Craft a culture of engaging, student-centered learning! With over 50 years of experience in education, Alisa H. Braddy and Denise White have compiled this essential toolkit for teachers of any subject or grade level to inject life into their instruction. Suitable for teachers, administrators, or instructional coaches, this resource creates engaging lessons that bring agency and critical thinking to students’ learning. Step-by-step procedures for implementing the various strategies are provided in each chapter as well as: Actual scenarios and vignettes of strategies in action A matrix highlighting the benefits of each strategy Reflection questions to challenge readers’ thinking and generate action

Easy-to-use techniques that can be used across all content areas and adapted for all grade levels Techniques are both practical and research-based Book includes a matrix of strategies and whether they build: communication, collaboration, critical thinking, purposeful movement, or reflection Each chapter includes reflection questions to challenge readers' thinking and push them to take action.

This book explores the contextual, particularly cultural-related, factors that may impact reading outcomes of young Indigenous learners in their early years, underpinned by the conceptual framework of cultural capital originated by Bourdieu. By drawing upon a participatory and exploratory case study, conducted at a regional school in Australia over a period of six months, it highlights the challenges that Indigenous students face in reading, and how the contextual factors contribute to Indigenous students’ development in reading skills and their reading performance. This book helps readers to gain a better and deeper understanding of Indigenous culture, the importance of the role that culture plays in Indigenous children’s literacy education, and how it shapes the way they learn and think.

Guide for middle school and high school teachers on how to teach and assess 21st century skills

Debate holds enormous potential to build 21st century skills such as critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and conflict resolution in the K-12 classroom, but teachers often struggle to implement and contextualize it effectively. Using Debate in the Classroom draws on research from a variety of academic disciplines to explain the benefits of debate across subject areas, and describes how teachers can use debate to enliven their curriculum and support the aims of the Common Core. Topics include: Introducing debate as a pedagogical practice to engage students, improve school culture, and disrupt the school to prison pipeline. Using debate to teach critical literacy and improve students’ reading, writing, and speaking skills. Implementing role-playing techniques to strengthen information literacy and reasoning skills. Building students’ empathy, perspective-taking skills, and cultural humility as they confront difficult social issues through debate. Appendices provide a variety of tools to assist K-12 teachers in implementing debate in the classroom, including ready-made debate activities, student handouts, and a step-by-step guide to introducing students to debate in just one week.

This practical book provides school staff with lots of LEGO activities to use with children of all ages (5-16) to improve communication skills. Whether it is whole class doing group building activities to encourage collaborative working or paired work to target specific communication difficulties, this book is packed full of engaging, fun activities to suit all ages and abilities. LEGO never fails to entertain. Designed to look like play, each activity is structured to target the development of particular skills needed for successful learners, including many that focus on basic literacy and numeracy vocabulary.

Scale Your Project Management Efforts to Maximize Success! One size does not fit all in project management. Selecting an approach that is appropriate for the size and complexity of a project is essential to achieving success. Over-managing a small project can bog it down in bureaucracy, while a laid-back approach can lead to disaster on a complex project. Pragmatic Project Management: Five Scalable Steps to Success will help you select the methodologies and tools that will enable you to expend minimum effort to achieve maximum gain on your project. This clearly written guide lays the groundwork with a chapter on project sizing and management scaling and follows with chapters on each of the five essential elements of pragmatic project management: • The project charter • The project team • The project plan • Project issue management • Project status tracking and reporting Practical tips and a checklist are included at the end of each chapter. Use the checklists as you plan and execute your project to keep it on track and to scale.