Curriculum Making in Europe

Curriculum Making in Europe
Author: Mark Priestley
Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing
Total Pages: 251
Release: 2021-01-20
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1838677372

In the context of profound social, political and technological changes, recent global trends in education have included the emergence of new forms of curriculum policy. Addressing a gap in the literature, this book investigates the ways in which curriculum policy is influenced, formulated, and enacted in a number of countries-cases in Europe.

Keys to Curriculum Mapping

Keys to Curriculum Mapping
Author: Susan Udelhofen
Publisher: Corwin Press
Total Pages: 121
Release: 2005-02-24
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1412909589

Based on extensive experience as a teacher/staff development consultant and earlier work in the field by foreword writer Heidi Hayes Jacobs, Wisconsin-based Udelhofen (PhD) explains how curriculum mapping can help educators better help students. She describes such mapping as a process in which teachers electronically document and share all curricul.

Understanding by Design

Understanding by Design
Author: Grant P. Wiggins
Publisher: ASCD
Total Pages: 383
Release: 2005
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1416600353

What is understanding and how does it differ from knowledge? How can we determine the big ideas worth understanding? Why is understanding an important teaching goal, and how do we know when students have attained it? How can we create a rigorous and engaging curriculum that focuses on understanding and leads to improved student performance in today's high-stakes, standards-based environment? Authors Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe answer these and many other questions in this second edition of Understanding by Design. Drawing on feedback from thousands of educators around the world who have used the UbD framework since its introduction in 1998, the authors have greatly revised and expanded their original work to guide educators across the K-16 spectrum in the design of curriculum, assessment, and instruction. With an improved UbD Template at its core, the book explains the rationale of backward design and explores in greater depth the meaning of such key ideas as essential questions and transfer tasks. Readers will learn why the familiar coverage- and activity-based approaches to curriculum design fall short, and how a focus on the six facets of understanding can enrich student learning. With an expanded array of practical strategies, tools, and examples from all subject areas, the book demonstrates how the research-based principles of Understanding by Design apply to district frameworks as well as to individual units of curriculum. Combining provocative ideas, thoughtful analysis, and tested approaches, this new edition of Understanding by Design offers teacher-designers a clear path to the creation of curriculum that ensures better learning and a more stimulating experience for students and teachers alike.

Making Curriculum Matter

Making Curriculum Matter
Author: Angela Di Michele Lalor
Publisher: ASCD
Total Pages: 183
Release: 2021-07-21
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1416630252

At the heart of education are two fundamental questions: What should we teach? and How should we teach it? Educators striving to design and deliver the best-possible learning experiences can feel overwhelmed by the possibilities. To help them make these critical decisions, Angela Di Michele Lalor identifies five key priorities of a curriculum that matters—practices, deep thinking, social and emotional learning, civic engagement and discourse, and equity. Emphasizing the importance of schools' determining their own path forward, Lalor provides a framework for action by * Describing how each element contributes to a rigorous, meaningful curriculum, * Providing strategies for incorporating each element into daily instruction and assessment, and * Offering reflection activities to identify strengths, needs, and possible next steps. With insightful observations, research-based background information, and real-world examples from a variety of schools and districts, Making Curriculum Matter presents teachers and administrators with a path for reaching their most important overall goal: to provide comprehensive, meaningful learning to all students.

Visible Learning for Literacy, Grades K-12

Visible Learning for Literacy, Grades K-12
Author: Douglas Fisher
Publisher: Corwin Press
Total Pages: 143
Release: 2016-03-22
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1506344038

"Every student deserves a great teacher, not by chance, but by design" — Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey, & John Hattie What if someone slipped you a piece of paper listing the literacy practices that ensure students demonstrate more than a year’s worth of learning for a year spent in school? Would you keep the paper or throw it away? We think you’d keep it. And that’s precisely why acclaimed educators Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey, and John Hattie wrote Visible Learning for Literacy. They know teachers will want to apply Hattie’s head-turning synthesis of more than 15 years of research involving millions of students, which he used to identify the instructional routines that have the biggest impact on student learning. These practices are "visible" for teachers and students to see, because their purpose has been made clear, they are implemented at the right moment in a student’s learning, and their effect is tangible. Yes, the "aha" moments made visible by design. With their trademark clarity and command of the research, and dozens of classroom scenarios to make it all replicable, these authors apply Hattie’s research, and show you: How to use the right approach at the right time, so that you can more intentionally design classroom experiences that hit the surface, deep, and transfer phases of learning, and more expertly see when a student is ready to dive from surface to deep. Which routines are most effective at specific phases of learning, including word sorts, concept mapping, close reading, annotating, discussion, formative assessment, feedback, collaborative learning, reciprocal teaching, and many more. Why the 8 mind frames for teachers apply so well to curriculum planning and can inspire you to be a change agent in students’ lives—and part of a faculty that embraces the idea that visible teaching is a continual evaluation of one’s impact on student’s learning. "Teachers, it’s time we embrace the evidence, update our classrooms, and impact student learning in wildly positive ways," say Doug, Nancy, and John. So let’s see Visible Learning for Literacy for what it is: the book that renews our teaching and reminds us of our influence, just in time.

Teach Smarter

Teach Smarter
Author: Vanessa J. Levin
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 198
Release: 2021-06-02
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1119698898

Discover new, practical methods for teaching literacy skills in your early childhood classroom. Has teaching early literacy skills become a stumbling block to getting your preschool students kindergarten ready? Break out of the tired “letter of the week” routine and learn how to transform your lessons with fun and effective techniques. Teach Smarter: Literacy Strategies for Early Childhood Teachers will equip teachers to infuse every aspect of their teaching with exciting hands-on literacy teaching methods that engage students and help them build authentic connections with books, so that 100% of their students will have a strong literacy foundation and will be fully prepared for success in kindergarten and beyond. Respected author Vanessa Levin, veteran early childhood educator and author of the “Pre-K Pages” blog, breaks down the research and translates it into realistic, actionable steps you can take to improve your teaching. Features specific examples of teaching techniques and activities that engage students in hands-on, experiential learning during circle time, centers, and small groups. Offers a simple, four-step system for teaching literacy skills, based on the foundational principles of early literacy teaching Demonstrates how to build your confidence in your ability to get 100% of your students ready for kindergarten, long before the end of the school year Understand the problems with traditional literacy teaching and identify gaps in your current teaching practice with this valuable resource.

Making Curriculum Pop

Making Curriculum Pop
Author: Pam Goble
Publisher: Free Spirit Publishing
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2016-02-22
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1631980629

From body art to baseball cards, comics to cathedrals, pie charts to power ballads . . . students need help navigating today’s media-rich world. And educators need help teaching today’s new media literacy. To be literate now means being able to read, write, listen, speak, view, and represent across all media—including both print and nonprint texts, such as film, TV, podcasts, websites, visual art, fashion, architecture, landscape, and music. This book offers secondary teachers in all content areas a flexible, interdisciplinary approach to integrate these literacies into their curriculum. Students form cooperative learning groups to evaluate media texts from various perspectives (artist, producer, sociologist, sound mixer, economist, poet, set designer, and more) and show their thinking using unique graphic organizers aligned to the Common Core State Standards

Making College Work

Making College Work
Author: Harry J. Holzer
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
Total Pages: 163
Release: 2017-08-15
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0815730225

Practical solutions for improving higher education opportunities for disadvantaged students Too many disadvantaged college students in America do not complete their coursework or receive any college credential, while others earn degrees or certificates with little labor market value. Large numbers of these students also struggle to pay for college, and some incur debts that they have difficulty repaying. The authors provide a new review of the causes of these problems and offer promising policy solutions. The circumstances affecting disadvantaged students stem both from issues on the individual side, such as weak academic preparation and financial pressures, and from institutional failures. Low-income students disproportionately attend schools that are underfunded and have weak performance incentives, contributing to unsatisfactory outcomes for many students. Some solutions, including better financial aid or academic supports, target individual students. Other solutions, such as stronger linkages between coursework and the labor market and more structured paths through the curriculum, are aimed at institutional reforms. All students, and particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, also need better and varied pathways both to college and directly to the job market, beginning in high school. We can improve college outcomes, but must also acknowledge that we must make hard choices and face difficult tradeoffs in the process. While no single policy is guaranteed to greatly improve college and career outcomes, implementing a number of evidence-based policies and programs together has the potential to improve these outcomes substantially.

Making Classroom Discussions Work

Making Classroom Discussions Work
Author: Jane C. Lo
Publisher: Teachers College Press
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2022
Genre: Education
ISBN: 080776664X

For the past 2 decades, the field of social studies education has seen an increase in research on the use of discussions as an essential instructional technique. This book examines the importance of using quality dialogue as a tool to help students understand complex issues in social studies. This edited volume provides a collection of well-known, evidence-based discussion techniques, as well as classroom examples showing the methods in use. While using discussion as an instructional method is widely considered a best practice of civic learning, actual high-quality discussions are rare and notoriously difficult to facilitate. Making Classroom Discussions Work is designed to guide teacher educators and classroom teachers in facilitating equitable and productive discussions that will boost learning and democratic engagement. Book Features: Emphasizes the rationale for using discussion in social studies teaching. Collects strategies that have been proposed in disparate journal articles and books in one convenient volume. Presents research-based challenges and supports for conducting and assessing discussions in the social studies. Includes methods and tips to help teachers make discussions more equitable in their classrooms.

Why Knowledge Matters

Why Knowledge Matters
Author: E. D. Hirsch
Publisher: Harvard Education Press
Total Pages: 287
Release: 2019-01-02
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1612509541

In Why Knowledge Matters, E. D. Hirsch, Jr., presents evidence from cognitive science, sociology, and education history to further the argument for a knowledge-based elementary curriculum. Influential scholar Hirsch, author of The Knowledge Deficit, asserts that a carefully planned curriculum that imparts communal knowledge is essential in achieving one of the most fundamental aims and objectives of education: preparing students for lifelong success. Hirsch examines historical and contemporary evidence from the United States and other nations, including France, and affirms that a knowledge-based approach has improved both achievement and equity in schools where it has been instituted. In contrast, educational change of the past several decades in the United States has endorsed a skills-based approach, founded on, Hirsch points out, many incorrect assumptions about child development and how children learn. He recommends new policies that are better aligned with our current understanding of neuroscience, developmental psychology, and social science. The book focuses on six persistent problems that merit the attention of contemporary education reform: the over-testing of students in the name of educational accountability; the scapegoating of teachers; the fadeout of preschool gains; the narrowing of the curriculum to crowd out history, geography, science, literature, and the arts; the achievement gap between demographic groups; and the reliance on standards, such as the Common Core State Standards, that are not linked to a rigorous curriculum. Why Knowledge Matters makes a clear case for educational innovation and introduces a new generation of American educators to Hirsch’s astute and passionate analysis.