Future-Focused Learning will drive you to think deeply about your instructional practices and consider what you need to change. Alex Valencic likes the book’s focus on what students both need and want to learn and finds it solidly on-target if occasionally frustrating.
Teacher Kathleen Palmieri strongly recommends the 2nd edition of Robyn Jackson’s book on the principles of mastery teaching, noting updated information, new tools and fresh topics that reflect Jackson’s own decade of learning. Included: a mastery self-assessment.
Qualities of Effective Teachers is a profoundly useful tool for all educators, helping them to reflect on their own teaching or the teaching they may be observing and identifying areas of strength and areas for improvement, writes educator Jennifer Peters.
Alexis Wiggins has taken a 1930s Socratic discussion strategy and enriched it to provide more detail about process, assessment and self-reflection. Teacher Joanne Bell finds Wiggins’ Spider Web technique a useful tool to develop learners ready for 21st century employment.
Todd Nesloney and Adam Welcome offer educators ways to rethink teaching, model risk taking for students, show students they are valued, push the boundaries that hold teachers back, take care of themselves, and develop leadership at a high level, writes Laura Von Staden.
Laura Von Staden says Joy Kirr’s “Shift This!” is a must read for all teachers, full of actionable strategies, the research and reasons to implement them, and the steps and support to transform your teaching to reach every student with the maximum impact possible.
David B. Cohen travels to 70 California schools to meet inspired teachers who experience autonomy and opportunities to lead. Though his visits lack the rigor of research, Mary Langer Thompson says his book can show readers what’s good about public schools.
Cathie E. West packs her book with key concepts and skills, charts to help explain these, engagement strategies and step-by-step activities, all to help achieve teacher – and subsequently student – engagement. Literacy coach Janice Rustico finds it a keeper.
In “The Writing on the Classroom Wall” teacher Steve Wyborney shows us how to increase student ownership and motivation and help kids become life-long learners by a process of sharing and considering 24 Big Ideas. Laura Von Staden recommends the book highly.
With short chapters, graphic organizers, rubrics and acronyms, the strategies in Barbara Blackburn’s updated Classroom Instruction for A to Z are right at the fingertips of busy teachers, ready for trial runs or implementation, says educator Laura Von Staden.
