Methods that matter
Everyone talks about "best practice" teaching—but what does it actually look like in the classroom? Fully updating and expanding Methods that Matter (Stenhouse, 1998), this new edition adds the stories of twenty more celebrated teachers, including James Beane, Donna Ogle, Franki Sibberson, and others from around the country. A brand-new chapter focuses on reading as thinking, detailing the ways teachers can nurture strategic readers. Teaching the Best Practice Way presents seven basic teaching structures that make classrooms more active, experiential, collaborative, democratic, and cognitive, while simultaneously meeting "best practice" standards across subject areas and throughout the grades. (K-12) 360 pp.
Each section begins with an essay outlining one key method, providing its historical background and research results, and then describing the structure's vital features. Next, several teachers representing different grade levels and school communities explain how they adopted the basic model, adapted it to their students' needs, and made it their own.
A brand-new chapter focuses on reading as thinking, detailing the ways teachers can nurture strategic readers—readers who not only deeply understand the printed materials they encounter in school, but who also bring these cognitive strategies to their "reading" of film, art, music, and their experience of the world. The book also shares new research studies that validate the principles and activities of best practice teaching, along with lists of recommended materials that support each of the seven methods.
Unique in the field, Teaching the Best Practice Way speaks to all teachers, K–12, with stories, examples, and practical classroom materials for the teachers of all children. This is the book for teachers, schools, and districts that believe the big ideas about teaching really do cross all grade levels and subject areas. Education professors will also find this an ideal resource for use in methods courses.
