Rely on Enriching the Learning to help your school community answer critical question 4 of the Professional Learning Communities at Work(R) process: How will we extend the learning for students who have demonstrated proficiency? The book's wide range of student enrichment strategies, templates, and tools is designed to fully prepare collaborative teams to plan and execute engaging extensions for any subject area or grade level. Lesson extensions and student engagement strategies for teaching proficient students in a PLC: Develop an understanding of the fourth question of a Professional Learning Community (PLC) at Work and why it is the most poorly addressed of the foundational PLC questions. Understand the importance of engaging proficient students in extended lessons and continuing their education. Learn how to differentiate instruction, enrich the curriculum, and build lesson extensions that will push proficient students to extend their abilities. Become familiar with three different extension models (skill extensions, interest extensions, and social extensions) and numerous strategies for implementation that integrate student voice and choice. Utilize the reproducible extension-planning templates and completed examples to build your own lesson extensions for personalized learning. Contents: Introduction Chapter 1: Addressing the Forgotten Question Chapter 2: Identifying Question 4 Students and Intentionally Planning Extensions Chapter 3: Creating Skill Extensions Chapter 4: Creating Interest Extensions Chapter 5: Helping Students Connect Through Social Extensions Chapter 6: Creating Extensions as Singletons Epilogue

How can educators create a collective method of professional development that results in the genuine, sustained teacher learning essential to improving student achievement? That question is at the heart of this comprehensive and practical guide to process learning circles, a unique and powerful way to develop, strengthen, and enrich professional learning communities. Authors Geoffrey and Renate N. Caine have dedicated more than 20 years to researching how people learn naturally. From this foundation, they describe in detail how process learning circles work, and they provide readers with a clear understanding of how powerful and successful this approach to professional learning can be. Along the way, they explore * The three critical elements of great professional development * How to create a field of listening * The logistics and phases of process learning circles * Tips for success as a process leader * The effects of individual differences and group dynamics * Principles for developing a process that works Examples from schools that have implemented process learning circles provide evidence of the method's success, and the authors also include an explanation of 12 underlying brain/mind learning principles, guidelines for using online tools, and broader suggestions for how to move from teaching for memorization to teaching for understanding. Written with both teachers and administrators in mind, Strengthening and Enriching Your Professional Learning Community: The Art of Learning Together is an essential guide to professional learning and development that works.

Educational technologies have revolutionized the learning and teaching environments. Offline/online applications and social media have changed the conventional learning and teaching habits and competencies. In terms of learners, it has been empirically proven that the use of educational technologies in the classroom make learning easier and more enjoyable. On the other hand, it also poses threats to students such as cyberbullying and online addiction. While exploiting the opportunities of technological use in the classroom, educators must also remain vigilant and formulate ways to overcome the challenges and risks brought by technology. Enriching Teaching and Learning Environments With Contemporary Technologies is an essential research publication that aims to present exemplary practices of technology use and their management in pedagogical purposes in learning and teaching environments. The book also analyzes problems that may arise and develops policies on educational technologies and the exploitation of technology with pedagogical purposes as part of the discussion to solve these challenges. Featuring a wide range of topics such as augmented reality, mass media, and religious education, this book is ideal for educators who want to use technology in class, educational administrators who have responsibilities for developing policies on educational technologies and managing the use of them, and researchers who want to carry out a deep investigation into the subject. Additionally, educational software developers, academicians, instructional designers, curriculum developers, education professionals, and students will also benefit from the research contained within the book.

Use the Schoolwide Enrichment Model to support enriching learning opportunities for all learners and to develop students' talent, raise achievement, honor diversity, and foster a growth-oriented staff.

Process drama is now firmly established, internationally, as a powerful and dynamic pedagogy. This clear and accessible book provides a practical, step-by-step guide to the planning of process drama. Grounded in theory and illustrated in practice, it identifies and explains the principles of planning and shows how they can be applied across age ranges and curricula. Drawing on the authors’ wide-ranging practical experience and research, examples are built up and run throughout the book, at each step showing how and why the teachers’ planning decisions were made. This second edition features: a wider range of examples illustrating the planning principles in practice two completely new chapters: one deals with planning for diverse learner groups and the other moves the reader on from the pre-action planning phase to the ‘planning on your feet’ required as the drama unfolds. incorporated new material to reflect recent understanding of how learning takes place Written as a conversation between reader and authors, Planning Process Drama will help practitioners to update and refine their practice and strengthen their understanding, skills and confidence. Planning Process Drama will be an essential guide for students undertaking initial teacher training at primary level, in addition to both Drama and English at secondary level, and a Masters in Drama in Education. It will also prove to be valuable reading for specialist and non-specialist teacher in both the primary and secondary sectors who teach, or wish to teach, process drama.

Eric Jensen—a leading expert in the translation of brain research into education, argues in Enriching the Brain that we greatly underestimate students’ achievement capacity. Drawing from a wide range of neuroscience research as well as related studies, Jensen reveals that the human brain is far more dynamic and malleable than we earlier believed. He offers us a powerful new understanding of how the brain can be “enriched,” across the board to maximize learning, memory, behavior and overall function. The bottom line is we have far more to do with how our children’s brains turn out than we previously thought. Enriching the Brain shows that lasting brain enrichment doesn’t occur randomly through routine or ordinary learning. It requires a specific, and persistent experiences that amount to a “formula” for maximizing brain potential. Parents, teachers and policy-makers would do well to memorize this formula. In fact, the lifelong potential of all school age kids depends on whether or not we use it. Offering an inspiring and innovative set of practices for promoting enrichment in the home, the school, and the classroom, this book is a clarion call. All of us, from teachers to parents to policymakers must take their role as ‘brain shapers’ much more seriously and this book gives the tools with which to do it.

Neuroscience tells us that the products of the mind--thought, emotions, artistic creation--are the result of the interactions of the biological brain with our senses and the physical world: in short, that thinking and learning are the products of a biological process.This realization, that learning actually alters the brain by changing the number and strength of synapses, offers a powerful foundation for rethinking teaching practice and one's philosophy of teaching.James Zull invites teachers in higher education or any other setting to accompany him in his exploration of what scientists can tell us about the brain and to discover how this knowledge can influence the practice of teaching. He describes the brain in clear non-technical language and an engaging conversational tone, highlighting its functions and parts and how they interact, and always relating them to the real world of the classroom and his own evolution as a teacher. "The Art of Changing the Brain" is grounded in the practicalities and challenges of creating effective opportunities for deep and lasting learning, and of dealing with students as unique learners.