Eight Essential Techniques For Teaching With Intention

In her latest book, bestselling author Ann Lewin-Benham describes eight techniques that foster intentional and reflective classroom practice. She presents over 70 novel exercises to help teachers learn to use body, face, hands, voice, eyes, and word choices to precisely convey meaning. Some exercises are for teachers to practice, while others build intention and reflection in children. Dozens of scenarios from typical classroom situations contrast unintentional and intentional teaching behaviors. A self-assessment enables teachers to measure how intentional and reflective they become as they learn to use the eight techniques. This lively and often humorous resource is a companion to Lewin-Benham’s Twelve Best Practices for Early Childhood Education, which explains what to teach and why. This new book explains how to teach. Book Features: Shows teachers how to incorporate the body’s micro-actions in their teaching.Presents “mindfulness” techniques, the leading edge in psychotherapy.Includes scenarios that show the impact words have on children.Explains the relation between up-to-the-minute brain research and the techniques presented.Unpacks the effectiveness of the Reggio Approach to teaching. “Whether you have never stepped into a classroom as a teacher, or whether (like me) you have taught various subjects at various ages for decades, you cannot fail to learn from this book.” —From the Foreword by Howard Gardner, professor of cognition and education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education “With her eight essential techniques, Lewin clearly and beautifully captures the essence of the decisionmaking dynamics from which effective teaching and learning environments emerge.” —Carol Brunson Day, Board President 2014–2016, NAEYC

Effective, intentional teaching begins with a strong set of beliefs, but even the best teachers -- including author Debbie Miller -- struggle to make sure that their classroom practice consistently reflects their core convictions. In Teaching with Intention: Defining Beliefs, Aligning Practice, Taking Action, K-5, Miller defines her actions to ensure that children are the true beneficiaries of her teaching. As Peter Johnston writes, Through this book we have Debbie's teaching mind on loan. She engages us in the details of a teaching life from inside her mind, showing the thinking behind her teaching and the consequences of her actions.Teaching with Intention brings us into classrooms of teachers and children Miller has met over the last five years in her work as a literacy consultant. From setting up the classroom environment to the intentional use of language, from comprehension instruction to lesson design, Miller is explicit about what she does and why. At the same time, she encourages teachers to develop their own belief statements concerning teaching and learning and includes key questions to guide them in this important process.In an environment where the handing down of scripted programs and foolproof curricula is increasingly the norm, Teaching with Intention offers a compelling reminder that truly transformative teaching is built from the ground up, and is rebuilt every year, by every teacher, in every classroom, with every new group of students.

Today’s kindergarten teachers face enormous challenges to reach district-mandated academic standards. This book presents a model for 21st-century kindergartens that is rooted in child-centered learning and also shaped by the needs and goals of the present day. Classroom teachers working with diverse populations of students and focusing on issues of social justice provide vivid descriptions of classroom life across urban and rural communities. Teacher reflections and commentary from the editors link teacher decisions to principles of good practice. Teaching Kindergarten illustrates how a progressive, learning-centered approach can not only meet the equity and accountability goals of the Common Core State Standards but go well beyond that to educate the whole child. Book Features: Rich examples of learner-centered teaching in diverse public school settings.Depictions of integrated curricula in science, social studies, math, arts, and language arts that address Common Core and other standards.Connections to recent developmental research and pedagogy.Programs promoting social and cultural awareness.Photographs of children’s projects and a list of children’s books. “The teachers you are about to read tell stories no one has heard before, at a time when it is difficult to hear the individual voices in the classroom. No grade level needs this soul-searching examination more than kindergarten. This book maps a remarkable number of journeys toward this goal. I hope teachers will be inspired to add their own voices to the process of renewal.” —Vivian Gussin Paley, internationally renowned educator, author, and classroom teacher “We need this book. It speaks eloquently to what good practice looks like in real schools, as well as what it means to be a good teacher. These are stories of amazing educators whose work addresses what equity is all about—starting with 5 year olds. It’s too bad the next 12 years of school are not more like these kindergarten classrooms.” —Deborah Meier, education activist, senior scholar at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Education

Kindergarten has changed. Many believe that it no longer reflects a nurturing environment but, instead, has become a race for children to learn skills so they are ready for the academic achievement tests that they will take continuously throughout their time in school. Resisting the Kinder-Race examines how the race came about, why it must change, and how all stakeholders in the early childhood and elementary school communities must take part in the reform process. The author draws on his own research to consider how the Kinder-Race might be reimagined through more democratic principles of schooling. Brown offers both practical and political strategies that can alter the day-to-day practices of the kindergarten classroom and the policies that currently define PreK–12 education in the United States. This resource will help readers see kindergarten as an educational environment that expands the learning of every child. Book Features: Provides an in-depth glimpse into a typical day in the Kinder-Race.Examines how kindergarten devolved from a garden that nurtures children into a race that dashes them from skill to skill.Brings together what are often siloed conversations among stakeholder groups.Highlights how kindergarten is now primarily defined through an economic lens and how this framing of learning, earning, and consuming might be rethought. Employs varied conceptual frameworks to investigate how stakeholders across different levels of public education make sense of the changed kindergarten.Illuminates the complexity of what is occurring in today’s kindergarten and puts forward practical and achievable ideas for change.

With foreword by Douglas Reeves As a school leader, your influence and impact on students, staff, and families is beyond measure. Designed as a guide and reflective tool, Leading With Intention will help focus your invaluable everyday work. The authors provide in-depth advice and actionable steps for creating a highly effective school culture that supports collaborative leadership and teaching, evidence-based decision making, and the belief that students are the top priority. Effective school leadership practices for building leadership capacity and furthering your professional development: Explore eight interrelated areas of school leadership that will assist you in becoming a more synergistic leader. Explore four concepts essential to your work in leading schools: collaboration, a shared leadership model, evidence-based decision-making, and a focus on learning. Learn how to enhance student achievement in your school or district with the Professional Learning Communities at Work(TM) (PLC) process. Acquire 40+ specific instructional leadership actions you can put into practice immediately. Access educational leadership reflection questions and downloadable reproducibles designed to support your instructional leadership development. Contents: Introduction: Using Your Great Power as a Leader Chapter 1: Achieving Focus and Staying Intentional Chapter 2: Establishing and Maintaining Organization Chapter 3: Building Shared Leadership Chapter 4: Using Evidence for Decision Making and Action Chapter 5: Prioritizing the Student Chapter 6: Leading Instruction Chapter 7: Fostering Communication Chapter 8: Developing Community and Relationships Afterword: Creating the Future References and Resources

Anti-bias education begins with you! Become a skilled anti-bias teacher with this practical guidance to confronting and eliminating barriers.

For five days a week for approximately nine months out of the year totaling countless hours, teachers work with other people’s most treasured gifts—their children. That the teacher is the most important element in fostering an energetic, engaging, and inspiring classroom environment where authentic learning can unfold cannot be overstated. Indeed, it is the teacher who understands self or does not; it is the teacher who is prepared or is not; it is the teacher who has command of subject matter or does not; it is the teacher who inculcates in an appropriate way or does not; and, it is the teacher who is patient, understanding, empathetic, and enthusiastic or is not. To that end, Teaching With Purpose underscores what it means to be an insightful teacher, foundationally emphasizing that the central aspect toward richly transforming education is through the professionalization of what it means to be a teacher. Written in accessible language, and attentive to connecting theory to practice, the benefits and features of this book are mindful of a diverse readership.

The concept of "funds of knowledge" is based on a simple premise: people are competent and have knowledge, and their life experiences have given them that knowledge. The claim in this book is that first-hand research experiences with families allow one to document this competence and knowledge, and that such engagement provides many possibilities for positive pedagogical actions. Drawing from both Vygotskian and neo-sociocultural perspectives in designing a methodology that views the everyday practices of language and action as constructing knowledge, the funds of knowledge approach facilitates a systematic and powerful way to represent communities in terms of the resources they possess and how to harness them for classroom teaching. This book accomplishes three objectives: It gives readers the basic methodology and techniques followed in the contributors' funds of knowledge research; it extends the boundaries of what these researchers have done; and it explores the applications to classroom practice that can result from teachers knowing the communities in which they work. In a time when national educational discourses focus on system reform and wholesale replicability across school sites, this book offers a counter-perspective stating that instruction must be linked to students' lives, and that details of effective pedagogy should be linked to local histories and community contexts. This approach should not be confused with parent participation programs, although that is often a fortuitous consequence of the work described. It is also not an attempt to teach parents "how to do school" although that could certainly be an outcome if the parents so desired. Instead, the funds of knowledge approach attempts to accomplish something that may be even more challenging: to alter the perceptions of working-class or poor communities by viewing their households primarily in terms of their strengths and resources, their defining pedagogical characteristics. Funds of Knowledge: Theorizing Practices in Households, Communities, and Classrooms is a critically important volume for all teachers and teachers-to-be, and for researchers and graduate students of language, culture, and education.