Professional Development

The First Days Of School: How To Be An Effective Teacher

With nearly 1.4 million copies sold, you'll learn practical techniques on discipline, procedures and routines, teaching for mastery, cooperative learning, and positive expectations. You'll find it difficult to put this book down as you become an even more effective teacher.

The Daily Five: Fostering Literacy Independence in the Elementary Grades

The Essential 55: An Award-winning Educator's Rules for Discovering the Successful Student in Every Child

ow many authors would travel coast to coast on a bus to get their book into as many hands as possible? Not many. But that's just what Ron Clark, author of The Essential 55, did to keep his book and message in the public eye. And it worked. After his Oprah appearance, sales skyrocketed: we've sold more than 850,000 copies in six months! The book sat tenaciously on the New York Times bestseller list for 11 weeks. Ron Clark was featured on the Today show, and in the Chicago Tribune, Good Housekeeping, and the New York Daily News-not to mention the calls we've received from teachers and parents who want to get their hands on Ron's guidelines for teaching children.Now in paperback, The Essential 55 will be the perfect book for parents and teachers to slip into their own backpacks, to read on the train or at lunch, and to highlight the sections that resonate for them. And with an author who is truly a partner in getting his message to the masses, we just can't lose.

Ron Clark's ESSENTIAL 55 rules were created to help him control his first class in rural North Carolina where the students had little interest in lessons, and the parents believed school was extended day care. In teaching these students to be orderly, respectful and to feel appreciated, he took a group of below-average students and turned them into stars (for example he took 5th grade students who were reading at a 3rd grade level to reading at 6th grade level and loving it). He continued his mission in Harlem, where he found a school that needed him the most and worked the same magic. But it's not magic. Ron Clark knows how to teach by using discipline and affection in almost equal measure. He devotes his time to teaching these kids how to live in the world so that they have respect for themselves and those around them;rules that apply to all of us. Some of the ESSENTIAL 55 include: how to accept compliments, how to return a greeting, how to gracefully lose a game. In hearing Ron Clark's engaging voice, combined with his confident manner at changing the lives of these kids for the better, any reader will feel she can influence a student, a young child or a son graduating from college and going out into the world.

First Year Teacher's Survival Guide: Ready-To-Use Strategies, Tools & Activities For Meeting The Challenges Of Each School Day (J-B Ed:Survival Guides)

Packed with 64 engrossing tales of the extraordinary, Read All About It! combines actual articles from the Associated Press with exercises in reading comprehension and skill mastery.\n\nRead All About It! is divided into four sections: Vocabulary, Questio

Enhancing Professional Practice: A Framework for Teaching

The framework for teaching is a research-based set of components of instruction that are grounded in a constructivist view of learning and teaching. The framework may be used for many purposes, but its full value is realized as the foundation for professional conversations among practitioners as they seek to enhance their skill in the complex task of teaching. The framework may be used as the foundation of a school's or district's recruitment and hiring, mentoring, coaching, professional development, and teacher evaluation processes, thus linking all those activities together and helping teachers become more thoughtful practitioners.

The actions teachers can take to improve student learning are clearly identified and fall under four domains of teaching responsibility: Planning and Preparation, the School Environment, Instruction, and Professional Responsibilities. Within the domains are 22 components and 76 descriptive elements that further refine our understanding of what teaching is all about. The framework defines four levels of performance--Unsatisfactory, Basic, Proficient, and Distinguished--for each element, providing a valuable tool that all teachers can use.

This second edition has been revised and updated and also includes frameworks for school specialists, such as school nurses, counselors, library and media specialists, and instructional coaches. Comprehensive, clear, and applicable to teaching across the K-12 spectrum, the framework for teaching described in this book is based on the PRAXIS III: Classroom Performance Assessment criteria developed by Educational Testing Service and is compatible with INTASC standards.

The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life

"This book is for teachers who have good days and bad — and whose bad days bring the suffering that comes only from something one loves. It is for teachers who refuse to harden their hearts, because they love learners, learning, and the teaching life." — Parker J. Palmer [from the Introduction]

For many years, Parker Palmer has worked on behalf of teachers and others who choose their vocations for reasons of the heart but may lose heart because of the troubled, sometimes toxic systems in which they work. Hundreds of thousands of readers have benefited from his approach in THE COURAGE TO TEACH, which takes teachers on an inner journey toward reconnecting with themselves, their students, their colleagues, and their vocations, and reclaiming their passion for one of the most challenging and important of human endeavors.

This book builds on a simple premise: good teaching cannot be reduced to technique but is rooted in the identity and integrity of the teacher. Good teaching takes myriad forms but good teachers share one trait: they are authentically present in the classroom, in community with their students and their subject. They possess "a capacity for connectedness" and are able to weave a complex web of connections between themselves, their subjects, and their students, helping their students weave a world for themselves. The connections made by good teachers are held not in their methods but in their hearts — the place where intellect, emotion, spirit, and will converge in the human self — supported by the community that emerges among us when we choose to live authentic lives.

BONUS: Includes an audio CD featuring a 45-minute conversation between Parker Palmer and his colleagues, Marcy Jackson and Estrus Tucker from the Center for Courage & Renewal. They reflect on what they have learned from working with thousands of teachers in their "Courage to Teach" program (www.CourageRenewal.org)and with others who yearn for greater integrity in their professional lives.

Practice With Purpose: Literacy Work stations for Grades 3-6

McKeachie's Teaching Tips: Strategies, Research, and Theory for College and University Teachers (College Teaching)

McKeachie's Teaching Tips is a handbook designed to provide helpful strategies for dealing with both the everyday problems of teaching at the university level, and those that pop up in trying to maximize learning for every student. The suggested strategies are supported by research and are grounded in enough theory to enable teachers to adapt them to their own situations. The author does not suggest a "set of recipes" to be followed mechanically, but gives teachers the tools they need to deal with the ever changing dynamics of teaching and learning.

Building Classroom Discipline (9th Edition)

Craft Lessons 2nd Edition

Since its publication in 1998 Craft Lessons has become a mainstay of writing teachers, both new and experienced. Readers value the pithy, practical lessons each printed on one page and appreciate the instructional language geared to three grade-level groupings: K 2, 3 4, and 5 8.
In the decade since Craft Lessons' publication the world has changed in many ways, yet one thing has remained constant: teachers continue to feel starved for time. With new curriculum mandates, daily specials, pull-outs, and precious time devoted to test preparation, the situation has never been worse, and the need for a succinct resource like Craft Lessons has never been greater.
The features that made Craft Lessons so valuable have been augmented. This edition includes:
* Seventeen brand new craft lessons; many based on veteran teachers' observations about typical student writing.
* Revisions to other craft lessons: model texts that have gone out of print have been replaced with current titles, and the resource materials sections have been expanded.
* New thinking about teaching elements of craft and the reading-writing connection.
*Two new indexes: a handy subject index to make it easier to find specific craft lessons, and an index that shows how these craft lessons can be integrated into Ralph and JoAnn's curriculum resource on the qualities of writing Ideas, Design, Language, and Presentation.
The 95 lessons in this book provide a wealth of information for teaching leads, character, endings, stronger verbs, and much more. This new edition reestablishes Craft Lessons as the crucial desert island book for harried writing teachers everywhere.