Far too often, our students attain only a superficial level of knowledge that fails to prepare them for deeper challenges in school and beyond. In Teaching for Deeper Learning, renowned educators and best-selling authors Jay McTighe and Harvey F. Silver propose a solution: teaching students to make meaning for themselves.

Contending that the ability to “earn” understanding will equip students to thrive in school, at work, and in life, the authors highlight seven higher-order thinking skills that facilitate students’ acquisition of information for greater retention, retrieval, and transfer. These skills, which cut across content areas and grade levels and are deeply embedded in current academic standards, separate high achievers from their low-performing peers.

Drawing on their deep well of research and experience, the authors

• Explore what kind of content is worth having students make meaning about.
• Provide practical tools and strategies to help teachers target each of the seven thinking skills in the classroom.
• Explain how teachers can incorporate the thinking skills and tools into lesson and unit design.
• Show how teachers can build students’ capacity to use the strategies independently.

If our goal is to prepare students to meet the rigorous demands of school, college, and career, then we must foster their ability to respond to such challenges. This comprehensive, practical guide will enable teachers to engage students in the kind of learning that yields enduring understanding and valuable skills that they can use throughout their lives.

No set of skills matters more in the classroom than the skills of designing curriculum and delivering instruction. This practical resource guide and instructional planning workbook will help you raise student achievement in your classroom or school by focusing on what matters most: crafting dynamic units and bringing them to life in the classroom.

Synthesizing the best research on effective lessons and units, Classroom Curriculum Design guides you through a series of tutorials (that spells out the acronym IDEAS) on instructional design and delivery.

• Tutorial 1: Identify your purpose using a planning tool called a Learning Window.
• Tutorial 2: Design your essential questions to pique student curiosity, guide teaching and learning, and promote deep understanding.
• Tutorial 3: Establish your assessment design by thinking through how students will demonstrate understanding before the unit (pre-assessment), throughout the unit (formative assessment), and at the end of the unit (summative assessment).
• Tutorial 4: Arrange the learning activities by selecting and sequencing appropriate instructional tools and strategies.
• Tutorial 5: Stop to review and refine your unit before implementing it in the classroom.