Impactful Classroom Experiences in Elementary Schools: Practices and Policies

Impactful Classroom Experiences in Elementary Schools: Practices and Policies
Author: Parks, Melissa
Publisher: IGI Global
Total Pages: 271
Release: 2023-08-18
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1668485524

With high teacher attrition rates, low pay, and constantly shifting standards, the education system desperately requires a fresh approach. Yet, dedicated teachers continue to enter the classroom with a genuine desire to make a lasting impact on their students' lives. Impactful Classroom Experiences in Elementary Schools: Practices and Policies delves into the challenges and opportunities of American elementary education. It offers teachers research-grounded ideas to develop and deliver engaging learning experiences that enhance students' conceptual understanding. The book focuses on positive strategies for creating meaningful classroom experiences, such as building safe and supportive environments, nurturing curiosity, and encouraging calculated risk-taking. It explores topics like play, communication with families, and nature, highlighting how failure can be a learning opportunity and empowering student expression. Additionally, the book provides practical tips and step-by-step directions for teachers to recreate successful experiences in engaging science, math, and social studies lessons. Impactful Classroom Experiences in Elementary Schools offers educators a roadmap to transform their classrooms into vibrant hubs of learning and personal growth. By incorporating research-backed methods and fostering a love of learning in a supportive atmosphere, teachers can create meaningful connections between students' emotions and their conceptual understanding. This invaluable resource equips teachers with the tools they need to make a lasting impact on their students' educational journey, enabling them to deliver joyful and transformative learning experiences in the elementary school setting.

Teaching Talk

Teaching Talk
Author: Kara Pranikoff
Publisher: Heinemann Educational Books
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2017
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9780325086767

Talk is part of every classroom, regardless of grade, content area, or school location. So how can teachers harness the energy of talk to spark discussion, strengthen student dialogue, and deepen comprehension? Teaching Talk is a practical resource that will help you focus your lens on classroom talk, making the most of the student voices and ideas that are already part of your classroom, and increasing the potential for learning. Kara Pranikoff offers suggestions and strategies that can be used immediately, starting with a comprehensive list of questions to help teachers assess and reflect on student talk. Each chapter addresses an element of classroom talk along with concrete examples to help you: collect and analyze artifacts of talk provide opportunities for students to share their ideas create conversations orchestrated by students and grounded in their ideas strengthen both talking and listening in conversation reflect on progress, set goals and refine instruction. Conversation is the currency of most ideas in the world. With Teaching Talk as your guide, you'll help students develop the skills they need to be inquisitive, independent, and critical thinkers in all aspects of their lives.

School, Family, and Community Partnerships

School, Family, and Community Partnerships
Author: Joyce L. Epstein
Publisher: Corwin Press
Total Pages: 508
Release: 2018-07-19
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1483320014

Strengthen programs of family and community engagement to promote equity and increase student success! When schools, families, and communities collaborate and share responsibility for students′ education, more students succeed in school. Based on 30 years of research and fieldwork, the fourth edition of the bestseller School, Family, and Community Partnerships: Your Handbook for Action, presents tools and guidelines to help develop more effective and more equitable programs of family and community engagement. Written by a team of well-known experts, it provides a theory and framework of six types of involvement for action; up-to-date research on school, family, and community collaboration; and new materials for professional development and on-going technical assistance. Readers also will find: Examples of best practices on the six types of involvement from preschools, and elementary, middle, and high schools Checklists, templates, and evaluations to plan goal-linked partnership programs and assess progress CD-ROM with slides and notes for two presentations: A new awareness session to orient colleagues on the major components of a research-based partnership program, and a full One-Day Team Training Workshop to prepare school teams to develop their partnership programs. As a foundational text, this handbook demonstrates a proven approach to implement and sustain inclusive, goal-linked programs of partnership. It shows how a good partnership program is an essential component of good school organization and school improvement for student success. This book will help every district and all schools strengthen and continually improve their programs of family and community engagement.

The Science of Learning and Development

The Science of Learning and Development
Author: Pamela Cantor
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 245
Release: 2021-06-21
Genre: Education
ISBN: 100039977X

This essential text unpacks major transformations in the study of learning and human development and provides evidence for how science can inform innovation in the design of settings, policies, practice, and research to enhance the life path, opportunity and prosperity of every child. The ideas presented provide researchers and educators with a rationale for focusing on the specific pathways and developmental patterns that may lead a specific child, with a specific family, school, and community, to prosper in school and in life. Expanding key published articles and expert commentary, the book explores a profound evolution in thinking that integrates findings from psychology with biology through sociology, education, law, and history with an emphasis on institutionalized inequities and disparate outcomes and how to address them. It points toward possible solutions through an understanding of and addressing the dynamic relations between a child and the contexts within which he or she lives, offering all researchers of human development and education a new way to understand and promote healthy development and learning for diverse, specific youth regardless of race, socioeconomic status, or history of adversity, challenge, or trauma. The book brings together scholars and practitioners from the biological/medical sciences, the social and behavioral sciences, educational science, and fields of law and social and educational policy. It provides an invaluable and unique resource for understanding the bases and status of the new science, and presents a roadmap for progress that will frame progress for at least the next decade and perhaps beyond.

How People Learn II

How People Learn II
Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 347
Release: 2018-09-27
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0309459672

There are many reasons to be curious about the way people learn, and the past several decades have seen an explosion of research that has important implications for individual learning, schooling, workforce training, and policy. In 2000, How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School: Expanded Edition was published and its influence has been wide and deep. The report summarized insights on the nature of learning in school-aged children; described principles for the design of effective learning environments; and provided examples of how that could be implemented in the classroom. Since then, researchers have continued to investigate the nature of learning and have generated new findings related to the neurological processes involved in learning, individual and cultural variability related to learning, and educational technologies. In addition to expanding scientific understanding of the mechanisms of learning and how the brain adapts throughout the lifespan, there have been important discoveries about influences on learning, particularly sociocultural factors and the structure of learning environments. How People Learn II: Learners, Contexts, and Cultures provides a much-needed update incorporating insights gained from this research over the past decade. The book expands on the foundation laid out in the 2000 report and takes an in-depth look at the constellation of influences that affect individual learning. How People Learn II will become an indispensable resource to understand learning throughout the lifespan for educators of students and adults.

The Five Practices in Practice [Elementary]

The Five Practices in Practice [Elementary]
Author: Margaret (Peg) Smith
Publisher: Corwin Press
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2019-08-14
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1544321147

Take a deep dive into the five practices for facilitating productive mathematical discussions Enhance your fluency in the five practices—anticipating, monitoring, selecting, sequencing, and connecting—to bring powerful discussions of mathematical concepts to life in your elementary classroom. This book unpacks the five practices for deeper understanding and empowers you to use each practice effectively. • Video excerpts vividly illustrate the five practices in action in real elementary classrooms • Key questions help you set learning goals, identify high-level tasks, and jumpstart discussion • Prompts guide you to be prepared for and overcome common challenges Includes planning templates, sample lesson plans and completed monitoring tools, and mathematical tasks.

Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8

Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 587
Release: 2015-07-23
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0309324882

Children are already learning at birth, and they develop and learn at a rapid pace in their early years. This provides a critical foundation for lifelong progress, and the adults who provide for the care and the education of young children bear a great responsibility for their health, development, and learning. Despite the fact that they share the same objective - to nurture young children and secure their future success - the various practitioners who contribute to the care and the education of children from birth through age 8 are not acknowledged as a workforce unified by the common knowledge and competencies needed to do their jobs well. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 explores the science of child development, particularly looking at implications for the professionals who work with children. This report examines the current capacities and practices of the workforce, the settings in which they work, the policies and infrastructure that set qualifications and provide professional learning, and the government agencies and other funders who support and oversee these systems. This book then makes recommendations to improve the quality of professional practice and the practice environment for care and education professionals. These detailed recommendations create a blueprint for action that builds on a unifying foundation of child development and early learning, shared knowledge and competencies for care and education professionals, and principles for effective professional learning. Young children thrive and learn best when they have secure, positive relationships with adults who are knowledgeable about how to support their development and learning and are responsive to their individual progress. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 offers guidance on system changes to improve the quality of professional practice, specific actions to improve professional learning systems and workforce development, and research to continue to build the knowledge base in ways that will directly advance and inform future actions. The recommendations of this book provide an opportunity to improve the quality of the care and the education that children receive, and ultimately improve outcomes for children.

The Classroom Management Book

The Classroom Management Book
Author: Harry K. Wong
Publisher: Harry K. Wong Publications
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2018
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9780976423393

This is a solutions book that shows how to organize and structure a classroom to create a safe and positive environment for student learning and achievement to take place. It offers 50 classroom procedures that can be applied, changed, adapted, into classroom routines for any classroom management plan at any grade level. Each procedure is presented with a consistent format that breaks it down and tells how to teach it and what the outcome of teaching it will be. While all of the work and preparation behind a well-managed classroom are rarely observed, the dividends are evident in a classroom that is less stressful for all and one that hums with learning. The information is supplemented with 40 QR Codes that take the learning beyond the basic text. As the companion book to THE First Days of School, it takes one of the three characteristics of an effective teacher, being an extremely good classroom manager, and shows how to put it into practice in the classroom. It will show you how to manage your classroom step by step. THE Classroom Management Book will help you prevent classroom discipline problems and help you create an atmosphere where everyone knows what to do--even when you are not in the classroom! 320-page book with Index 50 step-by-step Procedures 40 QR Codes for extended learning

How to Succeed as an Elementary Teacher

How to Succeed as an Elementary Teacher
Author: Marjan Glavac
Publisher:
Total Pages: 206
Release: 2019-07-05
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9780968331095

Tips for Success: Strategies to Regain Elementary Classroom Control Is there a knot in your stomach before you step into class? Are disruptive, defiant students part of your nightmares? Is the lack of control of your classroom affecting your lesson plans, your self-confidence, and ultimately your life?

Funds of Knowledge

Funds of Knowledge
Author: Norma Gonzalez
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 332
Release: 2006-04-21
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1135614059

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.