Best Practice: Today's Standards for Teaching and Learning in America's Schools

Front Cover

Best practice is the pillar that supports powerful teaching, and the first two editions of the highly acclaimed "Best Practice" have promoted instructional excellence for more than ten years. Now the third edition, with forty-five percent new material, does still more to make the big ideas of education accessible, identifying the teaching methods that help students learn, explaining how to implement them in the classroom, and showing what exemplary instruction really looks like.

Recognizing that the themes of American education have changed dramatically, Steven Zemelman, Harvey Daniels, and Arthur Hyde reconvened, and their new edition provides fresh, inspiring examples of state-of-the-art teaching methods in action. It also carefully examines state, national, and discipline-specific standards and demonstrates how engaging and interactive classroom instruction is truly the most effective way to meet those standards. You'll find that time-tested tools like the famed "More Than-Less Than" charts are updated, while the wealth of recent research and new classroom vignettes will lead your teaching in invigorating new directions.

Building on the official standards documents of leading professional organizations in reading, writing, math, science, social studies, and the arts, Zemelman, Daniels, and Hyde describe the classrooms and techniques of some of America's most effective teachers with the passionate, humorous, and conversational tone that has made "Best Practice" a favorite of veteran and novice teachers, staff developers, and teacher trainers across the country. Read "Best Practice," Third Edition - on your own or with a whole-school faculty study group - and find out why even though some things in education may change in the short term, methods that are student centered, experiential, democratic, collaborative, and rigorously challenging will always be the key to high-quality teaching and authentic learning.

From inside the book

Contents

Best Practice in Reading
36
Best Practice in Writing
78
Best Practice in Mathematics
106
Copyright

7 other sections not shown

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About the author (2005)

Harvey Daniels has been a city and suburban classroom teacher and a college professor, and now works as a national consultant and author on literacy education. In language arts, Smokey is known for his pioneering work on student book clubs, as recounted in Literature Circles: Voice and Choice in Book Clubs and Reading Groups, and Minilessons for Literature Circles. Smokey has recently coauthored three bestselling books on content-area literacy: Comprehension & Collaboration; Subjects Matter: Every Teacher's Guide to Content-Area Reading, and Content-Area Writing: Every Teacher's Guide. He is also coauthor of the new Best Practice, Fourth Edition, and editor of Comprehension Going Forward. Smokey works with elementary and secondary teachers throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe, offering demonstration lessons, workshops, and consulting, with a special focus on creating, sustaining, and renewing student-centered inquiries and discussions of all kinds. Smokey shows colleagues how to simultaneously build students' reading strategies, balance their reading diets, and strengthen the social skills they need to become genuine lifelong readers. Arthur Hyde is the author or coauthor of the Heinemann titles Understanding Middle School Mathematics; Comprehending Math; Best Practice, Fourth Edition; and Mathwise. A professor of mathematics education at National-Louis University, he received its Excellence in Teaching award. While teaching high school mathematics in Philadelphia, he developed a variety of creative methods for teaching math. He also obtained a doctorate in curriculum and instruction from the University of Pennsylvania, where he later was Associate Director of Teacher Preparation. He continues to work frequently in elementary and middle school classrooms and conducts extensive professional development programs on mathematics and problem solving in Chicago and its surrounding school districts.

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