Nurturing Informed Thinking

"Sunday Cummins draws on her work with teachers across the country in this step-by-step guide for using content-area reading to teach both content and heavy-duty reading skills (such as inferring, synthesizing, and weighting point of view) at the same time in grades 3-6"--

This book makes a case for a STEM-based approach across the curriculum by highlighting the potential impacts of rapid societal change, newly emerging information technologies, and the increasing demand for a new generation of skillful and well-rounded citizens and workers. The book discusses how thinking skills, collaborative learning, communications-related information technologies, science and math, language and literacy, and arts education can be used as mutually reinforcing instruments in preparing young learners. The role of the family, teachers, and school administration in creating an environment where young students can stand a chance is also articulated. Above all, the book reiterates the value of pedagogically attuned teachers who are sensitive to the diversity of backgrounds and capabilities of students. They will oversee and guide the transformation of young learners who will be trained to trust their creativity, humanity, and critical thinking skills in navigating the 21st century world.

Teaching Math, Science, and Technology in Schools Today: Guidelines for Engaging Both Eager and Reluctant Learners offers unique, engaging, and thought-provoking ideas. The activities open imaginative doors to learning and provide opportunities for all learners. It surveys today’s most important trends and dilemmas while explaining how collaboration and critical thinking can be translated into fresh classroom practices. Questions, engagement, and curiosity are viewed as natural partners for mathematical problem solving, scientific inquiry, and learning about technology. Like the Common Core State Standards, the book builds on the social nature of learning to provide suggestions for both eager and reluctant learners. The overall goal of the book is to deepen the collective conversation, challenge thinking, and provide some up-to-date tools for teachers so they can help reverse the steady erosion of math, science, and technology understanding in the general population.

In a rapidly evolving local and global economy, skills related to mathematical problem solving, scientific inquiry, and technological innovation are becoming more critical for success in and out of school. Thus, Demystify Math, Science, and Technology addresses the need to cultivate these skills in young students so that ingenuity, teamwork, and imaginative skills become part of their arsenal in dealing with real world challenges.

The comprehensiveness and detailed presentation of this book will deepen the collective conversation, challenge thinking, and give up-to-date tools that may be used today."--BOOK JACKET.

Tomorrow’s Innovators: Essential Skills For A Changing World focuses on approaches and methods to help teachers infuse their basic subject matter lessons with creativity, innovation, and adaptability. On a broader scale, we provide elementary and middle school educators with insights into current educational issues and suggestions for converting new ideas into practical classroom applications.

This book defines literacy broadly as it explores concepts within core subjects and shows how to make standards-based literacy the goal and outcome of school reform. It imagines a future digital medium where educational technology is worthy of the spirit our children bring to it. Classrooms and schools centered on learners and learning can be intellectually exciting places. This book attends to that concern while giving a great deal of attention to connecting overlapping themes to good teaching. Literacy Today sets out to challenge teachers to make literacy and learning more relevant and lasting for their students. By providing a standards-based context for connecting basic subjects, it encourages teachers to reflect upon their practices while building a conceptual framework for new directions and new approaches to the curriculum. As the concept of literacy expands to meet the needs of today's complex world, teachers need all the assistance that they can get. The standards movement does not authoritatively tell teachers what to do. rather, it helps them make decisions about what to teach, what to spend time on, and what to eliminate from the curriculum. This books gives teachers a road map and a literacy-intensive destination. It highlights some of the better routes and helps teachers with good activities and professional development along the way.