The Game of School

The Game of School
Author: Robert L. Fried
Publisher: Jossey-Bass
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2005-04-13
Genre: Education
ISBN:

Students play it, teachers perpetuate it, parents condone it, principals endorse it, and governments legislate it. The "game of school" is that familiar scenario where students' natural curiosity and desire to learn are replaced with a frantic rush (or a compliant shrug) to do the work, please the teacher, and get the grades. This game is easy to master, but exerts a high price. Can we afford to pay the price in wasted time and idle minds? In this compelling book, Robert L. Fried shows how we can change the rules of the game, reclaim and refocus the learning experience, and ultimately bring joy back into the classroom. The Game of School is filled with interviews and stories of teachers and students who are struggling to put the game of school behind them and engage in authentic learning. We experience the excitement of the first day of first grade; listen to urban teens discuss Shakespeare's Othello; and meet a college student who is beginning to question her long disengagement with learning. We are introduced to seven types of learners—from "go-getters" to "pluggers" to "rebels"—and find out how the game shapes their relationship to schooling and life. The Game of School offers workable solutions that take into account the reality of a culture consumed with testing, accountability, and the race for college. Fried redefines our common ideas of discipline, curriculum, instruction, grading, motivation, and family involvement in ways that enhance true learning and diminish the game's stranglehold on our curiosity and will. He argues that classrooms are more easily "managed" in a climate of mutual respect, and students are eager for "instruction" when it is challenging and engaging. His "Joy and Misery Index" serves to remind teachers of what really matters most in the classroom. Thoughtful and inspiring, The Game of School offers suggestions and ideas for teachers, parents, and students who want to free themselves from the ever-tightening grip of a game in which even winners end up losing.

The Passion-Driven Classroom

The Passion-Driven Classroom
Author: Angela Maiers
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 110
Release: 2017-09-07
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1315394723

Turn your classroom into a thriving community of learners! In The Passion-Driven Classroom, bestselling authors Angela Maiers and Amy Sandvold show you how to spark and sustain your students’ energy, excitement, and love of learning. This updated edition offers a new framework for changing your mindset and implementing a passion-driven classroom, where passion meets practice every day as students learn new skills and explore their talents. You’ll come away with specific examples of how to set up your classroom, how to manage it, and how to assign passion projects where students take the lead. With this book, you’ll be able to move away from prescription-driven learning toward Passion-Driven Learning, so you can make a real difference in the lives of your students.

The Evolution of Teaching

The Evolution of Teaching
Author: Rich Waters
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 212
Release: 2014-10-08
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1475813813

The Evolution of Teaching invites teachers to rethink what teachers and schools do. The need to rethink the role of teachers is driven by an abundance of data showing that teachers are increasingly unhappy with their work. Most critically, they feel a loss of control over their work and their profession as they witness teacher voices being marginalized by impersonal authorities outside of schools who dictate more and more of what teachers and schools must do. The antidote to this condition is the evolution of teaching. Teachers need to take charge and lead change. They need to redefine teaching and schooling in such a way that it authentically supports student learning and teacher learning. They must redefine it in a way that supports every teacher’s desire to have a personal impact on students while having control over their own work, stakeholder standing as respected professionals, and a full career of professional growth. As A Guidebook to the Advancement of Teaching, Teacher Education, and Happier Careers, this text will assist teachers in reconceiving the profession of teaching in ways that will make it more personally satisfying while acknowledging that the work of teachers in the twenty-first century must necessarily be different from what we have now, legacy practices of standardization left over from the industrial age.

How Computer Games Help Children Learn

How Computer Games Help Children Learn
Author: D. Shaffer
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2007-02-25
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0230601995

How can we make sure that our children are learning to be creative thinkers in a world of global competition - and what does that mean for the future of education in the digital age? David Williamson Shaffer offers a fresh and powerful perspective on computer games and learning. How Computer Games Help Children Learn shows how video and computer games can help teach children to build successful futures - but only if we think in new ways about education itself. Shaffer shows how computer and video games can help students learn to think like engineers, urban planners, journalists, lawyers, and other innovative professionals, giving them the tools they need to survive in a changing world. Based on more than a decade of research in technology, game science, and education, How Computer Games Help Children Learn revolutionizes the ongoing debate about the pros and cons of digital learning.

Learning to Play

Learning to Play
Author: Myint Swe Khine
Publisher: Peter Lang
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2011
Genre: Video games
ISBN: 9781433112355

Over the past two decades, much attention has been given to the new media culture of video games, due to their unique features and pervasive nature among young people. This book critically examines the role of video games in education, arguing that they encourage strategic thinking, planning, communicating, negotiation skills, multi-tasking and group decision-making. It is also observed that video games promote higher levels of attention and concentration among players. The book contains multiple perspectives and presents thought-provoking ideas, innovative approaches, systemic exploration, exemplary and promising efforts, and future-oriented scenarios. The book draws together distinguished researchers, educational and curriculum planners, game creators, educational and social psychologists, and instructional designers to explore how video games can transform the future of education.

Grading for Equity

Grading for Equity
Author: Joe Feldman
Publisher: Corwin Press
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2018-09-25
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1506391605

“Joe Feldman shows us how we can use grading to help students become the leaders of their own learning and lift the veil on how to succeed. . . . This must-have book will help teachers learn to implement improved, equity-focused grading for impact.” --Zaretta Hammond, Author of Culturally Responsive Teaching & The Brain Crack open the grading conversation Here at last—and none too soon—is a resource that delivers the research base, tools, and courage to tackle one of the most challenging and emotionally charged conversations in today’s schools: our inconsistent grading practices and the ways they can inadvertently perpetuate the achievement and opportunity gaps among our students. With Grading for Equity, Joe Feldman cuts to the core of the conversation, revealing how grading practices that are accurate, bias-resistant, and motivational will improve learning, minimize grade inflation, reduce failure rates, and become a lever for creating stronger teacher-student relationships and more caring classrooms. Essential reading for schoolwide and individual book study or for student advocates, Grading for Equity provides A critical historical backdrop, describing how our inherited system of grading was originally set up as a sorting mechanism to provide or deny opportunity, control students, and endorse a “fixed mindset” about students’ academic potential—practices that are still in place a century later A summary of the research on motivation and equitable teaching and learning, establishing a rock-solid foundation and a “true north” orientation toward equitable grading practices Specific grading practices that are more equitable, along with teacher examples, strategies to solve common hiccups and concerns, and evidence of effectiveness Reflection tools for facilitating individual or group engagement and understanding As Joe writes, “Grading practices are a mirror not just for students, but for us as their teachers.” Each one of us should start by asking, “What do my grading practices say about who I am and what I believe?” Then, let’s make the choice to do things differently . . . with Grading for Equity as a dog-eared reference.

Making Thinking Visible

Making Thinking Visible
Author: Ron Ritchhart
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2011-03-25
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1118015010

A proven program for enhancing students' thinking and comprehension abilities Visible Thinking is a research-based approach to teaching thinking, begun at Harvard's Project Zero, that develops students' thinking dispositions, while at the same time deepening their understanding of the topics they study. Rather than a set of fixed lessons, Visible Thinking is a varied collection of practices, including thinking routines?small sets of questions or a short sequence of steps?as well as the documentation of student thinking. Using this process thinking becomes visible as the students' different viewpoints are expressed, documented, discussed and reflected upon. Helps direct student thinking and structure classroom discussion Can be applied with students at all grade levels and in all content areas Includes easy-to-implement classroom strategies The book also comes with a DVD of video clips featuring Visible Thinking in practice in different classrooms.

This Book Is Not Required

This Book Is Not Required
Author: Inge Bell
Publisher: SAGE
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2013-11-21
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1452217181

This edition continues to teach about the university experience as a whole - looking at the personal, social, intellectual, and spiritual demands and opportunities - while incorporating new material highly relevant to today's students.

Teachers at Their Best

Teachers at Their Best
Author: Rich Waters
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 231
Release: 2018-04-03
Genre: Education
ISBN: 147584266X

The purpose of this book is to change the conversation about teacher induction, preparation, and development and how we create effective teachers. Our national discussion about how to create effective teachers needs to move away from how higher education can do a better job preparing our teachers and move toward how our local schools can do a better job inducting, preparing, and developing our teachers over a full career. There are two interconnected and irrefutable reasons for this. First, school culture supersedes all rational strategies for teacher development, and, second, teachers learn to teach in the schools where they work, not in higher education or any of the alternative routes which the ineffectiveness of higher education teacher preparation have caused to emerge. With the affirmation of these postulates, this book clarifies that teachers are at their best when they are working together in collaborative cultures where teacher thinking and decision-making lead schools in continuous improvement and change. Elaborating on the importance of these best conditions for optimal teacher development, this book will insist that it is the entirety of a school culture that produces effective teachers, and schools with authentic learning communities produce the cultures that produce effective teachers.

Killing ideas softly?

Killing ideas softly?
Author: Ronald A. Beghetto
Publisher: IAP
Total Pages: 179
Release: 2013-06-01
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1623963664

Creativity is a hot topic in education. As such, there is no shortage of insights or suggestions for how teachers might incorporate creativity into their curriculum. Wading through these suggestions can, however, be quite daunting. This is because many of these suggestions imply that teachers need to somehow radically change their approach to teaching, adopt a new curriculum, or add-on to their existing curriculum. Consequently, many teachers feel that such changes are not feasible and may even come at the cost of supporting students’ academic learning. This book provides an alternative. Teachers need not adopt a new curriculum, radically change what they are already doing, or attempt to add more to their already overflowing plate of curricular responsibilities. Rather, teaching for and with creativity is often more about doing what one is already doing, only slightly better. The aim of this book is to help teachers understand how they can make slight changes to their own teaching, which can substantially support the development of students’ creative potential and result in a more creative approach to teaching. The insights and practical suggestions presented in this book represent some of the newest and most promising work being done in the field of creativity studies. This book is unique in that it presents teachers with concrete ideas for how to simultaneously support creativity and learning. A particularly novel feature of this book is that it offers a blend of theoretical insights and vivid classroom examples to illustrate the kinds of opportunities and challenges that teachers face when they attempt to teach for and with creativity. As such, this book will provide teachers, scholars, researchers, and anyone interested in classroom creativity with new directions for future research and educational practice.