Pirates are on a constant quest for riches, but pirate leaders seek even greater rewards: Amazing schools, engaged students, and empowered educators who know they are making a difference. In Lead Like a Pirate, education leaders Shelley Burgess and Beth Houf map out the character traits necessary to captain a school or district. You'll learn where to find the treasure that's already in your classrooms and schools - and how to bring out the very best in your educators.

Finland shocked the world when its 15-year-olds scored highest on the first Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a set of tests touted for evaluating critical-thinking skills in math, science, and reading. That was in 2001; but even today, this tiny Nordic nation continues to amaze. How does Finnish education - with short school days, light homework loads, and little standardized testing - produce students who match the PISA scores of high-powered, stressed-out kids in Asia?

In 2008, John Hattie’s groundbreaking book Visible Learning synthesized the results of more than 15 years research involving millions of students and represented the biggest ever collection of evidence-based research into what actually works in schools to improve learning. Visible Learning for Teachers takes the next step and brings those groundbreaking concepts to a completely new audience.

Rich tasks, collaborative work, number talks, problem-based learning, direct instruction…with so many possible approaches, how do we know which ones work the best? In Visible Learning for Mathematics, six acclaimed educators assert it’s not about which one - it’s about when - and show you how to design high-impact instruction so all students demonstrate more than a year’s worth of mathematics learning for a year spent in school.  

The original Visible Learning research concluded that one of the most important influencers of student achievement is how teachers think about learning and their own role. In Ten Mindframes for Visible Learning, John Hattie and Klaus Zierer define the 10 behaviors or mindframes that teachers need to adopt in order to maximize student success.
 

When we learn, we change what we believe and how we interact with the world. This changes who we are as people and what we can achieve. Many people grow up being told they are ‘not a maths person’ or perhaps ‘not smart’. They come to believe their potential is limited. Now, however, the latest science has revealed that our identities are constantly in flux; when we learn new things, we can change our identities, increase our potential and broaden our capacity to receive new information. 

In this abridged audiobook version of his best-selling title, Paul Dix talks you through the book’s hugely influential behavior management approach - an approach whereby expectations and boundaries are exemplified by people, not by a thousand rules that nobody can recall. The testing, watch out for and nuggets sections have been removed for this audiobook, but the indispensable advice on how to involve all staff in developing a whole school ethos built on kindness, empathy, and understanding remains.

The Writing Revolution (TWR) provides a clear method of instruction that you can use no matter what subject or grade level you teach. The model, also known as The Hochman Method, has demonstrated, over and over, that it can turn weak writers into strong communicators by focusing on specific techniques that match their needs and by providing them with targeted feedback. Insurmountable as the challenges faced by many students may seem, TWR can make a dramatic difference.

Powerful Teaching: Unleash the Science of Learning empowers educators to harness rigorous research on how students learn and unleash it in their classrooms. Drawing on a 15-year scientist-teacher collaboration, more than 100 years of research on learning, and rich experiences from educators in K-12 and higher education, the authors present highly accessible step-by-step guidance on how to transform teaching with four essential strategies: Retrieval practice, spacing, interleaving, and feedback-driven metacognition. 

In this controversial new audiobook, the author offers a thought-provoking critique of educational orthodoxy. Drawing on her recent experience of teaching in challenging schools, she shows, through a wide range of examples and case studies, just how much classroom practice contradicts basic scientific principles. She examines seven widely held beliefs which are holding back pupils and teachers.

Kids walk into schools full of wonder and questions. How you, as an educator, respond to students' natural curiosity can help further their own exploration and shape the way they learn today and in the future. The traditional system of education requires students to hold their questions and compliantly stick to the scheduled curriculum. But our job as educators is to provide new and better opportunities for our students. It's time to recognize that compliance doesn't foster innovation, encourage critical thinking, or inspire creativity.

Kids are naturally curious, but when it comes to school it seems like their minds are turned off. Why is it that they can remember the smallest details from their favorite television programs, yet miss the most obvious questions on their history test? Cognitive scientist Dan Willingham has focused his acclaimed research on the biological and cognitive basis of learning and has a deep understanding of the daily challenges faced by classroom teachers.

We differentiate instruction to honor the reality of the students we teach. They are energetic and outgoing. They are quiet and curious. They are confident and self-doubting. More of them than ever speak a different language at home. They learn at different rates and in different ways. And they all come together in our academically diverse classrooms. Written as a practical guide for teachers, this audio edition of Carol Ann Tomlinson’s groundbreaking work covers the fundamentals of differentiation and provides additional guidelines and new strategies for how to go about it.

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 wider reaching.

In the second edition of this renowned book, you will find pearls of wisdom, heartfelt advice, and inspiration from one of the nation's leading authorities on staff motivation, teacher leadership, and principal effectiveness. With wit and understanding, Todd Whitaker describes the beliefs, behaviors, attitudes, and interactions of great teachers and explains what they do differently.