A Resource Guide For Secondary School Teaching

Thoroughly revised and updated, Secondary School Teaching: A Guide to Methods and Resources is a comprehensive guide to instructional methods and contains many practical exercises for active learning. This text provides a sound introduction to the challenges of today's secondary schools, teachers' professional responsibilities, thinking and questioning, classroom environment, curriculum, planning instruction, assessment using inquiry, teacher talk, and games, learning alone and in groups, and professional development. A key strength of this text continues to be the expression of core themes. Six of the most prominent include: the best learning occurs when the learner actively participates in the process; the best strategies for learning about secondary school teaching are those that model the strategies used in exemplary teaching at that level; to be most effective, a teacher must use an eclectic style in teaching; learning should be active, pleasant, fun, meaningful, and productive; teaching skills can be learned; and regardless of their individual differences, students must have equal opportunity to participate and learn in the classroom. Secondary School Teaching: A Guide to Methods and Resourcesprovides future and current teachers with relevant guidelines, best options and practices, the most useful research findings, and current resources so that they can reflect and improve their effectiveness.

A comprehensive guide to instructional methods and contains many practical exercises for active learning.

Focusing specifically on teaching in grades 7-12, this comprehensive resource guide/workbook involves readers interactively -- through discussions, exercises, vignettes, and case studies -- with the why, what, how, and how well of a performance-based, competency-based, criterion-referenced approach to teaching. Explores instructional planning, strategy implementation, discipline, legal issues, and both student and teacher evaluation. Reflects the latest developments in cognitive learning theory, the constructivist approach to learning, social/interactive learning, the current school funding environment, and the growing diversity of the student population. Emphasizes an eclectic model of teaching which encourages readers to choose effective approaches from a variety of possible teaching models. Connects strategies rather than teaching them as separate entities. For prospective secondary school teachers (grades 7-12).

The invaluable grade-by-grade guide (kindergarten—sixth) is designed to help parents and teachers select some of the best books for children. Books to Build On recommends: • for kindergartners, lively collections of poetry and stories, such as The Children’s Aesop, and imaginative alphabet books such as Bill Martin, Jr.’s Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and Lucy Micklewait’s I Spy: An Alphabet in Art • for first graders, fine books on the fine arts, such as Ann Hayes’s Meet the Orchestra, the hands-on guide My First Music Book, and the thought-provoking Come Look with Me series of art books for children • for second graders, books that open doors to world cultures and history, such as Leonard Everett Fisher’s The Great Wall of China and Marcia Willaims’s humorous Greek Myths for Young Children • for third graders, books that bring to life the wonders of ancient Rome, such as Living in Ancient Rome, and fascinating books about astronomy, such as Seymour Simon’s Our Solar System • for fourth graders, engaging books on history, including Jean Fritz’s Shh! We're Writing the Constitution, and many books on Africa, including the stunningly illustrated story of Sundiata: Lion King of Mali • for fifth graders, a version of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream that retains much of the original language but condenses the play for reading or performance by young students, and Michael McCurdy’s Escape from Slavery: The Boyhood of Frederick Douglass • for sixth graders, an eloquent retelling of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and the well-written American history series, A History of US . . . and many, many more!

This guide gives teachers specific instructional methods to help students raise their skills and critical thinking abilities and provides step-by-step guidance in designing a tutoring program, training the tutors, and conducting meaningful assessment and evaluation.