The heart of teaching - Audrey J. Sirota

The Heart of Teaching offers practical guidance in designing lessons and classroom activities that are powerfully effective for all types of students, including those placed at risk of educational failure due to linguistic, socioeconomic, racial, and geographic factors. The approach is easily geared to standards and can be used to strengthen and enrich scripted lessons or mandated curricular units. With a strong emphasis on literacy, the book shows teachers how to assess a lesson plan and then how to design activities and exercises that can meaningfully engage all students, even those who have difficulty in school. The book also shows teachers how to use learning centers for differentiating lessons and for breaking the classroom into small, participatory settings.

Drawing extensively from an acclaimed instructional model developed by the Center for Research on Education, Diversity and Excellence (CREDE), formerly based at the University of California, Santa Cruz, The Heart of Teaching features a five–part instructional framework that will help teachers

• create activities to promote student collaboration andparticipation


• develop students' academic language appropriate forthe content area


• connect school to students' home lives and prior learning


• develop rigorous activities to emphasize higher–orderthinking skills


• engage students in meaningful instructional conversations

The Heart of Teaching is richly illustrated with model lessons, assessment rubrics, and other practical tools from real–life math, science, social studies, and English classrooms.

"Teaching is both mind and heart, and to achieve its nobility, it must be practiced with both. The teaching approach made visible in this book offers not only inspiration but practical guides to action."

From the Foreword by Roland Tharp, founding director of the Center for Research on Education, Diversity and Excellence

"Audrey Sirota has fashioned a high school/middle school guide for educators utilizing practical idealism on how to achieve positive results with multilevel students. Teachers in any classroom will benefit from Sirota's concise distillation of five essential teaching principles."

Krissy Bartlett, high school English teacher, Virginia

"This is a must–have book for teachers in any content area, at any grade level especially teachers of second language learners. It provides specific, practical information and ideas using critical elements for developing language and higher–level thinking skills."

Maria Elena Garcia, school improvement administrator, Educational Service District 123, Pasco, Washington

"This book serves as a guide for teachers and teacher mentors at the middle school and secondary level as to how to teach so that all of our students can be successful in our schools."

Noni Mendoza Reis, chair, Department of Education Leadership,San Jose State University, College of Education

"As a standards– and assessment–based system, I find this book to be a must–read for teachers at every level."

Andrea Buchtel, computer applications instructor and businesswoman