Turn your school into a student-centered learning environment, where rigor is at the heart of instruction in every classroom. From the bestselling author of Rigor is Not a Four-Letter Word, Barbara Blackburn, and award-winning educator Ronald Williamson, this comprehensive guide to establishing a schoolwide culture of rigor is for principals and other administrators who seek to create the conditions in which rigorous classrooms flourish. School leaders will learn to manage a movement toward increased schoolwide rigor; engage teachers in conversations about improving instruction; build support for rigor among families and community members; learn methods for gathering meaningful data on student learning; and much more! With practical, ready-to-apply strategies, this book outlines and simplifies the steps toward achieving rigor at the school level. It represents a successful program that principals and administrators can use to put student learning first!

If we want all our students to become better thinkers and learners, we must design rigorous learning experiences that go beyond helping them simply master standards. In this guide, Robyn R. Jackson takes you step by step through the process of planning rigorous instruction—what great teachers do to ensure students have a learning destination that's worth working toward and that the path they take to get there will help them pass the big tests and become engaged learners, effective problem solvers, and critical thinkers. Here, you'll learn how to * Create a rigorous unit assessment to guide your instruction and ensure standards mastery. * Select rigorous learning materials by examining the type of thinking you want students to engage in and the type of understanding you want them to acquire. * Choose rigorous instructional strategies by looking at ways to help students grasp new content and acquire new skills, apply what they are learning in a meaningful way, use thinking processes to synthesize new understandings, and adapt these understandings to new contexts across disciplines. * Create a rigorous learning unit, tailored to your standards and classroom content, and to the students you teach.

First Published in 2010. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

By designing projects that move students from surface to deep and transfer learning through PBL, they will become confident and competent learners. Discover how to make three shifts essential to improving PBL’s overall effect: Clarity: Students should be clear on what they are expected to learn, where they are in the process, and what next steps they need to take to get there. Challenge: Help students move from surface to deep and transfer learning. Culture: Empower them to use that knowledge to make a difference in theirs and the lives of others.

Learn how to differentiate instruction while maintaining a rigorous learning environment. In this practical book, rigor expert Barbara R. Blackburn shows that the differentiated classroom doesn’t mean extra work for top students and easy work for others; instead, you can have high expectations for all students and provide scaffolding so that everyone can reach success. She also addresses many of the greatest concerns teachers have about implementing differentiated instruction, including: How to manage your time so that you can create lessons, find resources, and grade assignments for students working at different levels; How to balance differentiated instruction and teaching standards; How to ensure rigor at all tiers of instruction; How to collaborate with teachers and other faculty members; How to differentiate homework and other out-of-class assignments; How to explain differentiated instruction to parents and families; And more... Each chapter includes practical tools and activities that you can use immediately to bring all students to higher levels of achievement. Many of these tools are available as eResources and can be downloaded for free from the book’s product page: www.routledge.com/9780815394471.

Raise the level of rigor in your school and dramatically improve student learning with the tools in this book! In Rigor in Your School: A Toolkit for Leaders, Second Edition, each illuminating exercise is tailored to leaders looking to spread the word on rigor and beat the obstacles to achieving school-wide improvement. In this new edition, the authors answer more questions about common obstacles faced by principals, explore how technology can support rigor in your school, and provide additional information on collaborative tools for building a culture that supports rigor for all. The tools in this book help you: Assess where you are now Evaluate and adjust curriculum Design an advocacy plan Ensure accountability with parents Use your school's schedule to increase rigor And more! For both new and experienced leaders, you’ll find this easy-to-use toolkit full of practical templates and strategies to implement immediately. Many tools are available as free eResources from our website, www.routledge.com/ 9781138665293.

Learn how to increase instructional rigor so that all students can reach higher levels of learning! In this new edition of a best seller, author Barbara R. Blackburn offers practical ideas for raising expectations, increasing complexity, integrating scaffolding into instruction, creating open-ended choices and projects, and much more. This timely new edition provides connections to rigorous standards, plus it features new sections on topics such as questioning models, student ownership, Genius Hour, summative assessments, becoming a teacher-leader, and increasing rigor in instructional technology. Appropriate for teachers of all grade levels and subject areas, the book is filled with helpful strategies and tools that you can implement immediately. In addition, full-sized templates are available as eResources on our website (www.routledge.com/9781138569560) so you can download and print them for classroom use. With its practical advice and helpful tools, Rigor Is NOT a Four-Letter Word will set you and your students on the fast track to higher learning and sustained success.