Quest For Learning

With Foreword by Heidi Hayes Jacobs It's crucial for 21st century teachers and students to determine together what a student will learn and at what pace. This book dives deep into quest learning, a customizable inquiry model tailored to a student's interests, needs, and abilities. Learn how to use questing to engross students in emotionally gripping learning experiences, engage them with actionable goals, build 21st century skills, and promote collaboration in online and physical spaces. Learn how to motivate students using the education quest model: - Foster students' 21st century learning by engaging critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, and self-direction. - Form learning partnerships with students that lead to co-teaching and co-learning. - Explore the three main design types through which students can quest to learn: (1) inquiry, (2) network, and (3) game. - Investigate the guided inquiry design decisions involved in identifying a quest, determining checkpoints, and helping students reflect on their quest. - Use formative assessment templates for engaging students in learning. Contents: Foreword by Heidi Hayes Jacobs Introduction Part I: Establishing Chapter 1: Making the Case for Questing Chapter 2: Identifying Questing Components Chapter 3: Inquiring With Question Design Chapter 4: Playing With Game Design Chapter 5: Building Connections With Network Design Part II: Guiding Chapter 6: Launching the Quest Chapter 7: Introducing Students to Quests Chapter 8: Providing Instructional Support Chapter 9: Demonstrating Learning Appendix A: Frequently Asked Questions Appendix B: Questing Framework Questions Aligned to Decision Matrix Appendix C: Sample Complete Quest References and Resources Index

The design for Quest to Learn, an innovative school in New York City that offers a “game-like” approach to learning. Quest to Learn, an innovative school for grades 6 to 12 in New York City, grew out of the idea that gaming and game design offer a promising new paradigm for curriculum and learning. The designers of Quest to Learn developed an approach to learning that draws from what games do best: drop kids into inquiry-based, complex problem spaces that are built to help players understand how they are doing, what they need to work on, and where to go next. Content is not treated as dry information but as a living resource; students are encouraged to interact with the larger world in ways that feel relevant, exciting, and empowering. Quest to Learn opened in the fall of 2009 with 76 sixth graders. In their first semester, these students learned—among other things—to convert fractions into decimals in order to break a piece of code found in a library book; to use atlases and read maps to create a location guide for a reality television series; and to create video tutorials for a hapless group of fictional inventors. This research and development document outlines the learning framework for the school, making the original design available to others in the field. Elements in development include a detailed curriculum map, a budget, and samples of student and teacher handbooks.

Literacy and popular culture are intrinsically linked as forms of communication, entertainment, and education. Students are motivated to engage with popular culture through a myriad of mediums for a variety of purposes. Utilizing popular culture to bridge literacy concepts across content areas in K-12 settings offers a level playing field across student groups and grade levels. As concepts around traditional literacy education evolve and become more culturally responsive, the connections between popular culture and disciplinary literacy must be explored. Disciplinary Literacy Connections to Popular Culture in K-12 Settings is an essential publication that explores a conceptual framework around pedagogical connections to popular culture. While highlighting a broad range of topics including academic creativity, interdisciplinary storytelling, and skill development, this book is ideally designed for educators, curriculum developers, instructional designers, administrative officials, policymakers, researchers, academicians, and students.

"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.

My Quest for Health Equity is a vital resource for current and rising leaders.

Every child should have access to an education that works. The Quest for a Meaningful Special Education follows the educational journeys of nine students with a language-based learning disability (LBLD) who, through a combination of parental advocacy and luck, were removed from a debilitating learning situation and enrolled in a school designed to address their particular learning needs. In the process of following their journeys, the book explores the role of cultures within and outside the school and examines some of the ways that the construction of special education has affected student learning. In the context of the ongoing national conversation about student academic success, high school dropout rates, the disproportionate number of prison inmates with learning disabilities, the costs of educating students, and the controversy over the placement of minorities in special education, The Quest For a Meaningful Special Education is a timely book that will add a new perspective to current debates

"A funny memoir of Faith Club coauthor's serious attempt to change her brain from panic to peace in a year-long spiritual quest"--

While challenging the teacher as hero trope, We Got This shows how authentically listening to kids is the closest thing to a superpower that we have. Cornelius identifies tools, attributes, and strategies that can augment our listening.