Book Review

Best Practice: Today’s Standards for Teaching & Learning in Americas’ Schools

Zemelman, S., Daniels, H., & Hyde, A. A. (2005). Best practice: Today's standards for teaching and learning in America's schools. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

About the Authors:

Steven Zemelman is the Director of Professional Development at Leadership for Quality Education which is a school reform organization based in Chicago. He also directs the Illinois Writing Project.

Harvey Daniels is a former city and suburban teacher and is currently professor of education at National Louis University in Chicago. He is the founding director of the Walloon Institute and a Heinemann Professional Development provider as well as the co- author of some other books as well.

Arthur Hyde is a professor of mathematics education at National Louis University in Chicago. He started his career as a high school math teacher in Philadelphia and received his doctorate in curriculum and instruction from the University of Pennsylvania. He is currently involved with professional development programs in the Chicago area.

Back Cover Comments:

Best Practice has promoted instructional excellence for the past 10 years. This is the third edition with 45% new material.

The goal is to make the big ideas of education accessible by identifying the teaching methods that help students to learn.

This book explains how to implement ideas in the classroom and demonstrates what exemplary instruction looks like.

This edition recognizes changes in American education and provides updated teaching methods that are standards based and demonstrates how engaging and interactive classroom instruction is the most effective way to meet those standards.

Methods that are student centered, democratic, collaborative, experiential and challenging will always be the key to high quality teaching and authentic learning.

Highlights:

Teachers need to increase reading good literature aloud to students, provide more time for independent reading (even if it is only 10 minutes) and allow students to choose their own reading material. A fantastic idea is to have all students recommend books to their peers.

There should be writing before and after readings with social and collaborative activities that encourage discussion, interaction and critical thinking. There needs to be a balance of easy and difficult material.

Teachers must help students find real purposes to write and real audiences to reach. When the topic matters, students work hard and invest time and effort. The best learning occurs when students attempt actual communication and see how real listeners and readers react.

When the teacher is the only audience, students are deprived of diverse feedback that is needed to cultivate their motivation. Students need to take ownership of their writing and that means that they need to have more control and choices about their topics. This encourages them to look more critically at their work. When students take ownership of their writing there is actually more teaching and learning going on than before and it is focused on higher level thinking. 

Techniques to promote decision making and authentic writing include small group collaboration and peer evaluation and one on one conference with the teacher where they ask in depth questions about the students thinking process and ideas. Teachers must make the classroom a supportive setting that includes an active exchange of ideas.

Teachers need to model all stages of the writing process including drafting, revising and sharing and it benefits if they provide personal information about their own writing process. Teachers need to share their own work!

Lake Forest High School in Lake Forest, IL overhauled their English department and the model that they created has been wildly successful and a fantastic example for me to keep in mind in my own class. They integrated the traditional program with a student centered writers workshop to focus on reading and writing. Class size was reduced and teachers teach 4 classes instead of 5. The extra hour is dedicated to individual student conferences. 14 days students spend reading self-selected books and another 14 are spent writing about topics of their choosing. Conferences explore their work and ideas in depth and students are expected to complete portfolios as demonstration of their learning. The difference in this program is that students really began to care about their work whereas they had previously just cared about their grades. Most students would be upset if their work was just reduced to a grade because they value the feedback and responses because what they wrote was authentic and personal. Freedom to explore personal experiences gives them a writing power that they had not had before.  The workshops are not only an important tool in developing writing but also a creative outlet for emotions and ideas.  Students began to view writing not as a chore but as a sport.

Teachers need to use evaluation efficiently! Red markings all over a page are demoralizing to students and time consuming to teachers. We need to focus on fewer errors at a time, provide more oral feedback and get students involved in their own assessment and goal setting. We should only officially grade fully revised work. Students need to write a lot! Research has shown that the traditional way of intensively marking every error on a page does not promote improvement. Rather, a more productive solution is a brief conference and the marking of a sample paragraph for just one type of problem because it results in more authentic learning. It is then up to the student to take responsibility for the rest of the paper.

Good teachers target learning within a student rather than just trying to achieve the correct answers or manuscript.

Tech Tool Recommendation:

Kahoot!

 

Kahoot! is a game based learning platform and a multipurpose tool that students can use to create in-class questionnaires and quizzes. This is convenient for obtaining data for graphing assignments, data for research essays, and feedback from their classmates. Kahoot is compatible with multiple devices and has a game-like feel that will help keep students interested. I use Kahoot for formative assessment and I am looking forward to implementing it specifically for vocabulary work. It is engaging, best used in group settings and students can be a part of the designing of their own assessments. In addition, they can share their own Kahoot to deepen understanding, mastery and purpose, as well as engage in peer-led discussions. Kahoot promotes discussion and pedagogical impact which is social learning at its finest