core standards; • allows teachers to see the new standards and the scope and sequence for outcomes for all grade levels at a glance in a colorful, easy-to-read format; and • provides administrators, parents, and policy makers with a framework for understanding what students should know and be able to do as a result of their physical education instruction. The result is a text that teachers can confidently use in creating and enhancing high-quality programs that prepare students to be physically literate and active their whole lives.
Actions to increase effectiveness of schools in a rapidly changing world Schools, in order to be nimble and stay relevant and impactful, need to abandon the rigid structures designed for less dynamic times. The NEW School Rules expands cutting-edge organizational design and modern management techniques into an operating system for empowering schools with the same agility and responsiveness so vital in the business world. 6 simple rules create a unified vision of responsiveness among educators Real life case studies illustrate responsive techniques implemented in a variety of educational demographics 15 experiments guide school and district leaders toward increased responsiveness in their faculty and staff
Turn good intentions into better outcomes—by design! Why leave student success up to chance? By combining your intuition and experience with the latest research on high-impact learning practices, you can evolve your teaching from good to great and make a lasting difference for your students. Organized around the DIIE framework, Great Teaching by Design takes you step-by-step from intention to implementation to accelerate the impact your teaching has on student learning. Inside, you’ll find • A deep dive into the four stages of the DIIE model: Diagnosis and Discovery, Intervention, Implementation, and Evaluation • A fresh look at the Visible Learning research, which identifies the most powerful strategies for teaching and learning • Stories of best practices in action and examples from classrooms around the world Great teaching may come by chance, but it will come by design. Whether you’re new to teaching or looking to give your instruction a boost, take up the challenge and discover a new framework for teaching with true intentionality.
Science, engineering, and technology permeate nearly every facet of modern life and hold the key to solving many of humanity's most pressing current and future challenges. The United States' position in the global economy is declining, in part because U.S. workers lack fundamental knowledge in these fields. To address the critical issues of U.S. competitiveness and to better prepare the workforce, A Framework for K-12 Science Education proposes a new approach to K-12 science education that will capture students' interest and provide them with the necessary foundational knowledge in the field. A Framework for K-12 Science Education outlines a broad set of expectations for students in science and engineering in grades K-12. These expectations will inform the development of new standards for K-12 science education and, subsequently, revisions to curriculum, instruction, assessment, and professional development for educators. This book identifies three dimensions that convey the core ideas and practices around which science and engineering education in these grades should be built. These three dimensions are: crosscutting concepts that unify the study of science through their common application across science and engineering; scientific and engineering practices; and disciplinary core ideas in the physical sciences, life sciences, and earth and space sciences and for engineering, technology, and the applications of science. The overarching goal is for all high school graduates to have sufficient knowledge of science and engineering to engage in public discussions on science-related issues, be careful consumers of scientific and technical information, and enter the careers of their choice. A Framework for K-12 Science Education is the first step in a process that can inform state-level decisions and achieve a research-grounded basis for improving science instruction and learning across the country. The book will guide standards developers, teachers, curriculum designers, assessment developers, state and district science administrators, and educators who teach science in informal environments.
