Best Practice, Fourth Edition: Bringing Standards to Life in America's Classrooms

“The single most powerful variable in student achievement is the quality of teaching. But what does quality mean? What does it look like in real classrooms? It looks like the teaching in this book.”
―Steven Zemelman, Harvey “Smokey” Daniels, and Arthur Hyde

Best Practice is back, and with it Steve Zemelman, Smokey Daniels, and Arthur Hyde invite you to greet today’s most important educational challenges with proven, state-of-the-art teaching. Linguistic diversity, technology, Common Core, high-stakes testing―no matter the hurdle, Best Practice teaching supports powerful learning across our profession.

Best Practice, Fourth Edition, is the ultimate guide to teaching excellence. Its framework of seven Best Practice Structures and cutting-edge implementation strategies are proven across the grades and subject areas. BP4 creates common ground for teachers, leaders, and principals by recommending practices drawn from the latest scientific research, professional consensus, and the innovative classrooms of exemplary teachers.

BP4 puts top-quality teaching at the fingertips of individual practitioners by sharing real-life instructional scenes that define classroom excellence, increase learning, and improve students’ life opportunities. It’s also more valuable than ever to PLCs and school reform initiatives thanks to:

• plans and strategies for exceeding state and Common Core Standards
• cohesive principles and common language that strengthen professional collaboration
• classroom vignettes that show teachers and kids at work
• chapters on reading, writing, math, science, and social studies that support unified instructional goals
• special attention to technology in the classroom, special education, ELLs, struggling readers, and the arts.

This new educational era demands highly-effective, high-quality instruction that makes a difference for students. Fortunately with Zemelman, Daniels, and Hyde’s help every educator can be a world-class, life-changing teacher―a Best Practice teacher.

Arthur Hyde is the author or coauthor of the Heinemann titles Understanding Middle School Mathematics; Comprehending Math; Best Practice, Fourth Edition; and Mathwise. A professor of mathematics education at National-Louis University, he received its Excellence in Teaching award. While teaching high school mathematics in Philadelphia, he developed a variety of creative methods for teaching math. He also obtained a doctorate in curriculum and instruction from the University of Pennsylvania , where he later was Associate Director of Teacher Preparation. He continues to work frequently in elementary and middle school classrooms and conducts extensive professional development programs on mathematics and problem solving in Chicago and its surrounding school districts.

Harvey "Smokey" Daniels has been a city and suburban classroom teacher and a college professor, and now works as a national consultant and author on literacy education. In language arts, Smokey is known for his pioneering work on student book clubs, as recounted in Literature Circles: Voice and Choice in Book Clubs and Reading Groups, and Minilessons for Literature Circles. His latest bestselling books on content-area literacy are The Curious Classroom; Comprehension & Collaboration, Second Edition; Upstanders; Subjects Matter, Second Edition; the Texts and Lessons series; and Content-Area Writing. He is also coauthor of Best Practice, Fourth Edition, and The Best Practice Video Companion as well as editor of Comprehension Going Forward.

Smokey works with elementary and secondary teachers throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe, offering demonstration lessons, workshops, and consulting, with a special focus on creating, sustaining, and renewing student-centered inquiries and discussions of all kinds. Smokey shows colleagues how to simultaneously build students' reading strategies, balance their reading diets, and strengthen the social skills they need to become genuine lifelong readers.

Connect with Smokey @smokeylit.

READING
Comprehension Going Forward
Mini-lessons for Literature Circles
Subjects Matter, Second Edition
Texts and Lessons for Content-Area Reading
Texts and Lessons for Teaching Literature

WRITING
Community of Writers
Content-Area Writing

LITERACY
The Curious Classroom
Comprehension & Collaboration, Second Edition
Inquiry Circles for Elementary Classrooms
Inquiry Circles for Secondary Classrooms

SCHOOL CULTURE
Best Practice, Fourth Edition
Best Practice Video Companion
Rethinking High School
Rethinking High School Video
Upstanders