In this book, Linda Lambert takes a close look at leadership in schools, which today involves far more than a single leader. The author defines... leadership as the learning processes among participants in a community--processes that lead toward a shared sense of purpose. Leadership capacity refers to the breadth of participation in leadership and the depth of skill that teachers, administrators, parents, students, and community members bring to the work. The stories of three schools--an elementary school with low leadership capacity, a middle school with moderate leadership capacity, and a high school with high leadership capacity--reveal how school people can lead their communities to improve student learning. The stories show five features of effective leadership: (1) broad-based, skillful participation in the work of leadership, (2) inquiry-based use of information to inform decisions and practice, (3) roles and responsibilities that reflect broad involvement and collaboration, (4) reflective practice/innovation as a norm, and (5) high student achievement. This book outlines what schools and districts must do to build leadership capacity, including how to get started, how to sustain the momentum, and how to design school districts capable of supporting such work.

Building Literacy in Secondary Content Area Classrooms by renowned author Thomas Gunning gives practicing and prospective content area teachers the... knowledge and skills they need to develop their students’ content literacy–and to ensure that these secondary school students are college- and career-ready. Comprehensive and research-based, the book presents a balanced combination of both theory and practice; provides more than a dozen examples of exemplary teaching; includes extensive, practical suggestions for working with struggling students and English language learners; and incorporates the Common Core State Standards and IRA’s 2010 Standards for Reading Professionals.

Building Literacy in Secondary Content Area Classrooms by renowned author Thomas Gunning gives practicing and prospective content area teachers the... knowledge and skills they need to develop their students’ content literacy–and to ensure that these secondary school students are college- and career-ready. Comprehensive and research-based, the book presents a balanced combination of both theory and practice; provides more than a dozen examples of exemplary teaching; includes extensive, practical suggestions for working with struggling students and English language learners; and incorporates the Common Core State Standards and IRA’s 2010 Standards for Reading Professionals.

Summary: Preparing students to be active, informed, literate citizens is one of the primary functions of public schools. But how can students become... engaged citizens if they can t read, let alone understand, their social studies texts? What can educators--and social studies teachers in particular--do to help students develop the knowledge, skills, and motivation to become engaged in civic life? Building Literacy in Social Studies addresses this question by presenting both the underlying concepts and the research-based techniques that teachers can use to engage students and build the skills they need to become successful readers, critical thinkers, and active citizens. The authors provide targeted strategies--including teaching models, graphic organizers, and step-by-step instructions--for activities such as* Building vocabulary,* Developing textbook literacy skills,* Interpreting primary and secondary sources,* Applying critical thinking skills to newspapers and magazines, and* Evaluating Internet sources. Readers will also learn how to organize classrooms into models of democracy by creating learning communities that support literacy instruction, distribute authority, encourage cooperation, and increase accountability among students. Realistic scenarios depict a typical social studies teacher s experience before and after implementing the strategies in the classroom, showing their potential to make a significant difference in how students respond to instruction. By making literacy strategies a vital part of content-area instruction, teachers not only help students better understand their schoolwork but also open students' eyes to the power that informed and engaged people have to change the world.

It is estimated that 25% to 35% of students do not read well enough to handle their content area texts. This book emphasizes strategies, techniques,... and materials especially appropriate for students who are struggling to learn. Above all else, the book serves as a practical guide, filled with sample lessons, examples of exemplary teaching, explanations of student strategies, and emphasizes integrating technology into the classroom. Building Literacy in the Content Areas reflects the diversity of today's student population and emphasizes the need to gear instruction to include all students. This K-12 book provides templates for planning programs and making modifications for average, gifted, ESL and bilingual students, and struggling learners at all grade levels (not just secondary). K-12 experienced and incoming teachers, Reading Coordinators.

Want to help students achieve greater depth of reading, writing, and understanding? This book shows teachers how to facilitate discussions where... students share rich, defensible interpretations of literature and solid, reasoned, understandings of any concepts under study. Based on the authors’ extensive research in middle schools, it describes why discussion-based instruction is crucial to achievement, and then shows you how to introduce and sustain discussions. The authors clearly define the teacher’s role and provide lots of successful strategies such as provocative statements and journal jots. Trouble-shooting sections answer common questions teachers have, such as how to correct a wrong interpretation and how to teach students to build on each other’s comments.

The path to literacy begins in infancy. Building Literacy With Love suggests loving ways adults can provide experiences that foster children's ability... to become literate. This book offers practical suggestions for implementing effective, research-based teaching practices in child-care settings.

Maintaining a building is expensive: it costs many times more to run a building than to build it, yet maintenance is often accorded a low priority. ... Building Maintenance covers the technical aspects of maintenance for undergraduate students on built environment courses, particularly building surveying and facilities management. It addresses the major questions regarding maintenance activities and shows that maintenance should be considered seriously at the design stage. Extensive case studies illustrate what can go wrong, how to put matters right and how to get it right first time.

If you liked Building Dances, then you'll love Building More Dances! This new book uses the same hands-on approach to the mechanics and art of dance... making as the first book. Plus, it provides even more tools to help teachers facilitate the dance-making process: more dance construction models, more suggestions to spark creativity, and more ideas for lesson plans!Like the earlier book, Building More Dances puts the teacher in the role of facilitator. It covers all the fundamentals so that even teachers with little or no dance background will feel comfortable teaching students how to build dances. Building More Dances expands on the information in Building Dances, introducing even more ways to build dances and facilitate student learning. The book contains 23 new dance construction models and 108 all-new Deal-a-Dance cards. The dance construction models are creative, often cross-curricular blueprints for putting movements together in ways that satisfy National Physical Education Standards as well as the National Dance Standards. And the Deal-a-Dance cards provide movement examples that students can take to the floor with them to try out on the spot. They're great hands-on tools that stimulate students' creativity and inventiveness in the dance-making process.Building More Dances helps ensure student success with new material that elaborates on the seven steps to building dances:- Choosing subject matter- Exploring and selecting movement- Coordinating music and movement- Exploring possibilities- Refining and memorizing dance making- Adding the finishing touches - Performing the dance Each of the dance construction models lists grade-appropriate variations to make the dances suitable for any school-age group. You can use the constructions as single lessons or develop them into entire units. Regardless of your field of expertise or the ages and ability levels of your students, this book can supply hours, days, or even weeks of material. The book also contains specific assessment suggestions and numerous ideas for presenting and performing student-created dances. Building More Dances also includes an action plan for aligning standards and curriculum. Not only does the book define and compare the National Dance Standards and National Physical Education Standards, but each of the dance construction models also provides concrete suggestions to help you ensure that your program supports these standards, as well as standards for applied learning, music, geography, social studies, and other subjects.

Developing expertise in motivational interviewing (MI) takes practice, which is exactly the point of this engaging, user-friendly workbook. The volume... is packed with real-world examples from a range of clinical settings, as well as sample interactions and hands-on learning activities. The author is an experienced MI researcher, clinician, and trainer who facilitates learning with quizzes, experiential exercises, and reproducible worksheets. The reader learns step by step how to practice core MI skills: raising the importance of behavior change, fostering the client's confidence, resolving ambivalence, solidifying commitment to change, and negotiating a change plan. The utility of the book is enhanced by the large-size format and lay-flat binding. The book shows how to navigate each session using microskills that many clinicians already know: open-ended questions, affirmations, reflective listening and summaries, or OARS for short.This book is in the Applications of Motivational Interviewing series.

This practical introduction describes the kinds of real-world problems neural network technology can solve. Surveying a range of neural network... applications, the book demonstrates the construction and operation of artificial neural systems. Through numerous examples, the author explains the process of building neural-network applications that utilize recent connectionist developments, and conveys an understanding both of the potential, and the limitations of different network models. Examples are described in enough detail for you to assimilate the information and then use the accumulated experience of others to create your own applications. These examples are deliberately restricted to those that can be easily understood, and recreated, by any reader, even the novice practitioner. In some cases the author describes alternative approaches to the same application, to allow you to compare and contrast their advantages and disadvantages. *Organized by application areas, rather than by specific network architectures or learning algorithms, Building Neural Networks shows why certain networks are more suitable than others for solving specific kinds of problems.Skapura also reviews principles of neural information processing and furnishes an operations summary of the most popular neural-network processing models. Finally, the book provides information on the practical aspects of application design, and contains six topic-oriented chapters on specific applications of neural-network systems. These applications include networks that perform: **-Pattern matching, storage, and recall.-Business and financial systems.-Data extraction from images.-Mechanical process control systems.-New neural networks that combine pattern matching with fuzzy logic. The book includes application-oriented exercises that further help you see how a neural network solves a problem, and that reinforce your understanding of modeling techniques.

Reconstructing the story of how reformers used public authority to reshape the nation, Jason Scott Smith argues that the New Deal produced a revolution... in state-sponsored economic development. The scale and scope of this dramatic federal investment in infrastructure laid crucial foundations--sometimes literally--for postwar growth, prestaging the national highways and the military-industrial complex. This impressive and exhaustively researched analysis underscores the importance of the New Deal in comprehending political and economic change in modern America.

Praise for Building Nonprofit Capacity"A central question for leadership is to identify where, and when, to focus organizational energy, and that is... where Brothers and Sherman's book comes in. Changing organizations is never easy, which is why managers need the right set of maps and tools—like this one." Jon Pratt, executive director, Minnesota Council of Nonprofits "Anyone running a nonprofit organization, no matter how large or small, would benefit from reading this book. It's chock-full of useful information about managing change."Eric Nee, managing editor, Stanford Social Innovation Review "Nonprofit leaders need tools to help them manage better, engage communities, collaborate, and have greater impact. Building Nonprofit Capacity is a great tool and a useful reference for organizations that are seeking to make a greater and more sustainable difference." Paul Schmitz, CEO, Public Allies"Brothers and Sherman expertly braid together complementary organizational lifecycle frameworks—and add their own wide-ranging expertise and experience—to bring practitioners and executives this comprehensive, relevant, and honest book about the organizational quest to become ever better."Jeanne Bell, CEO, CompassPoint Nonprofit Services"Whether you are building a start-up, bringing an organization to scale, managing an established group toward excellence, or shepherding a nonprofit at risk of decline, this book should be required reading for every nonprofit executive director." Richard R. Buery, Jr., president and CEO, The Children's Aid Society"There are a lot of nonprofit management books out there. What makes Brothers and Sherman's book different and so important and worthwhile is that they have combined a number of models, theories, and practices and shaped them into a few essential processes that can be used by organizations both large and small."Doug Bauer, executive director, The Clark Foundation"In America, too few nonprofit founders or leaders can afford to step aside, nor have they been taught how to share power in the decision-making process. This critical juncture in the evolution of so many groups is but one reason to buy Building Nonprofit Capacity—a book that will help any forward thinking leader to see the future ? and act, today." Robert Egger, president, DC Central Kitchen"This should be required reading for nonprofit executives and board members!" —Sean Stannard-Stockton, CEO, Tactical Philanthropy Advisors

A resource book for teaching the Word of God to new believers, with special emphasis on teaching in other cultures, and especially for Christian... missionaries. Written for any christian who desires to know and teach the scriptures. Substantial lesson material is included for the instructional benefit of those who will teach. Textbook format.