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.

The completely updated, illustrated bestseller on architectural graphics with over 500,000 copies sold Architectural Graphics presents a wide range of basic graphic tools and techniques designers use to communicate architectural ideas. Expanding upon the wealth of illustrations and information that have made this title a classic, this Fourth Edition provides expanded and updated coverage of drawing materials, multiview drawings, paraline drawings, and perspective drawings. Also new to this edition is the author's unique incorporation of digital technology into his successful methods. While covering essential drawing principles, this book presents: approaches to drawing section views of building interiors, methods for drawing modified perspectives, techniques for creating accurate shade and shadows, expert styles of freehand sketching and diagramming, and much more.

The Game Plan is the first professional book that gives secondary administrators, literacy coaches, and other instructional leaders a step-by-step blueprint for implementing the Common Core Literacy Standards for History/Social Studies, Science, and the Technical Subjects and other college and career readiness standards. The book provides principals, district supervisors, instructional coaches, and other leaders with a coherent, realistic plan to build a school-wide culture of literacy instruction, data use, and PLC-based cycles of reflection, planning, and action. This multi-year plan is built on a continuous cycle of improvement philosophy and is modular in nature, allowing leaders to rearrange, substitute, and modify the plan to meet the needs of any secondary school. Organized in two parts, the first section of The Game Plan lays out a semester-by-semester flexible configuration for introducing, implementing, and supporting the literacy standards over the course of six full school years; this section also includes detailed guidelines for creating a comprehensive assessment plan to gather, analyze, and act on school data. The second section includes instructional tools and strategies for reading, writing, vocabulary, and other aspects of the literacy standards that teachers in all subject areas can use.

The series Tools for Instructions and Reading Assessment is a companion piece to Dr. Jennifer Katz's book Teaching to Diversity. The series, which supports the three-block model of universal design for learning, offers two instructional guides, A Model Unit and Reading Assessment Program Guide for each grade from 1 to 12. The Reading Assessment Program Guide includes: A guide that focuses on how to assess students' progress in reading comprehension and fluency/decoding Accompanying blackline masters and grade-specific rubrics Four levelled Reading Passages to use for assessment throughout the school year

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.