Buy all four Ainsworth titles together, and save!

This package includes:

• Common Formative Assessments

  Now you have powerful means to closely align curriculum, instruction, and assessment to the standards essential for student success.  You will learn how teams of teachers in the same content area or grade level can collaboratively develop, test, and refine common formative assessments in order to gain reliable and timely feedback on student progress.  The results provide teachers with critical insight into how well students are understanding the standards, what changes are needed in instructional strategies, and how to best meet the needs of every student!

• Power Standards

  Power Standards is a step-by-step, practical manual that explains how educators can distinguish the Power Standards—standards that are absolutely essential for student success—from those that are “nice to know.”

  In all 50 states, standards have become the critical focus for achieving the results that schools are expected to produce.  However, educators know that most states have too many standards to be taught effectively during one academic year.  Striving to cover everything, educators admit to teaching many of the standards only superficially.  In addition, educators often consider all standards equal when, in fact, certain standards are more important than others.

  Now, in Power Standards: Identifying the Standards that Matter the Most, Larry Ainsworth shows all educators not only how to create a prioritized subset of their own state or district standards, but also how to use these Power Standards to guide the development of meaningful curriculum and assessment.  The straightforward and easy-to-read format enables readers to immediately apply these proven, practical strategies. Now, educators can significantly improve achievement for all students—by first identifying the standards that matter the most!

• Rigorous Curriculum Design

  Rigorous Curriculum Design presents a carefully sequenced, hands-on model that curriculum designers and educators in every school system can follow to create a progression of units of study that keep standards, instruction, and assessment tightly focused and connected.

  The need for a cohesive and comprehensive curriculum that intentionally connects standards, instruction, and assessment has never been more needed than it is today. For educators to meet the challenging learning needs of students—comprehend all the standards, prepare for a variety of formative and summative assessments, and demonstrate proficiency on high-stakes state or provincial tests—they must have a clear road map to follow throughout the school year.

• “Unwrapping” the Standards

  All 50 states and the District of Columbia have formally defined standards of what students are expected to know and be able to do at each grade level and in every content area.  Because state assessments are to be aligned with state standards, the standards have naturally become the critical focus for achieving the results schools are expected to produce.  To meet these rigorous demands, educators need practical strategies that will help ensure high achievement levels for students in every instructional program.

  "Unwrapping" the academic content standards is a technique to help educators identify from the full text of the standards exactly what they need to teach their students. “Unwrapped” standards provide clarity as to what students must know and be able to do.  When teachers take the time to analyze each standard to identify its essential concepts and skills, the result is more effective instructional planning, assessment, and student learning.  From the “unwrapped” concepts and skills, educators next determine the “Big Ideas,” or learning goals, they want their students to remember long after instruction ends, and then write “Essential Questions” to guide their students toward the attainment of these Big Ideas.

  The process you will learn in "Unwrapping" the Standards is practical, it can be understood quickly, and perhaps best of all, it can be implemented immediately to improve both the quality of instruction and the achievement of all students.

  In “Unwrapping” the Standards, Larry Ainsworth guides educators through each phase of the “unwrapping” standards process.  By sharing the many success stories of K-12 educators across the country, Ainsworth explains how to identify the Big Ideas—what educators want their students to remember long after instruction ends—and how to formulate the Essential Questions.  The final goal of “unwrapping” standards is for students to be able to answer, in their own words, the Essential Questions with the Big Ideas.

  Included in this book are more than 80 examples of "unwrapped" standards from a variety of content areas and grade levels. Also included are ready-to-use checklists and templates to help educators immediately apply this simple, proven technique for making the standards manageable.