Product Description

Packed with examples and tools, this practical guide prepares teachers across all grade levels and content areas to teach the most critical cognitive skills from the Common Core State Standards. Discover a doable three-phase model of explicit teaching, guided practice in content-based lessons, and authentic application in standards-based performance tasks that will strengthen students' ability to learn across the curriculum.

Benefits

- Discover the desired student proficiencies of the CCSS: critical thinking, creative thinking, complex thinking, comprehensive thinking, collaborative thinking, communicative thinking, and cognitive transfer.
- Explore phase I, Talk-Through, during which teachers explicitly teach students a critical thinking skill.
- Utilize the content-based lessons included in phase II, Walk-Through, when specific guidance will ensure proper application of the skill.
- Learn how to make a direct connection between the selected thinking skill and the new standards with the CCSS performance tasks modeled in phase III.
- Take advantage of online and print resources, a glossary, reproducibles, reflection questions, and more.

Review 
Written in a style reflecting the very thinking skills they adamantly support, Bellanca, Fogarty, and Pete prompt educators to think critically, creatively, and comprehensively about the complex realities of integrating the Common Core State Standards in each classroom. The practical and clear strategies they detail foster crisp communication and purposeful collaborative efforts to generate mindful and cognitively rigorous learning experiences. Adaptable for any setting,How to Teach Thinking Skills Within the Common Core should be in the library of professionals seeking a schoolwide approach to actualize this exciting national initiative. --Heidi Hayes Jacobs, President and Founder of Curriculum Designers, Inc.; Executive Director of the Curriculum Mapping Institute

The Common Core will only realize its full potential to prepare our students for 21st century challenges if it truly helps them develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills. That will only happen if our teachers have concrete, practical tools to help them in that endeavor. This book is precisely that kind of tool. --Ken Kay, CEO, EdLeader21; Founding President, Partnership for 21st Century Skills

In this book, Jim, Robin, and Brian successfully expand on the key 4Cs of communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity. Their work should serve as key starting point for teachers who are taking on the challenge of preparing students to be college and career ready with rich and rigorous 21st century skills within the Common Core. --Timothy J. Magner, Executive Director of Partnership for 21st Century Skills

About the Author 
James A. Bellanca is the founder and CEO of International Renewal Institute, Inc. He is known for his cutting-edge program design and implementation of research-rich, standards-aligned professional learning programs for educators. He has worked with educational leaders in Chicago, Los Angeles, Cleveland, New York, New Jersey, and Michigan, and also with school districts to design programs that promote critical thinking and collaboration to increase academic performance among all children, including high-risk student populations.

Robin J. Fogarty is president of the Chicago-based, minority-owned educational publishing and consulting firm RFA: A Robin Fogarty Company. She has taught in classrooms from kindergarten level through college and served as an administrator. She is the author or coauthor of more than 10 books, includingFrom Staff Room to Classroom: A Guide for Planning and Coaching Professional Development (with Brian M. Pete), which won a 2006 National Staff Development Council book award. She is a contributor to 21st Century Skills: Rethinking How Students Learn and has written articles for Educational Leadership, Phi Delta Kappan, and the Journal of Staff Development.

She earned a doctorate in curriculum and human resource development from Loyola University Chicago, a master's in instructional strategies from National-Louis University, and a bachelor's in early childhood education from the State University of New York at Potsdam. She is married to Brian Pete.

Brian M. Pete is cofounder of RFA: A Robin Fogarty Company. He is a skilled presenter on a variety of educational and leadership topics. He helps teachers transfer knowledge gained in the staff room into immediate and relevant classroom strategies. His educational videos include Best Practices: Classroom Management and Best Practices: Active Learning Classrooms. Brian is also the author of numerous resources. He coauthored From Staff Room to Classroom: A Guide for Planning and Coaching Professional Development (with Robin Fogarty), which won a 2006 National Staff Development Council book award. He is also a contributor to 21st Century Skills: Rethinking How Students Learn.

He earned a bachelor of science from DePaul University in Chicago and is pursuing a master's in fiction writing from Columbia College Chicago. He is married to Robin Fogarty.