Matching Content to Problems: Building an Effective Text Set

INSTRUCTION Ambitious

Teaching With Rigor in the Secondary Classroom

“In an era where teaching is often reduced to preparation for a standardized test with the focus on instructional delivery, Brad Cawn provides a compelling alternative. Starting with a crystal-clear definition of rigor, he guides the reader through a process that focuses on challenging problems, deep engagement, and meaningful performance assessments. Ambitious instruction is difficult and risky. The rewards, however, are enormous: engaged learners and deeply satisfying teaching.”

—DOUGLAS REEVES Founder, Creative Leadership Solutions

“Ambitious Instruction is a logical, wellthought-out look at structures and ideas to promote rigor in the classroom. It provides meaningful examples and thought-provoking ideas that will challenge educators to consider practices that will support student growth and inspire rigorous consideration and reflection of content.”

Ambitious Instruction: Teaching With Rigor in the Secondary Classroom offers a blueprint for how to use rigor to reinvigorate daily learning and instruction. Author Brad Cawn makes rigor visible, accessible, and actionable to readers so that all grades 6–12 students will have opportunities to engage in meaningful intellectual work across the disciplines. By infusing the tenets of problembased learning and synthesis into lessons, secondary teachers develop teaching and learning practices to teach not only with rigor but for rigor, jump-starting students’ success.

Readers will: • Develop a working understanding of rigor that will serve as the basis for instructional excellence • Study both academic and instructional rigor, including their unique qualities and implications for instruction • Become familiar with actionable strategies to develop and increase rigor in the classroom • Learn the importance of talk in supporting rigor in the classroom • Improve students’ college and career readiness

Visit go.SolutionTree.com/instruction to download the free reproducibles in this book.

SolutionTree.com

—EILEEN DEPKA Educational Consultant and Author