Allison Zmuda

A game-changing resource for educators looking to elevate their unit and lesson plans, increase student engagement, and improve home-school communication.With so many standards to address and templates to fill out, curriculum design and lesson planning can be cumbersome and overwhelming. And every teacher knows the struggle of trying to cover all the required content, which may or may not resonate with their students.In Streamlining the Curriculum, experts Heidi Hayes Jacobs and Allison Zmuda take a hard look at our overburdened, dated curricular practices and offer a better way—one built on the power of narrative. Their storyboard approach casts students as the heroes of the learning journey. Instead of passive recipients, they become protagonists, activity engaged in exploring new ideas, solving problems, finding connections, enlisting allies, and acquiring new skills and understandings to apply to both present and future challenges.This innovative book teaches you how toDecide what to cut out, cut back, consolidate, and create in your lessons and units.Find the throughlines in your required content and approach lesson design and teaching as storytelling, no matter what subject area or grade level you teach.Apply genre lenses to make courses, units, and lessons more compelling.Communicate clear learning targets to your students and their families.Create space for exploring essential questions, investigating intriguing ideas, and conducting projects that feel relevant and important.Determine purposeful and authentic evidence of learning.Filled with examples and insights, this book shows educators how to break free from the tyranny of templates and start streamlining curriculum, assessment, and planning to make learning experiences more immersive, interesting, and emotionally resonant.

Educators' most important work is to help students develop the intellectual and social strength of character necessary to live well in the world. The way to do this, argue authors Bena Kallick and Allison Zmuda, is to increase the say students have in their own learning and prepare them to navigate complexities they face both inside and beyond school. This means rethinking traditional teacher and student roles and re-examining goal setting, lesson planning, assessment, and feedback practices. It means establishing classrooms that prioritize:Voice—Involving students in “the what” and “the how” of learning and equipping them to be stewards of their own education.Co-creation—Guiding students to identify the challenges and concepts they want to explore and outline the actions they will take.Social construction—Having students work with others to theorize, pursue common goals, build products, and generate performances.Self-discovery—Teaching students to reflect on their own developing skills and knowledge so that they will acquire new understandings of themselves and how they learn.Based on their exciting work in the field, Kallick and Zmuda map out a transformative model of personalization that puts students at the center and asks them to employ the set of dispositions for engagement and learning known as the Habits of Mind. They share the perspectives of educators engaged in this work; highlight the habits that empower students to pursue aspirations, investigate problems, design solutions, chase curiosities, and create performances; and provide tools and recommendations for adjusting classroom practices to facilitate learning that is self-directed, dynamic, sometimes messy, and always meaningful.

Students following directions, dutifully completing assignments, and quietly cooperating. For some teachers, this kind of compliance is a goal worth pursuing, but for you, it's not enough. You want real engagement—a classroom filled with students who ask intriguing questions, immerse themselves in assignments, seek feedback on their performance, and take pride in their progress. So even as you race to cover a demanding curriculum and address standards, you're wearing yourself out searching for the hooks that will inspire your students and make them eager to learn.It's not that you're not doing enough to motivate your students; it's that you're probably focusing on the wrong things.In this book, Allison Zmuda and Robyn R. Jackson explain the four keys to real engagement: clarity, context, challenge, and culture. Their smart, concrete strategies for improving classroom assignments, assessments, and environments will help you create learning experiences that are rigorous, meaningful, and rewarding for your students and yourself.

A real-world action plan for educators to create personalized learning experiences Learning Personalized: The Evolution of the Contemporary Classroom provides teachers, administrators, and educational leaders with a clear and practical guide to personalized learning. Written by respected teachers and leading educational consultants Allison Zmuda, Greg Curtis, and Diane Ullman, this comprehensive resource explores what personalized learning looks like, how it changes the roles and responsibilities of every stakeholder, and why it inspires innovation. The authors explain that, in order to create highly effective personalized learning experiences, a new instructional design is required that is based loosely on the traditional model of apprenticeship: learning by doing. Learning Personalized challenges educators to rethink the fundamental principles of schooling that honors students' natural willingness to play, problem solve, fail, re-imagine, and share. This groundbreaking resource: Explores the elements of personalized learning and offers a framework to achieve itProvides a roadmap for enrolling relevant stakeholders to create a personalized learning vision and reimagine new roles and responsibilitiesAddresses needs and provides guidance specific to the job descriptions of various types of educators, administrators, and other staff This invaluable educational resource explores a simple framework for personalized learning: co-creation, feedback, sharing, and learning that is as powerful for a teacher to re-examine classroom practice as it is for a curriculum director to reexamine the structure of courses.

Zmuda and Harada explore the increasing number of job descriptions in schools for learning specialists with the accompanying difficulty in effectively leveraging these roles to positively affect student learning. School librarians have been one of these learning specialists for decades. The ranks have expanded in recent years to include many other content area specialists. Grant Wiggins' foreword emphasizes the relevance of learning specialists is grounded in their ability to deliver results on mission-critical measures. This title incorporates quotations, exemplars, and findings from experts in both mainstream and librarian-focused education literature in an inclusive approach making the text accessible and credible for any leader charged with improving the system's ability for improved student achievement.There are an increasing number of job descriptions in schools for learning specialists - certified teachers with specialized areas of expertise whose job it is to improve student performance. While these positions are attractive ideas in theory, there are real challenges in effectively leveraging such roles to positively affect student learning. School librarians have been one of these learning specialists for decades. The ranks have expanded in recent years to include reading specialists, literacy coaches, writing coaches, technology specialists, mathematics specialists, science specialists, and teachers of English Language Learners. References included throughout the book incorporate quotations, exemplars, and findings from experts in both mainstream and librarian-focused education literature. This inclusive approach makes the text accessible and credible for any leader charged with improving the system's ability for improved student achievement. Grant Wiggins' foreword emphasizes the premise that the relevance of learning specialists is grounded in their ability to deliver results on mission-critical measures.

This book, written by teachers for teachers, takes an important look at the compendium of factors that make up a competent classroom. The authors troubleshoot issues surrounding content standards, instructional objectives, and the aims of curriculum while keeping in mind the importance of inspiring students. This book helps readers consider the essential questions surrounding creative teaching and the ways of helping students take ownership of their learning.