Ellin Oliver Keene

Discover how Lesson Study benefits both students and teachers. Unlike scripted curricula that strip teachers of professional decision-making, Lesson Study values teachers by expecting them to be agents of improvement in their own classrooms. This resource empowers readers to oppose reform efforts that minimize teacher agency by offering an evidence-based approach to teacher-led instructional improvement. The text provides structures for attending to students' interests, knowledge, and values when planning, teaching, reflecting, and revising instruction. It also shows educators how to use Lesson Study to design culturally responsive, differentiated instruction for the K–12 classroom. Use this step-by-step guide to develop professional learning communities; increase teacher motivation, efficacy, and knowledge; and support improvement adapted to local contexts. Book Features:Guides readers through three cycles of Lesson Study, taking teacher learning deeper with each cycle. Focuses on developing student understanding that supports meaningful instruction across academic areas. Emphasizes the utility of Lesson Study for informing culturally responsive instruction. Includes examples from a variety of grade-levels and content areas, featuring both pre- and inservice teachers. Includes additional resources and prompts in each chapter to guide application.

Discover how Lesson Study benefits both students and teachers. Unlike scripted curricula that strip teachers of professional decision-making, Lesson Study values teachers by expecting them to be agents of improvement in their own classrooms. This resource empowers readers to oppose reform efforts that minimize teacher agency by offering an evidence-based approach to teacher-led instructional improvement. The text provides structures for attending to students' interests, knowledge, and values when planning, teaching, reflecting, and revising instruction. It also shows educators how to use Lesson Study to design culturally responsive, differentiated instruction for the K–12 classroom. Use this step-by-step guide to develop professional learning communities; increase teacher motivation, efficacy, and knowledge; and support improvement adapted to local contexts. Book Features:Guides readers through three cycles of Lesson Study, taking teacher learning deeper with each cycle. Focuses on developing student understanding that supports meaningful instruction across academic areas. Emphasizes the utility of Lesson Study for informing culturally responsive instruction. Includes examples from a variety of grade-levels and content areas, featuring both pre- and inservice teachers. Includes additional resources and prompts in each chapter to guide application.

Every child is a cultural being with a unique history and rich cultural practices; a member of communities in and outside of school. Yet too many children spend their days inside classrooms where they rarely find their voices, values, and cultural practices reflected in curriculum materials, much less embraced and celebrated through instructional practices. Culturally relevant teaching is essential, now more than ever. If we want children to develop as successful learners, we must communicate that they belong in our classrooms. They need to see themselves, their cultures, their families, and their communities reflected in the materials and resources they find there. Culturally relevant teachers honor students' identities by positioning them at the center of teaching and learning. Each and every day, they make sure children and their families feel that they belong in school. They include multiple perspectives and points of view in the curriculum. In this book, four teachers who teach in richly diverse classrooms and have studied culturally relevant pedagogy for years with researcher Mariana Souto-Manning, share specific practices, strategies, and tools that make their teaching culturally relevant. Join the authors of No More Culturally Irrelevant Teaching and show your students that their lives do matter...in teaching, in learning, and in society.

Congratulations to Cris Tovani, recipient of ILA's Adolescent Literacy Thought Leader Award 2017 The truth is, when we rely on lecture in an effort to cover content, we're doing students a disservice. Although lecture can be engaging and even useful, lecture alone cannot give kids real opportunities to learn, retain, and transfer the disciplinary ideas, skills, and practices we're trying to teach. Cris Tovani and Elizabeth Moje help us translate the time spent lecturing into powerful learning experiences where students interact and inquire into topics that matter. Their research-based alternatives help you create the conditions for engaging, relevant work that's inherently interesting and sparks critical thinking. Elizabeth Moje helps us understand the latest research on how people learn, and shows powerful evidence that teachers can increase student learning with more purposeful student participation. Veteran teacher and instructional coach Cris Tovani provides a practical model for instruction that's backed by the current research and puts student engagement at the center of your teaching. Her examples of problem-based learning activities include connections to national standards and topics that matter outside the classroom walls. Together, Elizabeth and Cris make a convincing argument that when we minimize teaching-as-telling and transition to planning for kids to do the work, student engagement soars--and so does learning.

Too often in classrooms, English Learners are described by what they cannot do, rather than by what they can do. Particularly in mainstream classrooms in which teachers have little or no training in how to meet their needs, ELs are seen through a deficit lens. In No More Low Expectations for English Learners, esteemed EL researcher Jana Echevarr a argues that teacher attitude affects student achievement, and describes what best practice methods for supporting ELs academic achievement look like. Julie Nora, an educator and advocate, offers strategies to provide the instructional supports ELs need for both language acquisition and content-area learning. Together, Julie and Jana provide a framework of understandings and practices to make you a more capable teacher of English Learners.

"When we give every student worksheets to learn phonics and spelling, we miss opportunities to get our students excited about words and fail to give them the opportunity to meet the high standards represented by the Common Core Standards. Our students need instruction that makes them think and helps them apply their word knowledge to real reading and writing situations." --Jennifer Palmer and Marcia Invernizzi We want students to be curious about how words work and develop strategies that work whether they are decoding words or spelling them. And our jobs would be easier if students couldn't wait for word study. Yet so many classrooms are stuck in the cycle of unengaging, one-size fits all phonics and spelling worksheets. Reading specialist Jennifer Palmer and literacy researcher Marcia Invernizzi offer better, more effective, more engaging practices. Their suggestions lead kids to not only make progress during word study but also to transfer what they learn about words to their reading and writing. No More Phonics and Spelling Worksheets show us: why skill-and-drill methods and worksheets cause children to struggle or disengage the kinds of teaching that research shows actually works instructional ideas for word study can put to use right away. "We can cast off one-size-fits-all factory instruction and try a more useful practice," write Jennifer and Marcia, "meeting each child where s/he is." Pick up No More Phonics and Spelling Worksheets, discover practices that better support literacy growth, and help everyone make progress.

"Just as word learning is incremental, so is learning about vocabulary instruction. Teachers need exposure to research, best-practice strategies, and fellow practitioners." --Charlene Cobb and Camille Blachowicz The way we've learned influences the way we teach, but the vocabulary instruction many of us received--looking up words and writing sentences or completing worksheets-- just doesn't work. So what can we do instead? No More "Look Up the List" Vocabulary Instruction is your guide to engaging, research-proven practices for teaching words effectively. Practitioner Charlene Cobb and researcher Camille Blachowicz share why old-fashioned methods don't work, what the research shows does work, and how to put the research into action. Charlene and Camille answer teachers' most commonly asked questions about vocabulary instruction, including: How many words, and how do I select them? How can I foster student independence using dictionaries and glossaries? How do I find time for meaningful vocabulary instruction? How can I assess and hold students accountable? "Without practice in the full range of ways we use a word," write Charlene and Camille, "our word knowledge is limited and falls from our grasp as the next cycle of words enters." No More "Look Up the List" Vocabulary Instruction offers a solution--deepen students' engagement with words, increase their exposure to them, and expand their word knowledge.

Reading education pioneer Ellin Oliver Keene demystifies comprehension instruction by describing what it can look like when readers comprehend deeply and what it can look like when teachers aim for this deep comprehension. This ground-breaking book is illustrated with video footage of Ellin modeling the reading instruction she describes. Here, you can watch Ellin use language and teaching moves that help students go beyond superficial reading comprehension to lasting understanding. Talk About Understanding offers: "Outcomes of Understanding" Markers--descriptions of the behaviors present when children understand a text deeply including ways to assess with and teach toward these outcomes. "Talk About Understanding" Principles--suggestions to modify teaching language and teaching interactions to deepen children's ability to comprehend. "From the Inside" Video Segments--classroom footage of Ellin teaching lessons that illustrate use of the "Outcomes of Understanding" markers and "Talk About Understanding" principles from the book. Do your students understand their reading as deeply as they need to? Talk About Understanding has the guiding principles, the teaching suggestions, the carefully described outcomes, and the video support to help you teach your students how to comprehend, thoroughly and eagerly, the varied and complicated texts in the world around us.