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The Essentials for Achieving Rigour series of instructional guides helps educators become highly skilled at implementing, monitoring and adapting instruction. Readers can put the guides to practical use immediately, adopting day-to-day examples as models for application in their own classrooms.

This comprehensive textbook introduces readers to the most influential theories and models of reading and literacy, ranging from behaviourism and early information-processing theories to social constructionist and critical theories. Focusing on how these theories connect with different curricular approaches to literacy instruction (preschool to Year 12), the author shows how they both shape and are shaped by everyday literacy practices in classrooms. Readers are invited to explore detailed vignettes that offer a practice-based view of theories as they are brought to life in the classroom. This book devotes substantial attention to linguistically and culturally diverse classrooms and 21st-century technologies.

You may be able to design creative, compelling lessons. But if your classroom is chaotic or its inhabitants are disrespectful, your students will not be learning well. And you will be anywhere from dissatisfied to miserable! Kim Campbell knows the ins and outs of classroom management. She's a real, live, practising middle years teacher with a great gift of humour, a straight-talking approach and a parade of 12- to 15-year-old culturally mixed students to keep her honest. This is her story of what works, what doesn’t and what she’s learned from her students, parents and colleagues. In the manner of a teacher having a chat with another teacher, Kim shares strategies, stories and ideas for how to stop creating behaviour and management problems yourself, and more.

Standards, curricula and assessment have been built and rebuilt to provide excellence and achievement. Now we're faced with the one variable that can turn all this effort into ash: the students. Navigate the hot topic of student engagement with a true expert. The author explores the many factors involved in bringing out the best in students, such as relationships, emotions, environment and expectations. Discover how to create an environment in which students feel confident and safe enough to take risks, make mistakes and immerse themselves in learning experiences. Above all, become empowered to demand an authentic joy for learning in your classroom.

How do teachers and schools create meaningful learning experiences for students with diverse skills, abilities and cultures? How can teachers authentically assess the learning of their students and build n their strengths and interests in ways that enrich the larger community? How can schools become places where everyone is learning from each other? These are the questions that guide the work of teachers at the well-known Mission Hill School and that are addressed in this book. Teaching in Themes will help schools incorporate a whole-school, theme-based curriculum that engages students across years F-8.

How can students knock the top of any test? That's one of the 14 key questions that Dr Marcia L. Tate, a highly regarded assessment authority, answers in Formative Assessment in a Brain-Compatible Classroom: How Do We Really Know They're Learning? Although teachers tend to avoid types of assessments that are difficult to mark, these assessments are often the only way to know how well certain students are learning. Tate describes the theories behind various assessment types and addresses specific ways to create brain-compatible learning environments that foster high achievement.

Teacher quality is the most significant variable in school improvement, and of all the things teachers can do to improve the quality of their teaching, formative assessment has been shown to provide the greatest impact. In Content, Then Process: Teacher Learning Communities in the Service of Formative Assessment (from the 2009 Annual Conference on Standards and Assessment in Las Vegas, Nevada), Dr Wiliam outlines a model to shift towards more formative assessment–based teaching practices by first addressing content (what needs to be changed) and then addressing the process to approach that change.

Reader's Theatre is a unique and exciting way of increasing reading fluency and comprehension while engaging students of different reading levels and abilities in concepts from across the curricula. In this story: Students who think Australian history is boring and non-existent get a surprise when their new teacher takes them on a brief tour of the last 60000 years. This book introduces concepts found in the History subject, specifically the Historical Knowledge and Understanding strand in the Australian Curriculum, which extends across all year levels from F-10. No prior historical knowledge is needed. It can serve as a lead-in to instructing students in new concepts in Australian History (particularly Years 4, 5 and 6) or simply as an interesting Reader's Theatre exercise.

This set contains two of Tom Hierck's timeless resources: I Am the Future and What Do You Make? I Am The Future: A Book About Students and Those Who Teach Them reminds teachers that teaching is hard work, and will help them keep what is most important in mind as they approach each day: their students. What Do You Make? A Book for and About Teachers aims to inspire teachers and remind them of the connection they make to kids and how important this connection is. Every student needs a significant adult in school. As teachers, we have the best opportunity to fill this role. Teachers do make a difference.

Get past the knowing-doing gap with the practical tools and actionable steps in Standards-Based Learning in Action: Moving from Theory to Practice. Authors Tom Schimmer, Garnet Hillman and Mandy Stalets offer implementation practices and processes that rightly compare students' comprehension to performance standards instead of comparing them to each other. The approach also gives explicit guidance for separating behaviours from academics. Delve into the research or go directly to the action plans and effective communication strategies for talking to students and parents about the classroom changes that occur while transitioning to standards-based learning.

Balanced Literacy Essentials shows teachers how to navigate their way through the language and literacy block as they focus on ten literacy essentials. It offers a comprehensive approach to literacy instruction that puts students at the centre of the learning process. Anchored in sound theory, this practical book promotes a literacy program that balances the components of English with the power of meaningful interaction with students. From modelling literate behaviours to playing with language as 'earprint', this timely resource if full of useful strategies for nurturing reading, writing and talk in today's classrooms.

It is widely accepted that when home and school work together, children's learning improves. Although this fact is readily acknowledged, communication between school and home is still often one-sided and remains a struggle for many teachers. This remarkable book is designed to help teachers find new ways to attract parents' attention and involve parents in their children's learning. Aimed at the busy teacher, the book offers easy-to-implement ideas for efficient communicating in the digital age, with suggestions for websites and blogs, Facebook and Twitter, online surveys and virtual pinboards, and much more.