Most Popular Books by Douglas Fisher

Now in its 3rd edition, Better Learning Through Structured Teaching is the definitive guide to the gradual release of responsibility—an instructional framework any teacher can use to help students to be more successful and self-directed learners. To gradually release responsibility is to equip students with what they need to master content and develop new competencies. On a day-to-day basis, it means delivering lessons intentionally structured to incorporate four interrelated phases: * Focused Instruction ("I do it") that sets students up for cognitive apprenticeship by establishing lesson purpose, modeling strategies and skills, and sharing information and insight. * Guided Instruction ("We do it together") that incorporates targeted prompts, cues, and questions to scaffold understanding. * Collaborative Learning ("You do it together") that allows students to consolidate and extend understanding through accountable group tasks built on discussion and cooperative problem solving. * Independent Learning ("You do it alone") that provides students opportunities to practice and apply the skills and knowledge they''ve acquired to create authentic products and ask new questions. Authors Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey detail the components of each phase, sharing proven strategies and real-life examples. You''ll find a variety of useful tips for classroom implementation, along with new guidance on teacher credibility, social-emotional learning, and embedding assessment throughout all four phases. No matter what grade level or subject you teach, Better Learning Through Structured Teaching is an essential resource for improving your practice and empowering your students.

EDUCATION / Leadership

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!

This is Balanced Literacy: Grades K-6 Students learn to read and write best when their teachers balance literacy instruction. But how do you strike the right balance of skills and knowledge, reading and writing, small and whole group instruction, and direct and dialogic instruction, so that all students can learn to their maximum potential? The answer lies in the intentional design of learning activities, purposeful selection of instructional materials, evidence-based teaching methods, and in strategic groupings of students based on assessment data. Together, these create the perfect balance of high impact learning experiences that engage and excite learners. In this hands-on essential guide, best-selling authors Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey, and Nancy Akhavan help you define that balance for your students, lighting the path to implementing balanced literacy in your classroom. Their plan empowers you to integrate evidence-based approaches that include: • Instructional materials comprised of both informational and narrative texts. • The best uses of instructional delivery modes, including direct and dialogic instruction. • Grouping patterns that work best to accomplish learning aims for different learners at different stages. • Instruction in foundational skills and meaning making, including oral language, phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, and writing. • Technology used as a tool for increasing learning of a specific literary process. All the tips and tools you need to realize the goal of balanced literacy learning are included, with classroom videos that show strategies in action. Tap your intuition, collaborate with your peers, and put the research-based strategies embedded in this roadmap to work in your classroom to implement or deepen a strong, successful balanced literacy program. Grow as a reading and writing teacher while leading your students to grow as readers and writers.

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.

This book unpacks the science of how students learn and translates that knowledge into promising principles or practices that can be implemented in the classroom or utilized by students on their own learning journey.

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.

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.

What makes a powerful and results-driven Professional Learning Community (PLC)? The answer is collaborative work that expands the emphasis on student learning and leverages individual teacher efficacy into collective teacher efficacy. PLC+: Better Decisions and Greater Impact by Design calls for strong and effective PLCs plus—and that plus is YOU. Until now, the PLC movement has been focused almost exclusively on students and what they were or were not learning. But keeping student learning at the forefront requires that we also recognize the vital role that you play in the equation of teaching and learning. This means that PLCs must take on two additional challenges: maximizing your individual expertise, while harnessing the power of the collaborative expertise you can develop with your peers. PLC+ is grounded in four cross-cutting themes—a focus on equity of access and opportunity, high expectations for all students, a commitment to building individual self-efficacy and the collective efficacy of the professional learning community and effective team activation and facilitation to move from discussion to action. The PLC+ framework supports educators in considering five essential questions as they work together to improve student learning: 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 benefit? The PLC+ framework leads educators to question practices as well as outcomes. It broadens the focus on student learning to encompass educational equity and teaching efficacy, and, in doing so, it leads educators to plan and implement learning communities that maximize individual expertise while harnessing the power of collaborative efficacy.

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.

In this practical guide, authors Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey offer a variety of strategies that K-12 teachers can use to craft effective, standards-based purpose statements, assignments, and tests across grade levels and content areas.

Written by a science educator and a literacy expert, this resource gives secondary science teachers an approach for developing students'' disciplinary literacy so they can access science content.

This book explains how teachers can use guided instruction (gradually transferring knowledge and the responsibility for learning to students through scaffolds for learning) to boost students to higher levels of understanding and accomplishment.

Fisher & Frey’s answer to close and critical reading Learn the best ways to use text-dependent questions as scaffolds during close reading and the big understandings they yield. But that’s just for starters. Fisher and Frey also include illustrative video, texts and questions, cross-curricular examples, and an online facilitator’s guide—making the two volumes of TDQ a potent professional development tool across all of K–12. The genius of TDQ is the way Fisher and Frey break down the process into four cognitive pathways: What does the text say? How does the text work? What does the text mean? What does the text inspire you to do?

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

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.

Winner of AM&P EXCEL Bronze Award Your Students, My Students, Our Students explores the hard truths of current special education practice and outlines five essential disruptions to the status quo. Authors Lee Ann Jung, Nancy Frey, Douglas Fisher, and Julie Kroener show you how to - Establish a school culture that champions equity and inclusion. - Rethink the long-standing structure of least restrictive environment and the resulting service delivery. - Leverage the strengths of all educators to provide appropriate support and challenge. - Collaborate on the delivery of instruction and intervention. - Honor the aspirations of each student and plan accordingly. To realize authentic and equitable inclusion, we must relentlessly and collectively pursue change. This book—written not for "special educators" or "general educators" but for all educators—addresses the challenges, maps out the solutions, and provides tools and inspiration for the work ahead. Real-life examples of empowerment and success illustrate just what''s possible when educators commit to the belief that every student belongs to all of us and all students deserve learning experiences that will equip them to live full and rewarding lives.

Newly revised and updated throughout, this new Florida Edition has been specially developed to align with Florida’s new B.E.S.T. Standards. What it really means to "read closely." What could Fern Arable, Jay Gatsby, and Winston Churchill possibly have in common? They all need masterful teachers to help students revel in their complexity. And Nancy Frey and Doug Fisher are just the two mentors to help you make that happen. Call it close reading, call it deep reading, call it analytic reading—call it what you like. The point is, it′s a level of understanding that students of any age can achieve with the right kind of instruction. In Rigorous Reading, Nancy and Doug articulate an instructional plan so clearly, and so squarely built on research, that teachers, schools, and districts need look no further. The 5 Access Points Toward Proficiency, Purpose & Modeling: Teachers think aloud to demonstrate critical thinking and how good readers always know why they are reading. Close & Scaffolded Reading Instruction: Teachers engage students in repeated readings and discussions, with text-dependent questions, prompts, and cues to help students delve into an author′s ideas. Collaborative Conversations: Teachers orchestrate collaborative learning to get students in the habit of exercising their analytical thinking in the presence of their peers. An Independent Reading Staircase: Teachers artfully steer students to more challenging books, with strategic bursts of instruction and peer conferences to foster metacognitive awareness. Performance: Teachers offer feedback and assessments that help students demonstrate understanding of text in authentic ways and plan instruction based on student understanding. There′s more . . . Also included are illustrative classroom video clips available via QR codes—making Rigorous Reading the only resource a teacher, school, or district needs to seriously stretch students′ capacity to read and comprehend text.

Every teacher wants engaged students. No student wants to be bored. So why isn’t every classroom teeming with discussion and purposeful activity centered on the day’s learning expectations? Consistently finding a rhythm—where students progress through relevant and challenging content—isn’t easy. But not only is it possible, it can also seem effortless when teachers have the right design for genuinely engaging students. Classroom dynamics are inherently complex, as multifaceted as the personalities in the room, so where should a teacher begin? Engagement by Design gives you a framework for making daily improvements and highlights the opportunities that will bring the greatest benefit in the least amount of time. You’ll learn about relationships, clarity, and challenge, including How getting to know each student a little better can fundamentally change the classroom dynamics—and how to do that What it means to be an "intentionally inviting" teacher, and how it gives you an advantage in creating an environment conducive to learning How to bring more clarity to key aspects of your work—and how it can reap substantial rewards for you and your students How opening the culture to student voice—listening to students—is linked to academic motivation, and how to use it to shape your day-to-day planning The best ways to increase learning for your students, boosting the proportional value of their school year Understanding engagement—and actively pursuing it—can make all the difference between forging a real connection with students and having a classroom that’s simply going through the motions. Engagement by Design puts you in control of managing your classroom’s success and increasing student learning, one motivated student at a time.

Join Nancy Frey and Douglas Fisher as they outline a clear-cut, realistic, and rewarding approach to formative assessment. They explain how four discrete steps work in tandem to create a seamless, comprehensive formative assessment system—one that has no beginning and no end. This ongoing approach enhances an active give-and-take relationship between teachers and students to promote learning. Where am I going? Step 1: Feed-up ensures that students understand the purpose of an assignment, task, or lesson, including how they will be assessed. Where am I now? Step 2: Checking for understanding guides instruction and helps determine if students are making progress toward their goals. How am I doing? Step 3: Feedback provides students with valuable and constructive information about their successes and needs. Where am I going next? Step 4: Feed-forward builds on the feedback from step 3 and uses performance data to facilitate student achievement. Dozens of real-life scenarios demonstrate how to apply these steps in your classroom, always focusing on the presence or absence of student learning to guide the action. By enabling teachers and students alike to see more clearly what they need to do for learning to be successful, this approach builds students'' competence, confidence, and understanding. No matter what grade level you teach, The Formative Assessment Action Plan will help you make better use of assessment data so you can more quickly adjust instruction to keep every student on the path to success.

Data. Does the word make you cringe? Does it evoke feelings of guilt? Are you unsure how to distill it and use it effectively? Grab this book and learn how to empower yourself and your school community with information gleaned from your school''s data. Experienced educators and authors offer simple instructions that can help focus school improvement efforts and result in increasing teacher expertise—a factor that positively affects the quality of life for students long after they have left the classroom. Accepting responsibility for such far-reaching influence requires educators to adopt instructional improvement as a standard by which a school needs to operate and as a means to collaborate and interact with one another. More than that, though, instructional improvement is an important component of successful schools.

Stop apathy in its tracks with the 5 C’s of engagement Disengagement, disenchantment, distress—the three "D’s" of many post-pandemic schools. If we are to find our way back from this brink, every student, teacher, and leader must relearn how to lean in. It’s time to focus, know one another, and stop chasing so many initiatives. It’s time to shake things up so learners want to participate. From faculty meetings to student conferences, casual greetings to grading, you can learn to use practices that most powerfully reflect the Five C’s of Engagement: Connections — feeling known, valued, and tethered to others Conditions — being able to learn in a stable environment in which expectations are high Challenge — engaging in an endeavor knowing your "high jumps" in terms of intellectual and creative risks will be supported Control — the privilege of learning with a balance between ownership and support Collaboration — deepening one’s knowledge and identity as a learner by being skillful at relationship-building Our students are looking to us as the grownups in the room to model what it looks like to belong, believe, and balance high expectations with compassionate support. With Confronting the Crisis of Engagement in hand, you have the guide to make that happen.

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.

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.

First, let’s commend ourselves: how in the midst of a pandemic we faculty stepped up at record speed to teach in such a foreign learning environment. Try we did, adapt we did, and learn we did. But to be clear, and we already recognize this, this past spring was less about distance learning and more about crisis teaching. This time around we have the opportunity to be much more purposeful and intentional, and that’s where The Distance Learning Playbook for College and University Instruction will prove absolutely indispensable. Much more than a collection of cool tools and apps, The Distance Learning Playbook for College and University Instruction mobilizes decades of Visible Learning® research to reveal those evidence-based strategies that work best in an online environment. Supplemented by video footage and opportunities to self-assess and reflect, the book addresses every dynamic that must be in place for students to learn, even at a distance: Faculty-student relationships from a distance Teacher credibility from a distance Teacher clarity from a distance Engaging tasks from a distance Planning learning experiences from a distance Feedback, assessment, and grading from a distance Keeping the focus on learning, from a distance or otherwise What does our post-COVID future hold? "We suspect," Fisher, Frey, Almarode, and Hattie write, "it will include increased amounts of distance learning. In the meantime, let’s seize on what we have learned to improve post-secondary education in any format, whether face-to-face or from a distance." "We are all still active faculty members, committed to teaching, scholarship, and service. The unexpected transition to remote learning doesn’t mean we no longer know how to teach. We can still impact the lives of our students and know that we made a difference. The Distance Learning Playbook for College and University Instruction will show you how." ~Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey, John Almarode, and John Hattie

Newly revised and updated throughout, this new Texas Edition has been specially developed to align with the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills standards. What it really means to "read closely." What could Fern Arable, Jay Gatsby, and Winston Churchill possibly have in common? They all need masterful teachers to help students revel in their complexity. And Nancy Frey and Doug Fisher are just the two mentors to help you make that happen. Call it close reading, call it deep reading, call it analytic reading - call it what you like. The point is, it′s a level of understanding that students of any age can achieve with the right kind of instruction. In Rigorous Reading, Nancy and Doug articulate an instructional plan so clearly, and so squarely built on research, that teachers, schools, and districts need look no further. The 5 Access Points Toward Proficiency Purpose & Modeling: Teachers think aloud to demonstrate critical thinking and how good readers always know why they are reading. Close & Scaffolded Reading Instruction: Teachers engage students in repeated readings and discussions, with text-dependent questions, prompts, and cues to help students delve into an author′s ideas. Collaborative Conversations: Teachers orchestrate collaborative learning to get students in the habit of exercising their analytical thinking in the presence of their peers. An Independent Reading Staircase: Teachers artfully steer students to more challenging books, with strategic bursts of instruction and peer conferences to foster metacognitive awareness. Performance: Teachers offer feedback and assessments that help students demonstrate understanding of text in authentic ways and plan instruction based on student understanding. There′s more . . . Also included are illustrative classroom video clips available via QR codes along with an online Facilitator′s Guide with PowerPoints--making Rigorous Reading the only resource a teacher, school, or district needs to seriously stretch students′ capacity to read and comprehend text.

"This book is a follow up to Visible Learning for Literacy and delves more deeply into one critical component of any Visible Learning classroom: the student who has the ability to self-assess. Based on extensive research and with highly practical classroom scenarios and tools, this resource will help teachers learn how to help their students self-assess and flourish into their own teachers"--

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.

High levels of engagement—it’s not an impossible dream. But to attain it we need to focus on what galvanizes learning, and ensure we are offering the tools and mindsets with which students can lean in. In this playbook, an ace team of educators give us the goods to guide self-starting learners. Nine modules show us how to: Cohere standards, success criteria, tasks, and goals so students can travel clear pathways Offer tools that allow learners to recognize the gap between their current performance and the expected performance, and select strategies to close that gap Talk with students about engagement as a continuum, and that there are actions they can take to heighten their buy-in to any endeavor Stress-test our lesson plans to ensure students can discuss, debate, create and problem-solve around highly relevant content Use lots of low-stakes assessment and feedback routines to develop effective collaboration that doesn’t depend on us. Our job as teachers is to guide learning experiences that build knowledge and self-efficacy. But from there, we need to stay on the sidelines and let students play. Only then will they develop the muscle to persevere, the strategic actions to excel, and the confidence to make our curriculum the springboard of their own dreams and goals.

A guide to fostering academic discourse in classrooms regardless of subject area, with a focus on English language learners at all levels.

A teacher presents a lesson, and at the end asks students if they understand the material. The students nod and say they get it. Later, the teacher is dismayed when many of the students fail a test on the material. Why aren’t students getting it? And, just as important, why didn’t the teacher recognize the problem? In Checking for Understanding, Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey show how to increase students’ understanding with the help of creative formative assessments. When used regularly, formative assessments enable every teacher to determine what students know and what they still need to learn. Fisher and Frey explore a variety of engaging activities that check for and increase understanding, including interactive writing, portfolios, multimedia presentations, audience response systems, and much more. This new 2nd edition of Checking for Understanding has been updated to reflect the latest thinking in formative assessment and to show how the concepts apply in the context of Fisher and Frey’s work on gradual release of responsibility, guided instruction, formative assessment systems, data analysis, and quality instruction. Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey are the creators of the Framework for Intentional and Targeted (FIT) Teaching™. They are also the authors of numerous ASCD books, including The Formative Assessment Action Plan: Practical Steps to More Successful Teaching and Learning and the best-selling Enhancing RTI: How to Ensure Success with Effective Classroom Instruction and Intervention.

Classroom management is traditionally a matter of encouraging good behavior and discouraging bad by doling out rewards and punishments. But studies show that when educators empower students to address and correct misbehavior among themselves, positive results are longer lasting and more wide reaching. In Better Than Carrots or Sticks, longtime educators and best-selling authors Dominique Smith, Douglas Fisher, and Nancy Frey provide a practical blueprint for creating a cooperative and respectful classroom climate in which students and teachers work through behavioral issues together. After a comprehensive overview of the roots of the restorative practices movement in schools, the authors explain how to * Establish procedures and expectations for student behavior that encourage the development of positive interpersonal skills; * Develop a nonconfrontational rapport with even the most challenging students; and * Implement conflict resolution strategies that prioritize relationship building and mutual understanding over finger-pointing and retribution. Rewards and punishments may help to maintain order in the short term, but they''re at best superficially effective and at worst counterproductive. This book will prepare teachers at all levels to ensure that their classrooms are welcoming, enriching, and constructive environments built on collective respect and focused on student achievement.

Are we missing the opportunity to reach struggling learners from the very beginning? Are we hastily—and unnecessarily— referring students to intervention programs that substitute for high-quality core instruction? What if we could eliminate the need for intervention programs in the first place? Response to Intervention (RTI) programs are only as powerful and effective as the core instruction on which they''re built. High-quality instruction, then, is the key ingredient that helps all students excel, and it''s at the heart of Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey''s unique approach to the RTI model — Response to Instruction and Intervention, or RTI2. In Enhancing RTI, the authors argue that students learn best when classroom instruction and supplemental intervention mirror each other in both content and purpose. This book provides K-12 teachers with the knowledge and tools they need to implement a cohesive RTI2 system that helps all children learn by proactively addressing their needs. To this end, you will learn how to * Integrate and align core instruction and supplemental intervention. * Assess your own classroom instruction, in addition to your students'' responses to it. * Strengthen existing school improvement efforts within an RTI2 framework. * Utilize systematic feedback to raise student achievement. Fisher and Frey maintain that the RTI2 model not only promotes active student learning, but it also, when done right, promotes a culture of hardwired excellence at all levels of instruction.

Engage, Empower, Educate: Unleash the Potential of Multilingual Learners What′s your "why" for being a teacher? Unlike other professionals, teachers often have strong reasons for why they teach and a clear sense of purpose. Acknowledging and understanding this purpose helps educators to not just do what they do but do it well. This illustrated guide was designed for all classroom teachers to emphasize the unique challenges and opportunities that arise in multilingual learner education. Using Simon Sinek′s Golden Circle theory to understand and elevate that sense of purpose, the book is organized into three parts: the why, the how, and the what of teaching multilingual learners. You will learn The benefits and goals of a multilingual education How to design learning experiences for multilingual learners and how to respond when students are not learning Culturally inclusive pedagogy and how it positively supports the identities of your students How to foster oral language skills, build vocabulary, and increase students’ word knowledge How to engage families and caregivers and create a sense of belonging in your classroom And so much more! With a clear understanding of the research-based tools, techniques, and instructional strategies described and illustrated in the book, a solid sense of purpose, and a dash of grace for you and your multilingual learners, you will be well on your way to creating productive and positive learning opportunities that meet the best interests of all students, families, educators, and the community.

Discover proven methods to enhance teaching and learning schoolwide. Identify questions educators should ask to guarantee a positive classroom culture where students learn from each other, not just teachers. Explore ways to adapt learning in response to students’ individual needs, and gain strategies and tools to create clear learning targets, prepare effective lessons, and successfully assess instruction.

Unlock the secrets to student achievement with purposeful learning and clear expectations On a clear day, you can learn forever— that’s the adapted lyric you’ll be happily humming once you’ve covered this playbook, because you will have mastered using learning intentions and success criteria, the twin engines of Teacher Clarity. This template-filled guide shows you how to own it, do it, and live it—and your students will be more successful as a result. In this fully revised edition, this succinct, smart, and swift book’s nine learning modules take you systematically through a process that begins and ends with standards. With abundant and all new examples that span grade levels, planning templates for every step, key professional learning questions, new videos, revised success criteria and relevance sections, and the latest research, you have the most practical and up-to-date planner for designing and delivering highly effective instruction: Identifying Concepts and Skills Sequencing Learning Progressions Elaborating Learning Intentions Crafting Success Criteria Modifying Learning Intentions to Include Language Expectations Determining the Relevance of the Learning Designing Assessment Opportunities Creating Meaningful Learning Experiences Establishing Mastery of Standards Designed for PLCs or independent teacher use, The Teacher Clarity Playbook helps practitioners align lessons, objectives, and outcomes of learning seamlessly, so that the classroom hours flow productively for everyone. For any teacher striving to be more organized and have stronger relationships with students, this is the book that shows you how.

Fisher & Frey’s answer to close and critical reading Learn the best ways to use text-dependent questions as scaffolds during close reading and the big understandings they yield. But that’s just for starters. Fisher and Frey also include illustrative video, texts and questions, cross-curricular examples, and an online facilitator’s guide—making the two volumes of TDQ a potent professional development tool across all of K–12. The genius of TDQ is the way Fisher and Frey break down the process into four cognitive pathways: What does the text say? How does the text work? What does the text mean? What does the text inspire you to do?

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.

What is FIT Teaching? What is a FIT Teacher? The Framework for Intentional and Targeted Teaching®—or FIT Teaching®—is a research-based, field-tested, and experience-honed process that captures the essentials of the best educational environments. In contrast to restrictive pedagogical prescriptions or formulas, FIT Teaching empowers teachers to adapt the most effective planning, instructional, and assessment practices to their particular context in order to move their students’ learning from where it is now to where it should be. To be a FIT Teacher is to make a heroic commitment to learning—not just to the learning of every student in the classroom, but to the professional learning necessary to grow, inspire, and lead. This book introduces the powerful FIT Teaching Tool, which harnesses the FIT Teaching approach and presents a detailed continuum of growth and leadership. It’s a close-up look at what intentional and targeting teaching is and what successful teachers do to * Plan with purpose * Cultivate a learning climate * Instruct with intention * Assess with a system * Impact student learning Designed to foster discussion among educators about what they are doing in the classroom, the FIT Teaching Tool can be used by teachers for self-assessment; by teacher peers for collegial feedback in professional learning communities; by instructional coaches to focus on the skills teachers need both onstage and off; and by school leaders to highlight their teachers’ strengths and value. Join authors Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey, and Stefani Arzonetti Hite for an examination of what makes great teachers great, and see how educators at all grade levels and all levels of experience are taking intentional steps toward enhanced professional practice.