Presents a guide to improve student achievements, focusing on eight key concepts, which includes building mutual respect, teaching appropriate behaviors and procedures, using a six step process to keep track of student learning, and more.

This revised edition offers 30 specific strategies, readily integrated into daily lesson plans, to help K-12 students extend their thinking capabilities and raise their achievement levels.

This entry in the James H. Stronge Research-to-Practice Series focuses on specific strategies teachers can use to improve the quality of their instruction. Studies have shown teacher quality to be the top indicator of student achievement, with the effects of good teachers apparent even as students move on to successive grades. In this book, Grant, Hindman, and Stronge explore the relationship between teacher effectiveness and student learning. They provide a bridge between research-based theories and practical classroom applications. Templates, planning forms, and other reproducibles help teachers make a noticeable impact on student success using proven techniques and practices. Topics include tiered lessons, using assessment data, and much more.

Publisher description

Based upon the research of 45 interviews conducted in Texas and Arkansas, High-Stakes Teaching presents strategies that successfully blend child-centered and test-centered teaching into one focus, creating a consistently high-quality instructional environment. The teachers described offer their students an invitation to enter the realm of learning expectantly. Through their words, we visualize the educational scaffolding process, as students foster a love and an appreciation of critical thinking that promises to remain long after the last test question has been answered. Best practices emerge and are shared with the reader. Reflective questions and commentaries provide educators an opportunity to investigate their own philosophies of accountability testing and its place in the classroom. This study offers the support and guidelines necessary to break the cycle of "teaching to the test." Let each educator teach so that every child can become an engaged learner, an explorer, an individual who recognizes and respects the opportunities available from gaining a real education that is not merely a cookie-cutter mantra.

Grades are imperfect, shorthand answers to “What did students learn, and how well?” In How to Use Grading to Improve Learning, best-selling author Susan M. Brookhart guides educators at all levels in figuring out how to produce grades—for single assignments and report cards—that accurately communicate students’ achievement of learning goals. Brookhart explores topics that are fundamental to effective grading and learning practices: Acknowledging that all students can learn Supporting and motivating student effort and learning Designing and grading appropriate assessments Creating policies for report card grading Implementing learning-focused grading policies Communicating with students and parents Assessing school or district readiness for grading reform The book is grounded in research and resonates with the real lessons learned in the classroom. Although grading is a necessary part of schooling, Brookhart reminds us that children are sent to school to learn, not to get grades. This highly practical book will help you put grading and learning into proper perspective, offering strategies you can use right away to ensure that your grading practices actually support student learning.