Teaching Essentials

Book excerpt: What makes a teacher outstanding? More than anything, it's a way of being with kids in the classroom that lets them know they're smart and capable of high achievement. When you combine this mind-set with effective instruction, teaching and learning are transformed. In Teaching Essentials, Regie Routman gives us as much of a blueprint for achieving this powerful, responsive teaching as we're ever going to get. Drawing on her extensive work with students who have excelled against great odds, Regie shares the principles and practices that help all students and teachers reach their full potential. Teaching Essentials shows teachers and principals how to build an efficient and joyful practice by: setting lessons and activities in a meaningful context using an Optimal Learning Model to organize teaching and gradually release responsibility to students demonstrating reading, writing, and thinking for students so they have explicit models to follow articulating high expectations for every student, including ELLs and struggling learners, and ensuring that they meet them embedding assessment into all aspects of instruction and planning employing the reading-writing connection to improve comprehension motivating writers by always writing for real audiences and purposes implementing a schoolwide coaching model for higher achievement and a more fulfilling collaboration with colleagues. A companion website, www.regieroutman.com, provides additional information, including a downloadable, easy-to-use study guide to promote professional conversations and video clips of Regie teaching so you can view and review the language and routines behind engaging, responsive instruction and learning. The Teaching Essentials book and website are ideal for individual, whole school, and districtwide professional development.