Improving Student Learning One Teacher at a Time

by Jane E. Pollock

If you?ve ever taught a lesson or run an activity that you thought would teach something or hoped would lead to improved learning, then here's a book that will replace that uncertainty with a clear and confident plan for every class. Jane E. Pollock explains the four critical areas of teaching and describes how you can review your practice and revise what you do to align with a model for success. To execute your plan, the book offers step-by-step instructions that include: * Starting off with a curriculum document that defines your learning targets and explains what students are expected to achieve * Using a 6-step lesson planning process that prepares students, taps their prior knowledge, and cements new ideas and skills * Choosing a set of classroom assessment tasks that yield evidence of learning * Setting up your grade book with benchmarks for scoring student performance rather than using grades or point systems Throughout the book, individual teachers share their experiences with using this approach to increase student success and their own personal satisfaction.

Genres: Education, Teaching, Nonfiction

152 pages, Paperback

First published April 15, 2007

About the author

Jane E. (Ellen) Pollock

Reviews

[Tracey · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a great book for teachers who need to revamp their instruction. Many schools have been implementing these strategies so those teachers won't find this book too enlightening. I do plan to use this book in the fall when I go back as a checklist for reminders of things to do.

Replacing Hope with Certainty

Learning Targets
- Lesson Plans
- Unit plans
- Yearly plans

Instructional Planning and Delivery
Schema:
- 5 Instructional Steps: Prepare, Present, Associate, Systematize, Apply
Use the abbreviations in your plan book so you address them in each lesson in Sci/SS, Writing, Classmeetings,
Set the goal
APK - Access prior knowledge
NI - Acquire new information
APP - Apply knowledge
GEN - Generalize or summarize
HW - Homework
Feedback, feedback, feedback

Varied Classroom Assessments

Feedback, Record Keeping, and Reporting

[Brendan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is not super clear. I don't disagree with anything. I think it's probably mostly right. I tmakes me feel slightly anxious about some stuff that I'm not doing. Mostly I read this for the section on the Teaching Scheme for Mastery Learning. There wasn't enough here on that for me. I wanted more. Then there was a whole section on gradebooks which was difficult because it was written for Americans and their gradebooks are very different from ours. So it partially solves problems that don't exist much in the Australian context. I think there are some good ideas here, but I need to think about them more...

[Anthony · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good book. I wish was longer though.

[Lindsay · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book didn't go into very much detail on most things. I did however like all the teacher anecdotes.