Focus: Elevating the Essentials to Radically Improve Student Learning / Edition 1

by Mike Schmoker

Overview

Bestselling author Mike Schmoker describes a plan for radically improving student learning that is built on three core elements: a focused and coherent curriculum (what we teach); clear, prioritized lessons (how we teach); and purposeful reading and writing, or authentic literacy.

With this "less is more" philosophy, educators can help students learn content at a deeper level, develop greater critical thinking skills, and discover more clearly how content-area concepts affect their lives and the world around them. Both a call to action and a blueprint for creating more effective classrooms, Focus: Elevating the Essentials for Radically Improved Student Learning will challenge your assumptions about schooling and show how educators who have embraced this approach quickly achieved spectacular results.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781416611301
Publisher:	Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development
Publication date:	11/21/2011
Series:	Leadership & Learning Center Series
Pages:	229
Sales rank:	420,768
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Section I First Things First: What We Teach, How We Teach-and Literacy

Chapter 1 The Importance of Simplicity, Clarity, and Priority 9

Chapter 2 What We Teach 25

Chapter 3 How We Teach 50

Section II Curriculum, Instruction, and Literacy in the Content Areas

Chapter 4 English Language Arts Made Simple 93

A Brief Note on Textbooks 128

Chapter 5 Social Studies with Reading and Writing at the Core 131

Chapter 6 Redefining Inquiry in Science 163

Chapter 7 Making Math Meaningful 194

Conclusion: This Time, Let's Do It 217

References 219

Index 229

About the Author 237