Changing Curriculum through Stories

Changing Curriculum through Stories
Author: Marc Levitt
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 133
Release: 2017-05-24
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1475835922

Changing Curriculum Through Stories: Character Education for Ages 10-12 is a book about transforming school culture from one that supports a culture of competition to one where an understanding of how we are 'All In it Together’ permeates what is studied and how. Whether the issue is ‘going along to get along’, ‘shunning an outsider’, 'bullying', ‘learning to share', 'anger management' or 'forgiveness', Changing Curriculum Through Stories: Character Education for Ages 10-12 makes clear how an individual's behavioral choices, seemingly without consequences, ultimately effect everyone, including themselves. Using original and folkloric stories as jumping off points for discussions, Marc Levitt’s new book provides a holistic antidote to 'shallow selfishness', substituting instead, a curriculum and a pedagogy that provides the intellectual and visceral tools to help students understand and to act based on an awareness of their connections to one another, the value of community and the joy of living amidst diversity of all kinds.

The Right Tools

The Right Tools
Author: Towanda Harris
Publisher: Heinemann Educational Books
Total Pages: 128
Release: 2019
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9780325108582

Today, educators often find themselves facing a dizzying array of materials and resources, whether they are a box of dusty skills cards handed down from a retiring teacher, a professional book passed on by a colleague, a procedure recommended by a supervisor, a program required by a district, a book reviewed on a blog, a unit downloaded from a website, or a strategy highlighted in a brochure. But how do we know which of these will help the children in our classrooms? How do we find helpful resources without squandering funding or instructional time-not to mention our students' potential? In The Right Tools, Towanda Harris lays out a path that teachers and administrators can use to make informed decisions about what resources and practices they need for the students they teach. Rather than telling you what to buy or use, Towanda offers tools and guidance to help you to make that decision as you identify what you and your students need match resources with your goals for your students use the resource with a focus on your students assess how well the resource is working adjust how you are using the resource as necessary utilize one of the most powerful resources available to you as a teacher-your colleagues. Resources are only a piece of your teaching, alongside knowledge of best practices, and a deep understanding of your students. Yet each of these pieces can have powerful effects. By finding and using resources that are well matched to your students and their academic goals, you can keep working to help students reach their full potential.

A People's Curriculum for the Earth

A People's Curriculum for the Earth
Author: Bill Bigelow
Publisher: Rethinking Schools
Total Pages: 433
Release: 2014-11-14
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0942961579

A People’s Curriculum for the Earth is a collection of articles, role plays, simulations, stories, poems, and graphics to help breathe life into teaching about the environmental crisis. The book features some of the best articles from Rethinking Schools magazine alongside classroom-friendly readings on climate change, energy, water, food, and pollution—as well as on people who are working to make things better. A People’s Curriculum for the Earth has the breadth and depth ofRethinking Globalization: Teaching for Justice in an Unjust World, one of the most popular books we’ve published. At a time when it’s becoming increasingly obvious that life on Earth is at risk, here is a resource that helps students see what’s wrong and imagine solutions. Praise for A People's Curriculum for the Earth "To really confront the climate crisis, we need to think differently, build differently, and teach differently. A People’s Curriculum for the Earth is an educator’s toolkit for our times." — Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine and This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate "This volume is a marvelous example of justice in ALL facets of our lives—civil, social, educational, economic, and yes, environmental. Bravo to the Rethinking Schools team for pulling this collection together and making us think more holistically about what we mean when we talk about justice." — Gloria Ladson-Billings, Kellner Family Chair in Urban Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison "Bigelow and Swinehart have created a critical resource for today’s young people about humanity’s responsibility for the Earth. This book can engender the shift in perspective so needed at this point on the clock of the universe." — Gregory Smith, Professor of Education, Lewis & Clark College, co-author with David Sobel of Place- and Community-based Education in Schools

Learning That Transfers

Learning That Transfers
Author: Julie Stern
Publisher: Corwin Press
Total Pages: 333
Release: 2021-03-30
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1071835874

"It is a pleasure to have a full length treatise on this most important topic, and may this focus on transfer become much more debated, taught, and valued in our schools." - John Hattie Teach students to use their learning to unlock new situations. How do you prepare your students for a future that you can’t see? And how do you do it without exhausting yourself? Teachers need a framework that allows them to keep pace with our rapidly changing world without having to overhaul everything they do. Learning That Transfers empowers teachers and curriculum designers alike to harness the critical concepts of traditional disciplines while building students’ capacity to navigate, interpret, and transfer their learning to solve novel and complex modern problems. Using a backwards design approach, this hands-on guide walks teachers step-by-step through the process of identifying curricular goals, establishing assessment targets, and planning curriculum and instruction that facilitates the transfer of learning to new and challenging situations. Key features include Thinking prompts to spur reflection and inform curricular planning and design. Next-day strategies that offer tips for practical, immediate action in the classroom. Design steps that outline critical moments in creating curriculum for learning that transfers. Links to case studies, discipline-specific examples, and podcast interviews with educators. A companion website that hosts templates, planning guides, and flexible options for adapting current curriculum documents. Using a framework that combines standards and the best available research on how we learn, design curriculum and instruction that prepares your students to meet the challenges of an uncertain future, while addressing the unique needs of your school community.

Game Changer!

Game Changer!
Author: Donalyn Miller
Publisher: Scholastic Professional
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2018
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9781338310597

Miller and Sharp provide the game-changing tools and information teachers and administrators need to dramatically increase children's access to and engagement with books.

Productive Learning

Productive Learning
Author: Stanislaw D. Glazek
Publisher: Corwin Press
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2006-09-01
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1483362264

This unique resource promotes the creation of productive learning contexts, which allow students to bring all that they are to the learning process, as essential to successful educational reform.

Place-based Curriculum Design

Place-based Curriculum Design
Author: Amy B. Demarest
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 219
Release: 2014-10-30
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1317746775

Place-based Curriculum Design provides pre-service and practicing teachers both the rationale and tools to create and integrate meaningful, place-based learning experiences for students. Practical, classroom-based curricular examples illustrate how teachers can engage the local and still be accountable to the existing demands of federal, state, and district mandates. Coverage includes connecting the curriculum to students’ outside-of-school lives; using local phenomena or issues to enhance students’ understanding of discipline-based questions; engaging in in-depth explorations of local issues and events to create cross-disciplinary learning experiences, and creating units or sustained learning experiences aimed at engendering social and environmental renewal. An on-line resource (www.routledge.com/9781138013469) provides supplementary materials, including curricular templates, tools for reflective practice, and additional materials for instructors and students.

Writing and Teaching to Change the World

Writing and Teaching to Change the World
Author: Stephanie Jones
Publisher: Teachers College Press
Total Pages: 161
Release: 2014
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0807772828

Perfect for use in teacher preparation courses and professional learning groups, this book shows what critical pedagogy looks like and identifies the conditions needed for it to emerge in the K–12 classroom. Focusing on and documenting their experiences with one of their most disenfranchised students, six teachers analyze and rethink what they do in the classroom and why they do it. In so doing, each comes to re-imagine who they are as teachers and as individuals. This engaging collection illuminates writing as a powerful tool for thinking deeply about how and why teachers respond to students in particular ways. Book Features: Prompts and suggested writing exercises at the end of each chapter to support teacher-writer groups. Guiding questions at the end of each chapter to support the instructional practices of K-12 teachers. Powerful stories of teachers' and students' experiences with standards, tracking practices, evaluation practices, and life. Helpful appendices, including books for further reading and an essay about the Oral Inquiry Process by Bob Fecho. “This is an important book for all teachers to read—beginners and experienced, as it confronts all of us as teachers to pay attention to the social and political contexts within which we work and consider what we often ignore—our student’s lives outside of school.” —From the Foreword by Ann Lieberman, Senior Scholar at Stanford University “Kudos to Stephanie Jones and her colleagues for making moral sense of the day-to-day craft of education.” —Carl Glickman, educator and author of The Trembling Field: Stories of Wonder, Possibilities, and Downright Craziness Stephanie Jones is associate professor in the department of educational theory and practice at The University of Georgia, and co-director of the Red Clay Writing Project. Her books include The Reading Turn-Around: A Five-Part Framework for Differentiated Instruction.

The Death and Resurrection of a Coherent Literature Curriculum

The Death and Resurrection of a Coherent Literature Curriculum
Author: Sandra Stotsky
Publisher: R&L Education
Total Pages: 217
Release: 2012
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1610485580

This book is addressed to teachers who know that the secondary literature curriculum in our public schools is in shambles. Unless experienced and well-read English teachers can develop coherent and increasingly demanding literature curricula in their schools, average high school students will remain at about the fifth or sixth grade reading level--where they now are to judge from several independent sources. This book seeks to challenge education policy makers, test developers, and educators who discourage the assignment of appropriately difficult works to high school students and make construction of a coherent literature curriculum impossible. It first traces the history of the literature curriculum in our middle schools and high schools and shows how it has been diminished and distorted in the past half-century. It then offers examples of coherent literature curricula and spells out the cognitive principles upon which coherence is based. Finally, it suggests what English teachers in our public schools could do to develop a literature curriculum that gives all their students an adequate basis for participation in an English-speaking civic culture.

Invitations

Invitations
Author: Regie Routman
Publisher: Heinemann Educational Publishers
Total Pages: 800
Release: 1994
Genre: Education
ISBN:

Encouragement, support, and specifics on putting whole language theory into practice--things that today's educators need. Invitations offers all of them, and Routman invites all teachers to reflect upon their teaching. She provides specific strategies for the daily management and educational issues that teachers struggle with in their efforts to make teaching more relevant for their students and themselves.