Written by experienced language educator Paula Patrick, this 96-page book offers detailed guidelines to help new classroom teachers gain confidence and direction as they begin their teaching careers. In addition to step-by-step strategies for everything from classroom organization to navigating Back-To-School Night, the book includes sample lesson plans, templates for student and parent letters...even advice on dealing with the inevitable difficult moments every teacher faces! - Publisher.

"Published in conjunction with the Perkins School for the Blind."

Start the school year in a powerful way with this edition's new activities, tips for the classroom environment, and revised instructional materials in English and Spanish.

In this book, William Powell and Ochan Kusuma-Powell provide a practical map to navigate some of today's most complicated instructional challenges: How do you help all students succeed when every classroom is, in effect, a global classroom? And what does a successful education look like in a world that is growing smaller and flatter every day? Drawing on research and years of experience in international schools, the authors identify five critical keys to personalizing learning for students who have wildly different cultural, linguistic, and academic backgrounds: * Focus on your students as learners through systematic examination of their cultural and linguistic identities, learning styles and preferences, and readiness. * Focus on yourself as a teacher and investigate your own cultural biases, preferred teaching style and beliefs, and expectations. * Focus on your curriculum to identify transferable concepts that will be valuable and accessible to all students and further their global competence. * Focus on your assessments to ensure cultural sensitivity and improve the quality of the formative data you gather. * Focus on your collegial relationships so that you can effectively enlist the help of fellow educators with different experiences, backgrounds, skills, and perspectives. The way to teach now is to focus on your students both as individuals and as members of a multifaceted, interdependent community. Here, you'll learn how to design and deliver instruction that prepares students not just to meet standards but to live and work together in our complicated, 21st century world.

Creating a positive classroom learning environment is a complex but necessary task if a teacher wants to cultivate a new, productive classroom culture. By fully realizing the seven keys the author highlights, teachers can establish clearer expectations, enhance instruction and assessment practices, and foster quality relationships with students, thereby maximizing the potential of all students. The book includes helpful stories from teachers, as well as classroom strategies to consider in implementing the keys. With this book, teachers can clearly define the misunderstood concepts of differentiation and enrichment and know how to use these strategies to help all students succeed, no matter their needed level of support. Benefits Read stories from classroom teachers that highlight how each key can help establish a positive learning environment. Explore research and anecdotal evidence that maintains that students who feel connected are more motivated and successful in the classroom. Learn how the effective use of data can minimize both academic and behavioral challenges among students. Discover collaborative practices that can establish common expectations between teachers and their students, so a positive classroom tone is set when the school year starts. Consider tactics teachers can use to record and analyze data on students' progress, to make informed decisions that help students gain proficiency. Peruse the essential practices that teachers should have in their classroom assessment toolbox. Contents Introduction Classroom Culture and Positive Relationships: Precursors to a Positive Learning Environment Classroom Expectations Targeted Instruction Positive Reinforcement Data-Driven Decisions Differentiation and Enrichment Collaborative Teams Connecting to the Schoolwide System Epilogue References and Resources Index

This book provides data and uses stories and personal insights gleaned from nearly 6,000 observations in real classrooms across the nation. The mix of data and descriptions provide a clear picture of the rich interaction of teacher and student behaviors – and how one predicts the other. Graphs and tables provide concrete visual representations of the often surprisingly low rates of effective instructional practices used in the average classroom. In addition to a description of how the large dataset was developed, there are descriptions of what it is like to visit multiple classrooms in different schools, what the data tells us about teaching and learning in our public school system, and what the implications are for pre-service teacher training, school professional development, research, and understanding interaction effects.

Virtually every study about compelling needs in education places classroom management at or near the top of the list. Thoroughly understanding some particularly relevant principles of Human Behavior allows teachers to be able to systematically and skillfully manage the learning environment. This subsequently enables teachers and students to focus on subject content and results in greater learning opportunities. Five Principles of Human Behavior: Behavior is largely a product of it's immediate environment; Behavior is strengthened or weakened by its consequences; Behavior ultimately responds better to positive that to negative consequences; Whether behavior has been punished or reinforced is known only by the course of that behavior in the future; Past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior (until something in the environment changes to correct that behavior). Human behavior is lawful: hence it can be predicted, not with absolute certainty as with the law of gravity, but certainly in terms of probabilities. We can remarkable increase the probability that behavior will move in the desired direction and at the proper rate. The answers to problems within an environment are to be found within that environment. Teachers often, unknowingly, reinforce the very behaviors that disrupt their classes.