Discover how to design innovative learning environments that increase student ownership so they can achieve at high levels and meet rigorous standards. Students Taking Charge shows you how to create student-driven classrooms that empower learners through problem-based learning and differentiation, where students pose questions and actively seek answers. Technology is then used seamlessly throughout the day for information, communication, collaboration, and product generation. You’ll find out how to: Design an Authentic Learning Unit, which is at the core of the Learner-Active, Technology-Infused Classroom, aimed at engaging students; Understand the structures needed to support its implementation and empower students; Build the facilitation strategies that will move students from engagement to empowerment to efficacy. This new K–5 edition offers a more detailed look into elementary school implementation. With the book’s practical examples and step-by-step guidelines, you’ll be able to start designing your innovative classroom immediately!

Discover how to design innovative learning environments that increase student ownership so they can achieve at high levels and meet rigorous standards. Students Taking Charge shows you how to create student-centered classrooms that empower learners through problem-based learning and differentiation, where students pose questions and actively seek answers. Technology is then used seamlessly throughout the day for information, communication, collaboration, and product generation. You’ll find out how to: Design an Authentic Learning Unit, which is at the core of the Learner-Active, Technology-Infused Classroom, aimed at engaging students; Understand the structures needed to support its implementation and empower students; Build the facilitation strategies that will move students from engagement to empowerment to efficacy. This new 6–12 edition offers a more detailed look into secondary school implementation. With the book’s practical examples and step-by-step guidelines, you’ll be able to start designing your innovative classroom immediately!

Lead your organization to implement innovative learning environments in which students take ownership so they can achieve at high levels and meet rigorous standards. Students Taking Charge Implementation Guide for Leaders shows you how to inspire, coach, and support teachers to create student-driven classrooms that empower learners through problem-based learning and differentiation, where students pose questions and actively seek answers. Technology is then used seamlessly throughout the day for information, communication, collaboration, and product generation. You’ll find out how to: Inspire the adaptive change at the core of the Learner-Active, Technology-Infused Classroom, aimed at engaging students; Understand the structures needed to support its implementation and empower teachers and students; Employ leadership strategies that will move teachers and students from engagement to empowerment to efficacy. This new implementation guide for school leaders offers a more detailed look into the key mindset shifts that are critical for leaders of a Learner-Active, Technology-Infused School. With the book’s practical examples and step-by-step guidelines, you’ll be able to help your teachers implement innovative classrooms immediately.

With the view that children are capable young scientists, authors encourage science teaching in ways that nurture students' curiosity about how the natural world works including research-based approaches to support all K-5 children constructing scientific explanations via talk and writing. Grounded in NSF-funded research, this book/DVD provides K-5 teachers with a framework for explanation (Claim, Evidence, Reasoning) that they can use to organize everything from planning to instructional strategies and from scaffolds to assessment. Because the framework addresses not only having students learn scientific explanations but also construct them from evidence and evaluate them, it is considered to build upon the new NRC framework for K-12 science education, the national standards, and reform documents in science education, as well as national standards in literacy around argumentation and persuasion, including the Common Core Standards for English Language Arts (Common Core State Standards Initiative, 2010).The chapters guide teachers step by step through presenting the framework for students, identifying opportunities to incorporate scientific explanation into lessons, providing curricular scaffolds (that fade over time) to support all students including ELLs and students with special needs, developing scientific explanation assessment tasks, and using the information from assessment tasks to inform instruction.

The Common Core State Standards demand a level of understanding that requires students to engage with content. Students Taking Charge: Inside the Learner-Active, Technology-Infused Classroom focuses on increasing academic rigor, fostering student engagement, and increasing student responsibility for learning. Teachers and administrators who recognize the needs of today's society and students, and their impact on teaching and learning, can use this book to create student-centered classrooms that make technology a vital part of their lessons. Filled with practical examples and step-by-step guidelines, Students Taking Charge will help educators design innovative learning environments that allow students to take ownership of learning so they can achieve at high levels and meet the rigorous requirements of the Common Core. These innovative learning environments also empower students through problem-based learning and differentiation, where students pose questions and actively seek answers. Computer technology is then used seamlessly throughout the day for information, communication, collaboration, and product generation. Check out the learner-active classroom in action! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjyiclWVJ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zoXfaY0XhU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y91flkGcyX4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjHH_ujBIFw

100 ready-to-use graphic organizers that help elementary students learn Graphic organizers are a powerful metacognitive teaching and learning tool and this book features 100 graphic organizers for teachers in grades K-5—double the number of any other book on the market. These graphic organizers can be used as before learning, during learning, or after learning activities, and support students' learning in the major content areas: English language arts, science, social studies, and mathematics. Teachers can use each graphic organizer as-is or customize for their own classroom's unique needs. Tips for classroom implementation and information on how the tool supports learning A Difficulty Dial that indicates the complexity of each graphic organizer Two Student Samples demonstrating how the organizer may be used with younger and older students This book gives teachers in grades K-5 a powerful way to help students understand relationships between facts, terms, and ideas.

How can you shift from a focus on content to the creation of active learning experiences? In this practical resource, author Jason Kennedy provides a blueprint to help you stop "teaching" and start designing learning, so you can improve students’ critical thinking, decision making, problem solving, and collaboration with others, preparing them for their futures beyond school doors. The framework for learning design covers components of planning (learning targets), of instruction (the opening, learning task, skills, tools, and success criteria), and of the work session (choices, pathways, feedback, and assessment). Appropriate for teachers of any subject area, the book also offers wide variety of tools to help you implement the ideas in your own setting.