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In Inside PLCs at Work, authors Craig Dougherty and Casey Reason take the readers on a journey to Sheridan County School District 2, a school network that has implemented the Professional Learning Community at Work process to great success, to provide an in-depth view of the vast benefits successful implementation can have. F-12 teachers and administrators will develop a thorough understanding of the PLC process by exploring its foundational concepts and qualities; learn about the successful implementation at Sheridan County School District 2; understand how to implement the PLC process in their own schools in a nuanced and meaningful fashion; utilise real-world examples to garner further insight into the PLC process; and gain helpful tools to guide their work during the PLC journey.

Starting a movement helps to sustain and support the energy and purpose of schools as they transform into professional learning communities (PLCs). The authentic alignment model helps bridge the gulf between principles and practice to cultivate an environment where a PLC soars rather than stalls. Educators will learn to express, clarify and align their beliefs so that they are meaningful to teachers, staff and other stakeholders; create a maximum buy-in among all members of the school community; use the authors' authentic alignment model to help keep their actions aligned to their schools' mission and vision; and reinforce the researched, results-proven PLC within their school culture.

James Popham has helped hundreds of educators in all kinds of schools turn formative assessment theory into everyday practice. Now you can benefit from his approach to implementing formative assessment in all year levels and subjects. Instead of focusing on checklists and data-gathering techniques, Popham explains how to take on what really matters most in the formative assessment process, including: What kinds of assessment tools to use in your instruction; When and how often to collect evidence of student learning; Which items and how many to include in an assessment; and many more. Teacher comments bolster the author’s advice with clear illustrations of the kind of thinking and planning that ensures you teach more effectively.

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.

With classrooms moving online, teaching strategies that promote student engagement are critical to keep our students on track. Learn how the research behind student engagement connects to strategies you can use in your remote and virtual classrooms. Students deserve a remote classroom that successfully creates a fun, relevant, and deep synchronous and asynchronous learning environment. Teachers will leave the session with a larger, research-based toolbox for student engagement in their remote classrooms.

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.

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.

In this lively and eye-opening book, educator Myron Dueck reveals how many of the assessment policies that teachers adopt can actually prove detrimental to student motivation and achievement and shows how we can tailor policies to address what really matters: student understanding of content. Grading Smarter, Not Harder is brimming with reproducible forms, templates, and real-life examples of grading solutions developed to allow students every opportunity to demonstrate their learning. Written with abundant humor and heart, this book is a must-read for all teachers who want their grades to contribute to, rather than hinder, their students' success.

You’ve probably heard that teaching is a journey. So . . . where are you on yours?

That all depends on which challenges you’re currently facing. Trying to solve them all at once would lead to disorientation and burnout, so where to start? For guidance, join five of America’s leading thinkers, consultants and writers on teaching and learning as they demonstrate the power of self-reflection to achieve ever-deeper insights into your own strengths – and ever-better results from your students.

Research shows that vocabulary is the best support for students’ comprehension of narrative and information texts. Often, vocabulary instruction focuses on a few target words in specific texts. However, to understand the many new words in complex texts students need to know how words work. This book, written by an award-winning authority on reading instruction, shows teachers how to make small changes to teach more words and also how words work. Many of these small changes involve enrichments to existing vocabulary practices, such as word walls and conversations with students. Each chapter includes descriptions of teachers’ implementation of small changes to support big gains in students’ vocabulary. This book offers practical steps that F-8 teachers can use in any reading program.

Educators know engagement when they see it, but can they articulate how it forms? In Loving What They Learn: Research-Based Strategies to Increase Student Engagement, Alexander McNeece explains how competence, autonomy, relatedness and relevance are the keys to engagement, and from those connections, a cycle of self-efficacy emerges. Knowing the science behind behaviours and how to increase student competence and autonomy, foster healthy relationships and connect content to real life means F-12 teachers and administrators can create a culture where all students dive deep into their learning.

Fostering mindfulness is an essential guide to mindfulness activities and strategies that support the needs of today’s students. This timely book shows you how to help students cultivate the skills they need for self-regulation, stress management and learning. Simple activities and practices throughout the book are designed to strengthen areas of the brain that allow students to better manage their own attention, emotions, and behaviour in the classroom and beyond. Child-friendly language is used to explain mindfulness, physiology and brain science.