Teachers cannot become great unless they are given the time, support, and tools to grow in their professional practice. Written for teachers, coaches, and educational leaders, this resource offers a paradigm-shifting approach to teacher development and evaluation. The authors share research-backed steps for improvement, outline the principles for…

This toolkit, developed by Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) Central in collaboration with York Public Schools in Nebraska, provides a process and tools to help teachers use data from their classroom assessments to evaluate promising practices. The toolkit provides teachers with guidance on how to deliberately apply and study one classroom…

This manual is intended to assist teachers in implementing a comprehensive approach to teaching academic vocabulary at the classroom, school, and district levels. Using the manual's list of 7,923 terms, school and district teams can choose the most important vocabulary terms they want to teach to all students. All vocabulary terms are extracted…

Everyone knows that students from disadvantaged backgrounds, who are not well prepared for school, have the toughest time making the grade. But what hasn't been so clear is what schools can do about it ... until now. Here at last is a book that spells out how to overcome the deficiencies that hamper the achievement of so many students. Learn why…

Marzano's Taxonomy--the most current and comprehensive guide in 50 years to define the new standard for education--is a resource for all directors of curriculum and instruction, directors of staff development, principals, and teachers. Developed by Robert Marzano and John S. Kendall, internationally recognized experts in the development and…

Implementing the action steps from ASCD's best-seller "The Art and Science of Teaching" is much easier when you use this in-depth resource for workshops, professional learning communities, teacher training, and self-help. Hundreds of samples, guidelines, checklists, and activities help teachers in all grades and subjects become instant experts on…

Walla Walla Schools (Washington) designed a demonstration project using the Marzano thinking skills model, which emphasizes learning preparation, content thinking, and basic reasoning skills. Placing selected thinking skills within specific curriculum areas and grade levels proved so successful that teachers then collaborated on a content-free…

Concepts, propositions, proposition sets, and process patterns are discussed as elements of a model of language-related basic thinking skills. The term "concept" is defined and illustrated, and a model of concept attainment is briefly described. Illustrations are offered for a set of 430 basic concept clusters intended for use as a…

Intended for elementary school teachers, researchers, and materials developers, this book presents a cluster approach to vocabulary instruction, in which words are taught in semantically related groups. Over 7,000 words from elementary school textbooks have been organized into 61 instructional clusters, each containing two levels of subclusters…

Acknowledging a growing national awareness of the need for direct instruction in higher order thinking skills within public education, this paper describes an instructional model for reinforcing thinking skills in the classroom, kindergarten through grade 12. Following an introduction justifying the model's reliance on the processing of…

This book is designed to introduce active or preservice teachers to the new advances in understanding of the reading and writing processes and to show them how to apply this knowledge to enhance literacy skills in elementary through high school levels. An introduction opens with two case illustrations of different classes with different approaches…

This report provides K-12 educators with instructional strategies that research shows have the greatest likelihood of positively affecting student learning. The 12 chapters include: (1) "Introduction"; (2) "Identifying Similarities and Differences (comparing, classifying, creating metaphors, and creating analogies); (3)…