What is understanding and how does it differ from knowledge? How can we determine the big ideas worth understanding? Why is understanding an important teaching goal, and how do we know when students have attained it? How can we create a rigorous and engaging curriculum that focuses on understanding and leads to improved student performance in today's high-stakes, standards-based environment? Authors Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe answer these and many other questions in this second edition of Understanding by Design. Drawing on feedback from thousands of educators around the world who have used the UbD framework since its introduction in 1998, the authors have greatly revised and expanded their original work to guide educators across the K-16 spectrum in the design of curriculum, assessment, and instruction. With an improved UbD Template at its core, the book explains the rationale of backward design and explores in greater depth the meaning of such key ideas as essential questions and transfer tasks. Readers will learn why the familiar coverage- and activity-based approaches to curriculum design fall short, and how a focus on the six facets of understanding can enrich student learning. With an expanded array of practical strategies, tools, and examples from all subject areas, the book demonstrates how the research-based principles of Understanding by Design apply to district frameworks as well as to individual units of curriculum. Combining provocative ideas, thoughtful analysis, and tested approaches, this new edition of Understanding by Design offers teacher-designers a clear path to the creation of curriculum that ensures better learning and a more stimulating experience for students and teachers alike.

Discover new, practical methods for teaching literacy skills in your early childhood classroom. Has teaching early literacy skills become a stumbling block to getting your preschool students kindergarten ready? Break out of the tired “letter of the week” routine and learn how to transform your lessons with fun and effective techniques. Teach Smarter: Literacy Strategies for Early Childhood Teachers will equip teachers to infuse every aspect of their teaching with exciting hands-on literacy teaching methods that engage students and help them build authentic connections with books, so that 100% of their students will have a strong literacy foundation and will be fully prepared for success in kindergarten and beyond. Respected author Vanessa Levin, veteran early childhood educator and author of the “Pre-K Pages” blog, breaks down the research and translates it into realistic, actionable steps you can take to improve your teaching. Features specific examples of teaching techniques and activities that engage students in hands-on, experiential learning during circle time, centers, and small groups. Offers a simple, four-step system for teaching literacy skills, based on the foundational principles of early literacy teaching Demonstrates how to build your confidence in your ability to get 100% of your students ready for kindergarten, long before the end of the school year Understand the problems with traditional literacy teaching and identify gaps in your current teaching practice with this valuable resource.

This book offers strategies to help teachers and curriculum coordinators strengthen student interest through meaningful and purposeful learning. The 15 chapters are: (1) "Introduction: Planning a Connected Curriculum"; (2) "Children, School, and Community"; (3) "On Connections"; (4) "Making Connections: An Interdisciplinary Approach"; (5) "Making Meaning: What is it All About?"; (6) "How to Overcome Common Objections to Connected Teaching"; (7) "Making Connections through Technology"; (8) "Making Connections through the Arts"; (9) "Making Connections through Writing"; (10) "Making Connections across Science, Technology, and Society"; (11) "Making Connections through Curriculum Design and Assessment for Meaningful Instruction" (12) "Making Connections through Expeditionary Learning"; (13) "Making Connections through Assessment"; (14) "Marching to a Different Drummer?" and (15) "Practical Suggestions on Using This Guide." Each chapter attempts do describe why it is important to student learning, how the teacher can adapt it to the classroom, and how it redefines the teacher's role. Chapters contain best practice profiles. (Contains 65 references.) (SM).

Get all the tools your after-school program needs for a well-balanced program. This resource provides an overview of learning and child development; offers tips and tools for selecting, planning, developing and evaluating after-school activities; and demonstrates how to link these activities to sample learning and quality standards. The book also introduces the reader to curriculum resources focusing on seven key learning areas believed to be central to comprehensive, high-quality, after-school programs.

"Never before, in the entire history of the American theater, has so much of the truth of Black people's lives been seen on the stage," observed James Baldwin shortly before A Raisin in the Sun opened on Broadway in 1959. This edition presents the fully restored, uncut version of Hansberry's landmark work with an introduction by Robert Nemiroff. Lorraine Hansberry's award-winning drama about the hopes and aspirations of a struggling, working-class family living on the South Side of Chicago connected profoundly with the psyche of Black America—and changed American theater forever. The play's title comes from a line in Langston Hughes's poem "Harlem," which warns that a dream deferred might "dry up/like a raisin in the sun." "The events of every passing year add resonance to A Raisin in the Sun," said The New York Times. "It is as if history is conspiring to make the play a classic."