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Best Practice: Bringing Standards to Life in America's Classrooms (4th Ed.)
by Steven Zemelman, Harvey "Smokey" Daniels, Arthur Hyde
Best Practice, Fourth Edition, is the ultimate guide to teaching excellence. Its framework of seven Best Practice Structures and cutting-edge implementation strategies are proven across the grades and subject areas. BP4 creates common ground for teachers, leaders, and principals by recommending practices drawn from the latest scientific research, professional consensus, and the innovative classrooms of exemplary teachers.
BP4 puts top-quality teaching at the fingertips of individual practitioners by sharing real-life instructional scenes that define classroom excellence, increase learning, and improve students' life opportunities. It's also more valuable than ever to PLCs and school reform initiatives thanks to:
- plans and strategies for exceeding state and Common Core Standards
- cohesive principles and common language that strengthen professional collaboration
- classroom vignettes that show teachers and kids at work
- chapters on reading, writing, math, science, and social studies that support unified instructional goals
- special attention to technology in the classroom, special education, ELLs, struggling readers, and the arts.
The Core Six: Essential Strategies for Achieving Excellence with the Common Core
by Matthew J. Perini, Havey F. Silver
Six research-based, classroom-proven strategies that will help you and your students respond to the demands of the Common Core. Thanks to more than 40 years of research and hands-on classroom testing, the authors know the best strategies to increase student engagement and achievement and prepare students for college and career. Best of all, these strategies can be used across all grade levels and subject areas.
Test Better, Teach Better: The Instructional Role of Assessment
by W. James Popham
The right kinds of tests, correctly applied, can help every teacher become a better teacher. But unless you know the nuts and bolts of effective test design and application, you may be collecting the wrong data; misinterpreting data; and drawing off-base conclusions about what students know and can do, what to teach next, and how effective your instruction has been.
In Test Better, Teach Better, assessment expert W. James Popham explores the links between assessment and instruction and provides a jargon-free look at classroom and large-scale test construction, interpretation, and application. Featuring sample items, testing tips, and recommended resources, this "crash course" in instructionally focused assessment includes
* The four types of instructional decisions that testing will illuminate.
* What you really need to know about measurement concepts like validity, reliability, and bias.
* The advantages and disadvantages of various test formats and experience-based rules for creating great items in each.
* The benefits of assessing student affect and guidelines for doing it in your own classroom.
In addition, Popham offers practical advice for dealing with today's myriad testing targets and explains how standards-based achievement tests currently don't (but could) provide both accountability evidence and useful instructional information.