This indispensable guide combines proven curriculum design with teaching methods that encourage students to learn concepts as well as content and skills for deep understanding across all subject areas.

Teach higher-order thinking while you’re teaching concepts, skills, and content! This indispensable guide combines proven curriculum design with teaching methods that encourage students to learn concepts as well as content and skills for deep understanding across all subject areas. Synthesizing Lynn Erickson’s past 15 years of field work with teachers, curriculum developers, teacher educators, and instructional leaders, this resource offers a complete guide for designing curriculum and instruction to foster the continuous growth and development of students’ critical, abstract, and creative learning skills. Educators will learn how to: Bring coherence and clarity to high-quality curriculum design and instructional planning Teach the way that students’ minds learn best Encourage students’ creative and abstract thinking, regardless of level or subject area Gain the support of principals and district administrators

A cutting-edge model for 21st century curriculum and instruction How can you spot a thinking child? Look at the eyes: they’ll light up, signaling that transformative moment when your student has finally grasped that big idea behind critical academic content. If experiences like this are all too rare in your school, then you need a curriculum and instruction model that’s more inquiry-driven and idea-centered. Now. H. Lynn Erickson and Lois Lanning demonstrate how, through concept-based curriculum, you can move beyond superficial coverage and lower-level skills practice to effect intellectually engaging pedagogy, where students engage in problem finding and problem solving. New insights include: How to design and implement concept-based curriculum and instruction across all subjects and grade levels. Why content and process are two different (but equally important) aspects of any effective concept-based curriculum. How to ensure students develop the all-important skill of synergistic thinking. We’re all looking for the best curriculum and instruction model to meet the changing demands of the 21st century. This is it. "With the onset of the Common Core and new national content standards, concept-based learning is now more crucial than ever. Erickson and Lanning are ′ahead of the curve′ in providing teachers and curriculum leaders with rich instructional strategies to meet these challenging standards. This is an essential book for planning tomorrow’s curricula today." Douglas Llewellyn, Educational Consultant and Author of Inquire Within, Third Edition "Powerful teaching engages minds with powerful ideas. At its core, such transformative teaching is neither transmission of information nor practice with inert skills. Rather it is a careful choreography between a mind and an idea such that the mind comes to own the idea in a form that is true to the discipline and expansive for the learner. Erickson and Lanning teach teachers to be choreographers of learning—understanding both what makes content worth knowing and how to engage young minds with that content in ways that extend their capacities to understand it at a deeper level, use it, transfer it, and ultimately create with it." Carol Ann Tomlinson, Ed.D., Chair of Educational Leadership, Foundations, and Policy Curry School of Education, University of Virginia

Create a thinking classroom that helps students move from the factual to the conceptual Concept-Based Inquiry is a framework for inquiry that promotes deep understanding. The key is using guiding questions to help students inquire into concepts and the relationships between them. Concept-Based Inquiry in Action provides teachers with the tools and resources necessary to organize and focus student learning around concepts and conceptual relationships that support the transfer of understanding. Step by step, the authors lead both new and experienced educators to implement teaching strategies that support the realization of inquiry-based learning for understanding in any K–12 classroom.

In this book the author provides specific strategies for designing and developing a seamless learning programme that teaches students to grasp broad concepts and integrate the information they have learned. This is a companion volume to the author′s Stirring the Head, Heart, and Soul Second Edition and an ideal resource for teachers, curriculum developers, and staff developers who must guide students toward higher academic standards for content knowledge, process abilities, quality performance, and school-to-work transitions.

For literacy teachers looking for practical ways to implement a Curriculum and Instruction Model that’s more inquiry-driven and idea-centered, look no further than this book. This resource helps bridge the divide between conceptual curriculum and actionable practice, and provides practical support for teachers implementing Concept-Based literacy lessons. Readers will find Step-by-step help with lesson planning for conceptual understanding and transfer Ideas for supporting inductive learning Classroom Snapshots that showcase familiar literacy practices in Concept-Based classrooms Strategies to promote critical, reflective, and conceptual thinking Model elementary and secondary Concept-Based lesson and unit plans A chapter devoted to answering frequently asked questions

Functions as a framework for lesson plans.