Books & Resources

In Inspiring hope, authors Frank Crowther, Bruce Addison and Karen Fox present a groundbreaking path for Australian education moving forward – pedagogical balance. By building a system where educational standards and teachers’ personal pedagogical gifts come into harmonious coexistence, teachers are supported and empowered to meet expectations while feeling a deep sense of purpose and passion for their profession. Just as an orchestra needs a score, a conductor and talented players who trust themselves and one another, so too do our schools need gifted teachers with pragmatic standards and the faith of their school communities.

Making math stick shows teachers how to foster classroom learning experiences that will help students to better understand, retain and apply key maths concepts. The book explores why we need a different approach to teaching maths – one that leads students to a deeper understanding of mathematical concepts that will stick with them long after the test is handed in.

In schools, every day is ‘game day'. Every day, teachers need the best resources and forms of support because students deserve the best we as educators can offer. An instructional playbook aims to serve as that kind of support: a tool that coaches can use to help teachers match specific learning goals with the right research-based instructional strategies. Coaches have enormous potential to help teachers learn and implement new teaching practices, but coaches will only be effective if they deeply understand the strategies they describe and their explanations are clear. The instructional playbook addresses both issues head on and offers a simple and clear explanation of how to create a playbook uniquely designed to meet teachers’ instructional needs.

Novel engineering, K–8 shows how your students can work through engineering design challenges inspired by a broad range of literature – novels and short stories, biographies and histories, or even picture books. By way of introduction, the book offers clear conceptual background and practical advice on how the approach works: Your students pull information from literature to identify a problem. Then, using details from the story or text, they go through an engineering design process to develop functional solutions for their ‘clients’ – the book’s characters. To support your efforts and bring the concept to life, the book gives you five in-depth case studies featuring the use of novels, a biography and a nonfiction historical text.

Become an emotion-friendly teacher! Apply powerful new research and theory in the field of emotion to transform your classroom. Teach with emotion as part of every lesson. Elicit the ten most important positive emotions. Master the revolutionary Kagan emotion wheel to help students understand and manage their emotions. Boost students’ EQ as you teach: students acquire self-knowledge, self-control, self-motivation, empathy and relationship skills. And do it all with easy-to-learn, easy-to-use proven Kagan structures. Transform cutting edge research into practical activities to release the power of emotion-friendly teaching.

Cultivating writers shows teachers how to take writing instruction beyond the skills to ignite the will to write among Years 3–8 students. Based on extensive classroom experience, this book shares strategies that help students tap into their own life experiences, model the habits of a writer and make use of the tools of the trade. 

Do you, your school, or your school district want to align your science curriculum with state standards while meeting the growing demand for STEM instruction? If so, this is the book for you. It’s a guide to creating coherent, high-quality classroom materials that make standards and STEM work together in ways that are both effective for learning and practical for teaching. The author of STEM, standards, and strategies for high-quality units is thought leader and curriculum expert Rodger W Bybee. He wrote it to be useful for individual teachers, professional learning communities and professional developers. The book offers explicit directions for how these different groups can use the book’s background information and activities at each step of developing a standards-based STEM unit.

A perfect introduction to gifted education for beginning and early career educators, this engaging book provides field-tested, proven strategies designed to help teachers build their understanding of gifted education and gifted learners. Each chapter features a key question, making the book ideal for an engaging book study as well as survival tips and a survival toolkit of resources to keep readers on course as they navigate through gifted ed. This updated second edition covers topics essential to gifted education teachers, including recognising and identifying giftedness, encouraging creativity and providing multiple resources and opportunities to spur talent development in gifted and high-ability youth.

From encouraging perseverance, to teaching students about how their brains work, to quotes about learning from failure, the Mindsets in the classroom poster set is perfect for schools looking to implement the ideas in Mindsets in the classroom quickly, easily and successfully. When students believe that dedication and hard work can change their performance in school, they grow to become resilient, successful students. This set contains six posters with essential messages schools need to promote in order to create a growth mindset school culture in which hard work and effort can lead to success.

Designed as a guide to school reform, this resource outlines a series of ten small-scale changes powerful enough to make a lasting impact. Promote F-12 student growth through research-based instructional strategies, performance-based assessments and social-emotional learning (SEL).