The Purposeful Classroom

In this practical guide, authors Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey offer a variety of strategies that K-12 teachers can use to craft effective, standards-based purpose statements, assignments, and tests across grade levels and content areas.

Play is serious business. Whether it's reenacting a favorite book (comprehension and close reading), negotiating the rules for a game (speaking and listening), or collaborating over building blocks (college and career readiness and STEM), Kristi Mraz, Alison Porcelli, and Cheryl Tyler see every day how play helps students reach standards and goals in ways that in-their-seat instruction alone can't do. And not just during playtimes. "We believe there is play in work and work in play," they write. "It helps to have practical ways to carry that mindset into all aspects of the curriculum." In Purposeful Play, they share ways to: optimize and balance different types of play to deepen regular classroom learning teach into play to foster social-emotional skills and a growth mindset bring the impact of play into all your lessons across the day. "We believe that play is one type of environment where children can be rigorous in their learning," Kristi, Alison, and Cheryl write. So they provide a host of lessons, suggestions for classroom setups, helpful tools and charts, curriculum connections, teaching points, and teaching language to help you foster mature play that makes every moment in your classroom instructional. Play doesn't only happen when work is over. Children show us time and time again that play is the way they work. In Purposeful Play, you'll find research-driven methods for making play an engine for rigorous learning in your classroom.

"Teaching is a daunting, challenging endeavor, but author Karen Gazith seeks to help teachers incorporate best practices into their classrooms. Her book The Mindful and Purposeful Teacher: Research-Informed Practice for Every Student in Every Classroom is built on seven well-researched principles that can assist teachers in creating a classroom environment conducive to learning for every student present. The topics covered range from classroom management to establishing learning goals and are applicable to new and veteran teachers alike. These seven principles construct a robust picture of what education can and should be: a safe place of learning and growth"--

Discover how to plan effective blended instruction with purpose and intention with help from this definitive, practical guide to lesson design. A global pandemic hit our world and education has forever changed. But have your instructional practices changed? Teachers must now leverage technology to provide students with high-quality teaching and learning experiences that transcend a traditional classroom’s walls. This is a historic opportunity to abandon antiquated teaching practices and reimagine instruction in ways that boost learning outcomes and prepare students for living and working in the digital age. This book offers guidance for creating and sustaining rigorous and engaging blended learning solutions. Opening with lessons learned from the pandemic, the book addresses impacts on lesson design and delivery, student engagement, assessment, and teacher training and PD. The following chapters build on and address these experiences, with each chapter featuring strategies and examples of how to implement effective approaches to lesson design for blended and online instruction. This book: • Explores seven different blended learning models, with strategies and suggestions for implementing each one. • Provides detailed guidance for planning a blended learning curriculum, from establishing a digital infrastructure to integrating students into a learning management system (LMS) to mapping a course scope and sequence. • Provides step-by-step design essentials for developing a pacing guide and creating effective blended and virtual lessons. • Features downloadable templates, checklists and guided professional learning tasks in every chapter to help design virtual and blended lessons. • Includes strategies for implementing authentic, student-led assessments. The book is sure to meet the needs of varying practitioners who are eager to learn about designing successful blended learning courses and understanding what makes each course work. Audience: K-12 teachers and instructional designers; faculty in higher education programs

"The definitive guide to the gradual release of responsibility-an instructional framework teachers can use to help students become more successful and self-directed learners"--

What type of questioning invigorates and sustains productive discussions? That's what Jackie Acree Walsh and Beth Dankert Sattes ask as they begin a passionate exploration of questioning as the beating heart of thoughtful discussions. Questioning and discussion are important components of classroom instruction that work in tandem to push learning forward and move students from passive participants to active meaning-makers. Walsh and Sattes argue that the skills students develop through questioning and discussion are critical to academic achievement, career success, and active citizenship in a democratic society. They also have great potential to engage students at the highest levels of thinking and learning. The extent to which this potential is realized, of course, depends on individual teachers who embrace these practices, make them their own, and realize that this process requires a true partnership with students. With that in mind, Questioning for Classroom Discussion presents and analyzes the DNA of productive discussions--teacher-guided, small-group, and student-driven.

Better Learning Through Structured Teaching describes how teachers can help students develop stronger learning skills by ensuring that instruction moves from modeling and guided practice (situations where the teacher has most of the responsibility) to collaborative learning and, finally, to independent tasks. You'll find out how to use the four components of this approach to help meet critical challenges, including differentiating instruction and making effective use of class time: 1. Focus Lessons: Establishing the lesson’s purpose and then modeling your own thinking for students.2. Guided Instruction: Working with small groups of students who have similar results on performance assessments. 3. Collaborative Learning: Enabling students to discuss and negotiate with one another to create independent work, not simply one project. 4. Independent Tasks: Requiring students to use their previous knowledge to create new and authentic products. The authors explore each component using student dialogues and examples from a variety of disciplines and grade levels. They provide tips and tools for successfully implementing this instructional approach in your own classroom, including checklists for classroom setup and routines, critical questions, real-world lesson plans, and more. No matter what grade level you teach, Better Learning Through Structured Teaching is your essential guide to helping students develop and expand their capacity for authentic and long-lasting learning.

The field of education has been and will continue to be essential to the survival and sustainability of the Black community. Unfortunately, over the past five decades, two major trends have become clearly evident in the Black community: (a) the decline of the academic achievement levels of Black students and (b) the disappearance of Black teachers, particularly Black males. Today, of the 3.5 million teachers in America’s classrooms (AACTE, 2010) only 8% are Black teachers, and approximately 2% of these teachers are Black males (NCES, 2010). Over the past few decades, the Black teaching force in the U.S. has dropped significantly (Lewis, 2006; Lewis, Bonner, Byrd, & James, 2008; Milner & Howard, 2004), and this educational crisis shows no signs of ending in the near future. As the population of Black students in K-12 schools in the U. S. continue to rise—currently over 16% of students in America’s schools are Black (NCES, 2010)—there is an urgent need to increase the presence of Black educators. The overall purpose of this edited volume is to stimulate thought and discussion among diverse audiences (e.g., policymakers, practitioners, and educational researchers) who are concerned about the performance of Black students in our nation’s schools, and to provide evidence-based strategies to expand our nation’s pool of Black teachers. To this end, it is our hope that this book will contribute to the teacher education literature and will inform the teacher education policy and practice debate.