A Teacher's Guide to Using the Common Core State Standards With Gifted and Advanced Learners in the English/Language Arts provides teachers and administrators a blueprint for differentiating the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts for gifted and advanced students through the use of acceleration, depth, complexity, and creativity within and across grade levels. It illustrates the differences between learning experiences for typical and advanced students based on the same standard and provides an array of examples across five of the information text and literary text standards while integrating the other aspects of language arts teaching and learning. The book highlights implementation features, such as classroom management and assessment of student work, that allow teachers to make data-based decisions about instruction for particular students. It also offers guidance to teachers on reading selections for advanced learners at all grade levels.

These new model core teaching standards outline what all teachers across all content and grade levels should know and be able to do to be effective in today's learning contexts. They are a revision of the 1992 model standards, in response to the need for a new vision of teaching to meet the needs of next generation learners. This document incorporates changes from a public feedback period in July 2010.

This leader companion to the grade-level teacher guides illustrates how to sustain successful implementation of the Common Core State Standards for mathematics. Discover what students should learn and how they should learn it. Comprehensive research-affirmed analysis tools and strategies will help collaborative teams develop and assess student demonstrations of deep conceptual understanding and procedural fluency.

For years, educators have turned to the Hess Cognitive Rigor Matrices (CRM) when it comes to assessment. Now for the first time, the modules are packaged into one resource to help teachers evaluate the quality and premise of their current assessment system.

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.

Providing clear explanations of inquiry-based learning in the light of the Common Core, this book is a practical and graphical guide that will serve as a much-needed primer for librarians and educators. Common Core State Standards (CCSS) are putting educators under pressure to examine what works and what doesn't. Even with the best efforts, integrating new strategies into daily practice in the classroom or library can be frustrating. This book will help. Providing a professional development toolkit that trains school librarians and teachers and enables them to train others, it presents a sequence of scaffolded essential questions that results in a customized blueprint for effective teaching. The book assembles background building blocks for inquiry and the Common Core, illustrates and connects key concepts on how to introduce inquiry-based learning, and provides effective tools for igniting the Common Core through inquiry-based learning methods. Developed from the crucible of six years of professional development to real-world audiences with deep experience in teaching and school librarianship, this book makes implementing inquiry learning and embracing the Common Core easier for classroom teachers and school librarians who understand the value of these teaching methods but are unsure of the best way to implement them.

Megan Kortlandt, Carly Stone, and Samantha Keesling have developed a flexible structure for collaborative professional learning that they call the principal lab, in which K–12 principals learn with and from each other to become better instructional leaders. Each chapter walks through the foundational components of a successful principal lab—relationship building, anchoring experiences, observations, and feedback—and then discusses how to lay the groundwork, figure out logistics, and plan and structure labs. Principal Labs: Strengthening Instructional Leadership Through Shared Learning combines the latest research in adult learning with the authors' practical experience to discuss the qualities of a successful principal lab and provide the tools to build your own. It's easy to get started with downloadable reflection and observation templates based on the examples in each chapter. As a school principal you have many responsibilities, and finding time for your own professional development can be a challenge. The approach in this book will help you effectively use your time to connect with other principals, practice and develop feedback skills, and ultimately make informed decisions for instructional improvement in your school.