Assn/Supervision & Curric. Dev.

Brain-friendly strategies for the inclusion classroom; insights from a neurologist and classroom teacher.

Neurologist and middle-school teacher Willis describes a number of strategies that educators in inclusion classrooms can use to engage students with and without learning disabilities. These instructional practices draw upon findings from recent research on the learning brain. A number of sample lesson plans for inclusion class activities are provided in the appendix, along with a glossary and an extensive bibliography. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Building literacy in social studies; strategies for improving comprehension and critical thinking.

Ogle (reading and language, National-Louis U.) et al. discuss the conceptual basis and strategies for teaching students social studies and developing the skills needed to become informed citizens. Strategies are research-based and relate to the reading process, fostering engaged learning, vocabulary development for older students, classroom organization, and civic engagement. Each begins and ends with a fictitious classroom scenario that demonstrates ineffective strategies and a model of those discussed. The final three chapters address strategies for teaching about textbook literacy, primary and secondary documents, and newspaper and magazine literacy. These incorporate instructions on modeling the strategy, how to explain it to the student, and models and graphic organizers. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Improving student learning one teacher at a time.

This volume outlines how teachers can use curriculum, instructional planning and delivery, assessment, feedback, record keeping, and reporting to improve student learning. Pollock presents modifications of fundamental practices that have evolved from the work of educators and theorists such as Madeline C. Hunter and J.F. Herbart. Each chapter also addresses computer software and information-sharing advances in teaching and perspectives of educators who have used her approach. Pollock is the director of an education consulting firm, an adjunct faculty member at several colleges, and coauthor of Classroom Instruction That Works. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Principals who learn; asking the right questions, seeking the best solutions.

Former principals Kohm and Nance explain tools for school administrators that will help them to become collaborators and learners rather than top-down, authoritarian leaders. They describe how shifts in their own thinking changed their leadership process and how other principals can benefit from the ideas, which are organized around four themes: listening to all voices, which emphasizes including all perspectives; seeing possibilities; asking the right questions, which stresses that leadership is the responsibility of everyone in an organization; and creating collaborative cultures, which focuses on changes in organizational structure that create supportive learning. In explaining these themes, they draw on ideas from books by Peter Senge, Margaret Wheatley, Linda Lambert, and Michael Fullan, and discuss communication, assessing risk, resource allocation, and systems thinking, among other topics. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Taking action on adolescent literacy; an implementation guide for school leaders.

Checked out the college board scores of schools in your neighborhood lately? Chances are you will be unpleasantly surprised, unless you have previously checked out the ways in which literacy has been short-changed in current curriculum. Here those in a position to influence curriculum learn about ways to take literacy, including reading, writing, speaking and critical thinking skills from lip-service status to the core of all curriculum. The authors, all academics with specialties in aspects of literacy, advocate integrating literacy actively so students who excel benefit as much as those who struggle. They describe how to build a school-wide action plan, support teachers, use data to make decisions about teaching and learning, build leadership capacity and allocate resources to support literacy. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)