New Releases by Nancy Frey

Transform your PLC collaboration to strengthen student learning across classrooms Professional Learning Communities hold tremendous potential, but without clear structure and shared purpose, that potential often goes untapped. PLC+ The Texas Way offers Texas educators an evidence-based framework for moving beyond isolated classroom practice toward collaborative inquiry and evidence-based teaching that accelerates learning for every student. Written specifically for Texas schools, this guide shifts PLC work from prep and planning to creating shared understanding of TEKS and HQIM, making intentional instructional decisions that support learners and responding to student needs. Anchored in the five essential questions—Where are we now? Where are we going? How do we move learning forward? What did we learn today? Who benefited and who did not?—PLC+ provides the clarity and direction teacher teams need to translate state standards and quality materials into meaningful student growth. Inside, you′ll find: Direct connections to Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) and English Language Proficiency Standards (ELPS) Spotlight cases featuring small and rural schools that demonstrate how PLC+ works in diverse Texas contexts Ready-to-use tools and protocols that support teams in making sense of the five essential questions and taking immediate action PLC+ The Texas Way helps educators build cultures of collective responsibility, shared efficacy, and trust-based teamwork. When teachers collaborate with purpose, students thrive—and that′s what matters most.

Build and sustain the mindsets and systems that make teacher clarity work. Learning depends on clarity—a shared understanding among teachers, leaders, and students of what is being learned, why it matters, and how success will be recognized, all aligned with the learning experiences and assessment tasks. While many schools want to embrace teacher clarity, progress often stalls without clear guidance for school and district leaders. This book provides the essential framework for leaders to build, sustain, and embed a culture of clarity that transforms teaching and learning across the entire system. Developed for principals, instructional coaches, and district leaders, this practical guide will help you lead and implement teacher clarity, ensuring it is a foundational element of your school′s or district’s culture and not just a temporary initiative. Designed for reading alongside teachers’ use of the bestselling The Teacher Clarity Playbook, this book provides leaders with the tools to support teachers on their journey and ensure the work succeeds and endures. Features include: Planning Your Pitch: Ready-to-use talking points to help leaders communicate key ideas clearly and persuasively The Thinking Leader: Reflective questions to deepen self-awareness and provoke thoughtful leadership discussions A Leader′s Perspective: Real-life stories and insights from experienced educational leaders Leadership Checklist: Actionable steps to guide leaders in implementing new ideas effectively within their own contexts By modeling, protecting, and sustaining clarity, leaders can create the conditions for teachers to collaborate, reflect, and grow together, ensuring every student has a clear vision of success.

Imagine a classroom where every lesson feels like a step toward a clear and meaningful destination. The Illustrated Guide to Teacher Clarity by Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey offers an accessible, fully illustrated introduction to the essential aspects of Teacher Clarity. Engaging visuals and infographics bring the principles of Teacher Clarity to life, making the basics easy to understand, remember, and apply. Teacher Clarity is not a single strategy or technique—it is a mindset and a commitment to designing and delivering instruction in ways that make learning visible and attainable for all students. Start with The Illustrated Guide to Teacher Clarity to build your foundation, then move into The Teacher Clarity Playbook to focus on and practice writing learning progressions, learning intentions, and success criteria for your own classroom. With the Illustrated Guide, teachers will: Grasp the "why" behind Teacher Clarity. Discover the easy-to-follow Teacher Clarity process that seamlessly weaves together a thoughtful analysis of standards, intentional organization of lessons, meaningful assessment, and responsive instruction. Gain actionable strategies to invite students into the learning process as partners—encouraging them to take ownership, build confidence, and develop the skills they need to thrive both in school and beyond. Get 25+ videos, clarity checklists, and other ready-to-use tools to help you bring Teacher Clarity to your classroom. The Illustrated Guide to Teacher Clarity and The Teacher Clarity Playbook provide a complete path—first to understanding clarity, then to bringing it to life in your teaching practice.

Lead lasting change for your entire learning community School leadership requires more than good intentions—it demands consequential actions that produce positive and meaningful outcomes for students, teachers, and the whole school community. Consequential Leadership is a practical, illustrated guide for busy educational leaders that will help you move beyond compliance to meaningful transformation—efficiently and effectively. Drawing from extensive research and real-world experience, the authors present five essential leadership imperatives that combine theoretical insights with actionable strategies, all delivered alongside engaging illustrations that make complex concepts accessible and memorable. The book explores crucial areas that define effective educational leadership: Five leadership imperatives that include courage and accountability, motivation and collective purpose, evidence-based decision making, professional learning design, and performance conversations Practical tools and assessments like self-evaluation rubrics, reflection prompts, and a personalized leadership journey map Real-world applications that bridge research and practice, helping you to implement strategies that drive student achievement and teacher effectiveness A visual framework that presents leadership concepts through illustrations, charts, and diagrams designed to enhance understanding and retention Embracing consequential leadership principles will allow you to develop the skills and competencies to create learning environments where students grow academically and personally, teachers thrive professionally, and school communities flourish through collective purpose and shared accountability.

Lay the foundation for inclusive, impactful classrooms where every student thrives Every student deserves an education that is meaningful, memorable, and built for them. When we design learning with intentional, universal support, the impact extends beyond individual students—it transforms entire classrooms. In Every Child Deserves a Special Education, the authors introduce five powerful mindframes that reshape the way we think about teaching, learning, and inclusion. These mindframes spark a cycle of reflection and growth, shifting not just what we do, but how we see our students, our classrooms, and our role as educators. Inside, you’ll find: Five essential educator mindframes—helping you plan for both diverse learners and the diversity within each learner Stories and examples that bring these mindframes to life through real classroom experiences Reflection tools to help you examine and refine your own beliefs and practices True inclusion starts with how we think, not just what we do. Every Child Deserves a Special Education will help you build the mindset every classroom needs for all students to thrive.

Drive collaboration and improve student learning with PLC+ Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) have long been celebrated as a powerful tool for driving collaboration and improving student outcomes. But what if there was a way to take your PLC work to the next level? Your Introduction to PLC+: Building Collaborative Teams That Drive Student Success introduces the next-generation PLC model that prioritizes collective efficacy and actionable strategies by focusing on five essential questions: Where are we going? Where are we now? How do we move learning forward? What did we learn today? Who benefited and who did not? PLC+ emphasizes identifying and applying evidence-based instruction that values the background of every student, ensuring access and opportunities for all. Team members begin by identifying a common challenge. Then, the clear PLC+ framework, practical tools, and research-based strategies ensure that team efforts directly improve teaching practices and student outcomes. This playbook includes: Protocols and tools that promote data-driven decision-making and actionable plans. Engaging features like "Two Truths and a Lie," self-assessment tools, and implementation-ready scenarios. Practical strategies to measure the real-time impact of collaborative efforts. An interactive design with ample space to reflect on your learning and outline steps to build collective efficacy. Transform your professional learning community today. Whether you′re a teacher or school leader, Your Introduction to PLC+ equips you with the knowledge and skills to collaborate effectively and lead with clarity and confidence. Together, you’ll create effective and impactful learning environments that ensure every student thrives.

A professional development assessment tool to elevate learning and instruction in every classroom This unique, hands-on flipbook is designed as a classroom observation tool that redefines RIGOR, with a focus on five key elements, or indicators, that form a framework to promote a rigorous, scaffolded learning environment. Explore the five indicators on a RIGOR Walk to identify teacher strengths and areas for growth, and to set goals: Relationships Instruction Goals Organization Relevance Developed for teachers, teams, instructional coaches, and school leaders, RIGOR Unveiled provides a wealth of support and knowledge for classroom observation and reflection, including: Tabbed sections that describe each of the five indicators to help focus discussion and evaluations Rubrics for evaluation including ratings, evidence, and "My Next Steps" 100+ video spotlights defining key concepts 25 classroom videos showing each of the indicators in action 25 videos of coaches discussing what they observed in each of the classroom videos Sturdy flipbook format for individual and team use and easy writing on the go Spot It Happening feature to calibrate observations as they happen Together your teaching teams can improve the learning outcomes for students by committing to continuous improvement in their teaching practice. With this book in hand, you’ll have everything you need to make it happen.

The Path to Truly Impactful Practice in Education Starts with Visible Learning It may seem obvious, but learning should never be implied or assumed. Learning must be explicit, evaluated and monitored; the impact of teaching on student learning should be visible. But how can we be sure? Armed with years of research that includes more than 2,100 meta-analyses, and 130,000 studies that include more than 300 million students—plus decades of experience as educators —bestselling authors John Hattie, Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey, and John Almarode have collaborated to create this accessible guide to what works best to accelerate students′ learning. Packed with everything you need to evaluate your impact, the Illustrated Guide to Visible Learning includes: Clear instructions for collecting, interpreting, and using evidence to make decisions with and for your students A primer on the 11 signature practices of Visible Learning Research-backed mindframes that have the potential to significantly influence the quality of education. To have the greatest impact on student learning, we must know what practices work best. With this illustrated go-to guide to Visible Learning in hand, your path is set for truly impactful practice in education.

Let evidence and integrity guide your grading practice If you want to ask a polarizing question in education, ask someone their thoughts on grading. Few topics have elicited more interest or opinions, even though grading practices have remained relatively unchanged for years. But opinions are not evidence. The time has come to get it right with a fresh approach grounded in research and the principles of integrity. Grading With Integrity introduces a measured approach to grading reform based on honesty, transparency, accuracy, and equity with recommendations backed by clear and trustworthy evidence. Addressing the many "whys’’ involved, this thoughtfully organized book addresses central questions related to grading and reporting student learning, covering: An historical overview of grading and reporting practices A discussion of standards-based and competency-based grading Recommendations for reporting non academic learning goals separately from academic achievement, to accurately reflect students′ performance Suggestions for reporting growth and improvement, using specific assessments and other reporting tools An infallible argument for grading with integrity This book is a must-read for K-12 classroom teachers and administrators who are looking to implement better and more defensible grading and reporting policies and practices. Let evidence and integrity be your guide to enhancing students’ best interests and learning success.

Fuel student-driven success and enhance learning with better assessment What if there was a better way to collect and interpret assessment data that could strengthen the link between teaching and learning? Student Assessment: Better Evidence, Better Decisions, Better Learning is the innovative guide to show you how it′s done and done right. This unique book offers a new assessment model focused on decision-driven data collection and provides an arsenal of tools for collecting better evidence to increase student learning. You will learn: the importance of assessment in the teaching and learning process what a decision-driven data collection assessment model looks like and how it differs from a more traditional data-driven decision-making model how to effectively establish learning intentions and success criteria within assessments to actively engage students in their own learning how to implement an array of assessment tools that yield better evidence and improve decision-making how to address the challenge of ensuring authenticity in students′ responses when AI-generated content is becoming more common With this guide in hand, you′ll be ready for a better approach to assessment—armed with practical tools and strategies to ensure students can analyze, synthesize, adapt, critique, and most importantly, take charge of their own learning.

Foster Trust, Accountability and Engagement in Your Teams Creating strong, cohesive teams is an art, and How Teams Work: A Playbook for Distributing Leadership is the essential guide for school leaders looking to master this craft. This interactive playbook doesn′t just advise but actively equips leaders with the tools they need to foster trust, accountability, and engagement in their teams. School leaders today face a critical mandate: to empower, engage, and work in concert with their teams to foster a positive and productive school environment. How Teams Work doesn′t offer mere platitudes—it offers practical strategies and tools, with concept maps, learning intentions, team challenges, reflection prompts and more. Information is organized into six modules exploring: The foundational role leaders play in team dynamics Strategies to bring together and mobilize effective leadership teams Methods to forge and maintain team unity and collaboration How to build and maintain trust and respect within teams Practical tools for maximizing team productivity and decision-making Guidelines on reflective leadership to assess and improve team performance How Teams Work isn′t only a resource; it′s a roadmap to sustainable success, illuminating the path to nurturing leadership at every level. In an age where the turnover of educators is high and the need for sustained, collective school improvement efforts is urgent, leveraging the power of teams isn′t just advantageous—it′s essential.

Time Saving AI Tools that Make Learning More Engaging Busy educators need tools that support their planning and provide them with more time with students. While Artificial Intelligence (AI) has emerged as a promising solution, it can only help if we’re willing to learn how to use it in ways that improve upon what we already do well. The Artificial Intelligence Playbook: Time Saving Tools that Make Learning More Engaging is here to empower teachers to explore AI’s potential and discover practical ways to implement it to enhance their planning and instruction. Two chapters and 6 "Educator Functions" guide teachers step-by-step through how to purposely use AI to: Compose Writing Prompts and Avoid Plagiarism Manage Content Foster Student Engagement Meet Students’ Instructional Needs Assess Student Learning Continue Lifelong Learning Though AI has the potential to reduce workload for educators, it will never replace teachers. Your connection with students is irreplaceable—and greatly impacts their learning. Consider AI a valuable tool that provides you with more time to build and sustain those vital relationships with students and that can assist them in learning at the very same time.

Your Hands-On Guide to Thriving Your First Years of Teaching You’ve made the incredible decision to become an educator because you want to impact the learning lives of young people. Thank you, and welcome. We welcome you to this amazing profession with open arms, and with an arsenal of experience and essential tools, strategies, and lessons to help you establish a successful and satisfying teaching career. We wanted to make it easier for you to learn and practice these techniques that research shows increase student learning. To do so, we also considered cognitive psychology research that tells us that images and illustrations can help strengthen communication and our own understanding. This helped us develop the unique format for this book: part hands-on playbook, part professional book, and all highly illustrated, it is designed to make complicated concepts more digestible and memorable. This extensive guide for new teachers provides everything you need to impact learning from your first day on, including: How to plan powerful learning experiences that ensure student engagement 22 step-by-step learning strategies for any grade and any subject Detailed guidance for developing formative and summative assessments 30+ classroom videos demonstrating the techniques and strategies in action Teaching is without a doubt one of the most challenging professions there is. But those who chose to accept that challenge are what make teaching the best profession in the world!

It’s all about the right support, at the right time, in the right amount New teaching staff, whether novice or veteran, are a central part of a successful school year. So why is it that they are often greeted at the door of our school community with the autopilot vibe of a ticket taker at the movies? Onboarding Teachers changes the rules of engagement, offering activities and practical strategies that focus leaders and coaches on critical aspects of success for that make-or-break first year. Built on high-impact instructional and coaching practices and ready for you to roll out in four eight-week cycles, everything you need is here: Timely content aligned to needs as they come up throughout the year including the physical environment, engagement, and classroom management Checklists and self assessments to gauge readiness Sample emails and communication tips for various audiences Coaching scenarios to apply and reflect on strategies Links to access additional resources on-line Half of all new teachers leave the profession within five years. We can reduce that attrition by integrating new members in a way that deepens connection and practice. With Onboarding Teachers, the wish for new teachers to find their stride becomes a plan.

Concepts, conversation, collaboration—vocabulary instruction is so much more than lists of words. More is more when it comes to students’ vocabulary knowledge, and in The Vocabulary Playbook, educators in K-12 get ideas for transforming all children into curious, capable word learners. The key? Put away the word-list mindset, and embrace active modeling, peer work, and independent practice. Five modules offer direct instruction and effective routines that show how to: Select and teach only the most high-utility, transferable words that are ripe for discussion Use direct instruction to model word-solving in each content area Teach morphology in ways that invite students to apply understandings in reading, writing, talk, and listening Turn academic word-learning into a relevant experience with peer collaboration activities Create a culture of word consciousness by emphasizing concepts, modeling curiosity, and offering "low-risk" routines that make it okay to not yet know Intentional vocabulary instruction is critical in every grade, and in every content area. With The Vocabulary Playbook, your approach is now tactical, transparent, and fun. Whether you are an administrator executing a school-wide plan or a teacher eager for practical strategies, this is the book that will help students build academic success—word by word.

Provide the perfect structure and support to develop student independence. Effective scaffolding leads to learner autonomy—but too many educators have been airlifting students to right answers, perpetuating a generation who don’t know how to learn. Yes, we know the sweet spot for learning involves giving our students the right blend of productive failure and productive success, but how to do it is cloaked in misconceptions. How Scaffolding Works unveils the essential moves and methods. Ten interactive modules help every K-12 educator structure support in new ways, including knowing how to: Gradually release responsibility to students through intentional and purposeful scaffolding Design lessons and experiences that attend to the affective, metacognitive, and cognitive aspects of learning Collect data before, during, and after learning, so we can place, move, and take away scaffolds with greater intention Promote independence with front-end scaffolds, distributed scaffolds, back-end scaffolds, peer scaffolds, and fading scaffolds Use a blend of demonstration, modeling, coaching, explaining, questioning and choice Promote purposeful practice—in which learners knows where they’re going and how to get there Perhaps we rush in to rescue learners because the world seems fraught; we want to help our students reach the safety of academic success. Our intentions are good, but it’s time to step back, gradually and purposefully, and let them pilot their own learning.

Your playbook for truly impactful early childhood education Early childhood is a uniquely sensitive time when young learners are rapidly developing across multiple domains. Knowing which teaching strategies work best and when can have a significant impact on a child’s development and future success, both in school and beyond. The Early Childhood Education Playbook examines how the Visible Learning® research can guide our decisions as we plan, teach, document, and partner with families and colleagues so that we can have the greatest possible impact on learning and development of children from birth to age 8. Each of the modules unpacks unique characteristics of early childhood environments as well as coherent practices that form a strong foundation for learning over time. Filled with tools and methods to support a team as they work toward a common goal, this playbook covers: Teacher efficacy, credibility, and clarity Partnerships with families The importance of language Formative assessment and feedback How to ensure equity and inclusion Using these strategies, teachers will discover how they can collaborate with young learners to encourage high expectations, implement developmentally appropriate practices at the right level of challenge, and focus on explicit success criteria. Get started with this playbook and watch your young learners thrive!

The comprehensive guide you can trust for evidence-based reading practices It′s settled science: developing skilled readers can enhance students’ lives. That’s why renowned educators Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey, and Diane Lapp wrote this resource with the urgency of a code blue in an ER—because too many children, for many reasons, struggle with learning to become strong readers. Designed to be a one-stop shop for best practices, Teaching Reading is concise, encyclopedic, and essential. Thirteen interactive modules provide easy to read ideas to support you teaching every child to read very well. You will learn how to: Focus on two critical aspects of reading—word recognition and language comprehension. Select the best activities to support students in grades K-6 to learn letters and sound relationships. Provide developing readers with the most effective oral, written, and reading experiences. Recharge your confidence and craft with uplifting new research findings from neuroscience, cognitive science, and child development. Clear up confusions about phonics progressions, reading fluency, morphology, text selection, grammar, and more. Develop background knowledge, vocabulary, and comprehension instruction. Be up to date on how to help students attain deeper levels of comprehension by applying Theory of Mind and other cutting-edge ideas. Reading is a thrilling but complex process. It involves a heady mix of skills, schema, self-concept, and social dimensions. To give all students the chance to reap its rewards, we need a go-big kind of resource. This is it.

Feedback keeps learning moving forward. Picture water pouring into a crystal goblet. That’s how clear and dynamic feedback must be. You can achieve that "perfect swirl" of giving, receiving, and integrating feedback with this remarkable book, which is organized into 16 modules for self-study or PLCs. Major concepts include: Defining Feedback: learn the most useful types of feedback, why to align them with transparent criteria, how to gather evidence. 4 C’s of Feedback: offer it with care, credibility, clarity, and clear communication Gathering Evidence for Feedback: use a balance of verbal, written, and kinesthetic responses; peer collaboration, checks-for-understanding, technology, and more.

Utilize restorative practices to create a safe, accepting, and equitable school climate where learning can flourish. When students have unfinished learning, educators create opportunities for students to learn. Unfortunately, this role seems to end when it comes to behavior. How can we turn behavior into a teachable moment? The Restorative Practices Playbook details a set of practices designed to teach prosocial behaviors based on strong relationships and a commitment to the well-being of others. Implementing restorative practices establishes a positive academic and social-emotional learning environment while building students’ capacity to self-regulate, make decisions, and self-govern—the very skills students need to achieve. In this eye-opening, essential playbook, renowned educators Dominique Smith, Douglas Fisher, and Nancy Frey support educators with the reflection prompts, tools, examples, and strategies needed to create restorative practices around several key concepts: A restorative school culture, grounded in respect, that builds agency and identity, establishes teacher credibility, sets high expectations, and fosters positive relationships Restorative conversations that equip adults and students with the capacity to resolve problems, make decisions, and arrive at solutions in ways that are satisfactory and growth-producing Restorative circles that promote academic learning through dialogue, build consensus in decision making, and help participants reach resolution through healing Formal restorative conferences that foster guided dialogue between victim(s) and offender(s) and include plans for re-entry into the school community By becoming adept in the skillful use of restorative practices, educators will foster equitable discipline that reduces exclusion and creates a school community driven by relationships and respect.

Arm students with the confidence they need to pursue ambitious goals—together. Collective student efficacy— students’ beliefs that by working with other people, they will learn more—can be a powerful accelerator of student learning and a precursor to future employment success. Harnessing twenty-five years of VISIBLE LEARNING® research, Collective Student Efficacy: Developing Independent and Inter-Dependent Learners illuminates the power of collective efficacy and identifies the many ways teachers can activate collective efficacy with their students. More than cooperative and collaborative learning, collective efficacy requires the refinement of both individual and collective tasks that build on each other over time. This innovative book details how knowledge, skills, and dispositions entangle to create collective and individual beliefs, and leads educators to mobilize collective efficacy in the classroom. It includes: The vital components and evidence-based success criteria necessary for students′ collective efficacy The "I" and "We" skills that need to be developed to ensure students have the skills and confidence to contribute to group success The nature of learning design, lesson planning, and classroom structures that ensure opportunities for all students to engage in collective efficacy The necessity for constructive alignment between learning intentions, tasks, success criteria, and assessments "Learning from a Distance" actions to facilitate building skills in remote learning environments The time is now to prepare students to meet the demands of the future. Through collective student efficacy, students will learn to become actionable agents of learning and change.

Build students’ confidence and competence with tutoring strategies that spark meaningful, accelerated learning. Tutoring is much more than telling students information. Effective tutoring begins with the strong and caring relationship a tutor establishes with a learner to build trust, fuel motivation, and drive critical learning. How Tutoring Works distills the complexity of strategic moves effective tutors make to build students’ confidence and competence. Harnessing decades of Visible Learning® research, this easy to read, eye-opening guide details the six essential components of any effective tutoring intervention—establishing a relationship and credibility, addressing student confidence and challenges, setting shared goals, helping a student learn how to learn, teaching and learning content, and establishing a habit of deliberate practice. Indispensable for any educator who intervenes with students, this rich resource includes: Examples of impactful tutoring conversations, including what to say and what not to say when building a relationship with a learner. Specific approaches to use when establishing credibility, addressing challenges to learning, leveraging the relevance of knowledge, setting goals, and ensuring practice. Learning strategies, with effect size, for teaching and learning content, including specific strategies for improving reading, writing, and mathematics. Tips and tools for helping students develop powerful cognitive, metacognitive, and affective study skills. Resources and advice for establishing an effective and transformational tutoring program. Done well, tutoring can repair a student’s damaged relationship to learning, address unrealized potential, and alter the course of a young person’s life. A strong and nurturing relationship between tutor and learner is key.

For more than a year now, we educators have been tested and tested again. We’ve been stretched, we’ve been pulled, we’ve been put through the wringer. But now it’s time to "rebound." It’s time to bounce back, come back better, and benefit from the many lessons learned to reignite engagement, accelerate learning, and move forward with fresh optimism and better systems for schooling. Enter Doug Fisher, Nancy Frey, Dominique Smith, and John Hattie, whose Distance Learning Playbooks have supported more than a half million educators across pandemic teaching and who are here now to advise you on this next, absolutely critical leg of our ongoing journey. Complete with tools and strategies, prompts and exercises, Rebound: A Playbook for Rebuilding Agency, Accelerating Learning Recovery, and Rethinking Schools will help you: Address the collective traumas we have experienced during the pandemic and rebuild our sense of agency and self, so that we can attribute student success to both teachers’ and students’ efforts Evaluate what we have learned about remote teaching and learning to determine what to carry forward and what to leave behind Shift the narrative from learning loss to "learning leaps" and implement instructional and assessment practices that ensure our students reclaim lost knowledge, build skills, develop agency, and accelerate gains Redefine classrooms, learning experiences, the ways schools operate, and the very idea of schooling itself "The greatest travesty that can arise for schools after 2020/21," Doug, Nancy, Dominique, and John write, "is to rush back to the old normal, and learn nothing, or little, about what worked well. That’s why this book has focused on rebounding, and taking the opportunity to create an even better schooling system, one that serves even more students, and focuses more on what matters most." "Let′s agree not to reduce the impact that our expectations have on students′ learning. What if we talk about learning leaps instead of learning loss? What if we identify where students are in their learning and identify critical content that they must learn now to accelerate their performance in the future? And what if we raise our expectations for students rather than lower them?" —Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey, Dominique Smith, and John Hattie

Student learning communities (SLCs) are more than just a different way of doing group work. Like the professional learning communities they resemble, SLCs provide students with a structured way to solve problems, share insight, and help one another continually develop new skills and expertise. With the right planning and support, dynamic collaborative learning can thrive everywhere. In this book, educators Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey, and John Almarode explain how to create and sustain student learning communities by - Designing group experiences and tasks that encourage dialogue; - Fostering the relational conditions that advance academic, social, and emotional development; - Providing explicit instruction on goal setting and opportunities to practice progress monitoring; - Using thoughtful teaming practices to build cognitive, metacognitive, and emotional regulation skills; - Teaching students to seek, give, and receive feedback that amplifies their own and others'' learning; and - Developing the specific leadership skills and strategies that promote individual and group success. Examples from face-to-face and virtual K–12 classrooms help to illustrate what SLCs are, and teacher voices testify to what they can achieve. No more hoping the group work you''re assigning will be good enough—or that collaboration will be its own reward. No more crossing your fingers for productive outcomes or struggling to keep order, assess individual student contributions, and ensure fairness. Student Learning Communities shows you how to equip your students with what they need to learn in a way that is truly collective, makes them smarter together than they would be alone, creates a more positive classroom culture, and enables continuous academic and social-emotional growth.

Turn good intentions into better outcomes—by design! Why leave student success up to chance? By combining your intuition and experience with the latest research on high-impact learning practices, you can evolve your teaching from good to great and make a lasting difference for your students. Organized around the DIIE framework, Great Teaching by Design takes you step-by-step from intention to implementation to accelerate the impact your teaching has on student learning. Inside, you’ll find: A deep dive into the four stages of the DIIE model: Diagnosis and Discovery, Intervention, Implementation, and Evaluation A fresh look at the Visible Learning research, which identifies the most powerful strategies for teaching and learning Stories of best practices in action and examples from classrooms around the world Great teaching may come by chance, but it will come by design. Whether you’re new to teaching or looking to give your instruction a boost, take up the challenge and discover a new framework for teaching with true intentionality.

Effective teaching is effective teaching, no matter where it occurs The pandemic teaching of mid-2020 was not really distance learning, but rather crisis teaching. But starting now, teachers have the opportunity to prepare for distance learning with purpose and intent—using what works best to accelerate students’ learning all the while maintaining an indelible focus on equity. Harnessing the insights and experience of renowned educators Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey, and John Hattie, The Distance Learning Playbook applies the wisdom and evidence of VISIBLE LEARNING® research to understand what works best with distance learning. Spanning topics from teacher-student relationships, teacher credibility and clarity, instructional design, assessments, and grading, this comprehensive playbook details the research- and evidence-based strategies teachers can mobilize to deliver high- impact learning in an online, virtual, and distributed environment. This powerful guide includes: Learning Intentions and Success Criteria for each module to track your own learning and model evidence-based teacher practices for meaningful learning A diversity of instructional approaches, including direct instruction, peer learning, and independent work that foster student self-regulation and move learning to deep and transfer levels Discussion of equity challenges associated with distance learning, along with examples of how teachers can work to ensure that equity gains that have been realized are not lost. Special guidance for teachers of young children who are learning from a distance Videos of the authors and teachers discussing a wide variety of distance learning topics Space to write and reflect on current practices and plan future instruction The Distance Learning Playbook is the essential hands-on guide to preparing and delivering distance learning experiences that are truly effective and impactful. To purchase from an Authorized Corwin Distributor click here. A Spanish translation of the Distance Learning Playbook, Grades K-12, Aprendizaje a Distancia Guia, Guia de Preescolar a Bachillerator, can be purchased by contacting Irene Yepez from Editorial Trillas at [email protected].

Keeping professional learning communities focused on goals: High functioning professional learning communities don’t happen by chance. They require deliberate efforts and structures to ensure efficiency and focus, and to ignite action. The first books in the PLC+ series challenged PLC teams to engage in difficult discussions about equity of access, high expectations for all students, and a commitment to building individual and team efficacy. All of this requires activation and skilled facilitation to move from discussion to action. The PLC+ Activator′s Guide offers a practical approach, real-life scenarios, and examples that show activators what to expect and how to navigate their PLC+ on a successful and collective journey. Readers will find: Templates to help activators prepare for PLC+ meetings Approaches for fostering and nurturing collaboration Vignettes from real schools that are implementing PLC+ Reflection questions with spaces for activators to record notes Solutions for addressing barriers that often arise in PLC+ teams Activators will find this an essential guide to keeping PLC+ team discussions goal-focused and the work centered on building the collective efficacy of the team.

Help students move from surface-level learning to the transfer of understanding. How do social studies teachers maximize instruction to ensure students are prepared for an informed civic life? VISIBLE LEARNING® for Social Studies, Grades K-12 shows how the field is more than simply memorizing dates and facts—it encapsulates the skillful ability to conduct investigations, analyze sources, place events in historical context, and synthesize divergent points of view. The Visible Learning framework demonstrates that learning is not an event, but rather a process in which students move from surface-level learning to deep learning, and then onto the transfer of concepts, skills, and strategies. Encouraging learners to explore different facets of society, history, geography, and more, best practices for applying visible learning to social studies curriculum are presented through: · A scaffolded approach, including surface-level learning, deep learning, and transfer of learning · Examples of strategies, lessons, and activities best suited for each level of learning · Planning tools, rubrics, and templates to guide instruction Teachers must understand the impact they have on students and select approaches to maximize that impact. This book will guide you through the process of identifying the right strategy for the right time to successfully move students through surface, deep, and transfer learning.

Explore the powerful synergy between your credibility with students and your collective efficacy as a member of a team. What’s the connection between teacher credibility and collective efficacy in schools? Highly credible teachers can’t reach their full potential without engagement in a collective of other teachers. And collective efficacy is difficult to achieve when teachers are not credible with their students. The Teacher Credibility and Collective Efficacy Playbook illuminates the connection between teacher credibility and collective efficacy and offers actions educators can take to improve both. When you increase your credibility with students, student motivation rises. And when you have evidence of your ability to impact student learning, and partner with other teachers to achieve this, your students learn more. A one-stop resource for educators intent on improving teacher practice, this powerful guide includes: - Specific actions teachers can take to become more trustworthy, competent, dynamic, and responsive in the eyes of students, and more confident impacting learning as a member of a team - Coaching videos from the authors that outline key concepts, share thinking and experiences, and challenge teachers to take steps to build credibility and collective efficacy - Tools for teams to use to polish their collective effectiveness through better communication and problem-solving - Reflective writing prompts, pause and ponder tasks, self-assessments, and data collection tools that help teachers grow professionally Jumpstart learning and achievement in your classroom and school by increasing your credibility with students and the collective efficacy of the team of educators at your school.

Huge numbers of our students are caught in storms of trauma—whether stemming from abuse, homelessness, poverty, discrimination, violent neighborhoods, or fears of school shootings or family deportations. This practical book focuses on actions that teachers can take to facilitate learning for these students. Identifying positive, connected teacher–student relationships as foundational, the authors offer direction for creating an emotionally safe classroom environment in which students find a refuge from trauma and a space in which to process events. The text shows how social and emotional learning can be woven into the school day; how literacies can be used to help students see a path through challenges; how to empower learners through debate, civic action, and service learning; and how to use the vital nature of the school community as an agent of change. This book will serve as a roadmap for creating uniformly consistent and excellent classrooms and schools that better serve children who experience trauma in their lives. Book Features: Makes a clear case for the need and responsibility of schools to equip students with tools to learn despite the trauma in their lives. Shows practical classroom instructional and curricular interactions that address trauma while advancing student academic learning. Uses literacy and civic action as pathways to empowerment. Provides a method and tools for developing a coherent plan for creating a trauma-sensitive school.