What Principals Need to Know

This accessible resource offers practical strategies for increasing student achievement in science and fostering a school environment that supports the science curriculum. Assess your own science programs, and discover tools to evaluate teachers' preparedness for science instruction. With checklists, assessments, and reproducibles that you can share with teachers, parents, and other stakeholders, discover how to improve science instruction and sustain a strong science program.

This 10th anniversary sequel to the author's best-selling book, Professional Learning Communities at WorkTM: Best Practices for Enhancing Student Achievement (DuFour & Eaker, 1998), is a merger of research and practice. It offers educators specific, practical recommendations for transforming their schools into PLCs so their students learn at higher levels and their profession becomes more rewarding, satisfying, and fulfilling. The authors examine research, practices, and standards in education, as well as organizational development, change processes, leadership, and successful practices outside of education. They provide core information on the PLC concept, along with new insights gleaned from their work with leaders in education and in real schools and districts across North America. They encourage educators to undertake the challenging but rewarding process of building their collective capacity to create schools and districts that operate as high-performing PLCs. This volume features a detailed chapter on the rise and fall of school reform, information on assessment, strategies for intervention and enrichment, and chapters on the roles of classroom teachers, the principal, the central office, and parents and the community in a PLC.

Principals will discover practical strategies for strengthening and improving reading programs using the foundation established by the authors' six truths of reading instruction. Explore comprehensive, multifaceted instruction techniques, as well as additional steps you can take to support students directly. Identify and troubleshoot problems your teachers may face, and gain valuable approaches to topics such as reading comprehension, vocabulary and literacy, and phonics and fluency.

Principals are instrumental in the teacher's understanding of a differentiated classroom. This valuable resource gives administrators the knowledge and skills needed to enable teachers to implement and sustain differentiation. Learn information and strategies to jump-start, guide, and coach teachers as they respond to the needs of diverse students, including students with special needs, students with attention deficit disorder, gifted learners, and English learners. Benefits: Understand the concept of differentiated instruction and the theory that supports it; Discover why schools need differentiated instruction to ensure student success; Learn how differentiated instruction serves all students--including those with special education needs, gifted students, students with attention challenges, and ELs; Understand how teachers can build their students individual learning profiles, including how to identify learning styles and preferences; Identify specific learning strategies that teachers can use in the classroom for differentiated instruction; Lead differentiation by supporting and encouraging teachers, providing access to professional development opportunities, and establishing partnerships.

Ensure a challenging mathematics experience for every learner, every day. This must-have resource offers support and encouragement for improved mathematics achievement across every grade level of your school. With an emphasis on Principles and Standards for School Mathematics and Common Core State Standards, you'll cover the importance of mathematics content, learning and instruction, and mathematics assessment.

Designed to meet the unique needs of principals, this brief, accessible guide examines the basics of brain-compatible learning. Dr. Sousa guides principals through a quick tour of brain structures and reveals the latest discoveries of how the brain works. With helpful examples and figures, the book presents applications of educational neuroscience to build productive and successful brain-compatible classrooms. The basic overview of educational neuroscience presented in this book is designed to help principals construct meaningful professional development that enhances teachers' knowledge and skills about brain-compatible learning. With Dr. Sousa's guidance, principals will be able to establish a positive classroom and school climate, and build more productive and successful problem-solving teams.