Teaching Books Hall of Fame
Here is a collection of educational books that have impacted our pedagogical knowledge and approach.
At the heart of effective, evidence-based teaching lies the same foundational principles of effective instruction, but the terminology can get a little confusing.
This kind of teaching is known by many as explicit instruction (ei), but it is also referred to as direct instruction (di) by academics like Rosenshine, and these lower case versions are considered synonymous.
Then you have branded models like Archer and Hughes’ Explicit Instruction (EI), which include lots of additional strategies and nuances that build upon the foundations of the broader principles of explicit instruction (ei).
Hollingsworth and Ybarra did something similar with their model Explicit Direct Instruction (EDI) that also adheres to the same overarching principles of ei while introducing many additional strategies and insights that help teachers to implement the explicit instruction pedagogy in their classrooms.
To make things a little murkier, educational juggernaut Siegfried Engelmann’s Direct Instruction (upper case DI) pedagogy draws on similar principles, but has the added distinction of including teaching materials that are fully designed and scripted for teachers, which has been incredibly successful, and a bit controversial.
All of these teacher-led approaches adhere to the same guiding principles, but with slightly different angles and strategies for impacting student outcomes. These ideas are also the basis of new initiatives in teaching related to the Science of Learning or High Impact Teaching Strategies (HITS). All of these evidence-based approaches are more alike than they are different — and most importantly, they are grounded in research. Instead of prescribing to any one set pedagogy, we like to find the best ideas from each that have the greatest impact on improving student outcomes.
Explicit Instruction
By Anita Archer and Charles Hughes
Explicit Instruction by Archer and Hughes is an amazing teaching resource. It was an antidote to the mostly ineffective strategies that we were taught during our initial teacher education (ITE). We were drowning in the classroom when this book came our way, a lifeline care of the Doc.
A great example of theory meeting practice. Archer and Hughes are strong advocates for the power of effective teaching. This text represents the fundamentals of explicit or high-impact teaching in a way that is extremely transferable to the classroom. We still revisit this text when wrestling with a new idea or angle, and Anita Archer has since become a true idol of ours, and we are constantly recanting her words to one another. Anita is famous for her simple catch phrases that cut straight to the heart of it…
“How well you teach = how well they learn”
With its clear and practical style, this brought us back to the core of effective teaching. In our opinions, this book should be a staple of ITE and in the library of every teacher.
For more information visit www.explicitinstruction.org .
Explicit Direct Instruction
By Silvia Ybarra and John Hollingsworth
Explicit Direct Instruction by Hollingsworth and Ybarra (Dataworks) was another huge piece of the instructional puzzle for us. Another book introduced to us by the Doc that really influenced our practice.
The ideas in this text aligned well with Archer and Hughes, and we were starting to get a feel for the structure and level of participation needed to teach a whole-class effectively. Again, this was not something that featured in our teacher training, but something we were learning on the fly with the living and (fire) breathing students we had before us.
Possibly our biggest take away from this book is that we as teachers must be constantly seeking engagement and eliciting responses from our students while we are teaching. Engagement is a pre-requisite for learning, and it is through student responses that we can truly gauge the efficacy of our teaching.
A particular highlight are the Engagement Norms and TAPPLE protocol that include strategies like pair-shares, mini whiteboards, and non-volunteers. These might appear simple — but there are levels to these strategies that slowly dawn on you as you embed them in your classroom. More than 15 years later… we are still discovering ways to maximise the effect of the engagement norms, and there isn’t an important moment in our teaching that isn’t teeming with engagement norms.
Easy to read, based on research, and extremely practical. This book is full of fundamental insights relating to effective classroom teaching. This is another one that we feel should part of every effort to train teachers.
For more information you can visit: www.dataworks-ed.com/research/
Theory of Instruction
By Siegfried Engelmann and Douglas Carnine
‘Theory of Instruction’ by Engelmann and Carnine is an almost mystical book for us. Inherited from a great mentor of ours, Dennis Bussell, this book is heavy in every sense of the word. Beyond its profound insight, this book is hefty enough to stop a bullet. Engelmann is a huge figure in teaching, and his Project Follow Through could be one of the biggest scandals in Education history, which we only found out about after years of teaching.
Engelmann and Carnine coined the phrase “faultless instruction” which among other things, takes the responsibility for success in the classroom away from novice learners and places it firmly back on the teaching. This can be confronting at first, to realise that no matter what variables are impacting the learner, it is ultimately up to us teachers to ensure every student finds success. Talk about profound — we cried over this, not in front of each other, but we definitely cried. The faces of all those students who we had failed would haunt us over the years, due in part to how their failure would manifest in the classroom, and also in how we could’ve helped them if we had just known what we know now.
Another huge highlight of this book is the focus on the use of examples & non-examples, which Engelmann is emphatic is the secret to communicating any and all conceptual knowledge to students. We never looked back, and now examples & non-examples are a feature of our work across every learning area and level of phase.
Engelmann held a strong belief that teaching materials can and should be scripted down to the smallest detail to support teachers, to ensure consistency, and in the pursuit of faultless instruction. His influence on SRA scripted teaching materials like Spelling Mastery is significant, which is a program that we advocate strongly for. Beyond its effect on language outcomes, it is a great way for teachers to learn the spelling and morphology rules that govern English. It is a bit of an in-joke that if a teacher seems to know there spelling rules, there is a good chance they learned them by delivering Spelling Mastery.
A version of this book was made available for free by the publishers, and you can view this here.
Embedded Formative Assessment
By Dylan Wiliam
Embedded Formative Assessment by Dylan Wiliam is a great book that focuses on the power of formative assessment and feedback. In other words, the act of a teacher frequently checking for understanding while instructing, and then using feedback about student performance to dictate the direction of the learning.
While diagnostic, formative and summative assessments all have a time and place — for classroom teaching, there really is no comparison to formative assessment. For every piece of information that we teach or review, we ensure that we check for understanding across the whole class before moving forward. In this sense, we ensure an equal opportunity for our students by not moving forward in the learning without students having an adequate understanding.
Complementing the ideas from Hollingsworth and Ybarra, and Archer and Hughes — Wiliam focuses on the importance of constantly eliciting responses from students. This typically involves strategies like mini whiteboards, frequent questioning of non-volunteers with pop sticks, and hinge-questions. These are just some of the staples of Wiliam’s approach to formative assessment, which we couldn’t recommend more highly to every teacher. As Dylan Says:
“It is only through formative assessment that we can see whether our teaching has been effective, and if it hasn’t, we do something else.”
For more information you can visit: www.dylanwiliam.org/Dylan_Wiliams_website/Welcome.html
Teach Like a Champion
By Doug Lemov
Teach Like a Champion 3.0 by Doug Lemov is the third iteration of his iconic Teach like a Champion practical teaching guide. With strong links to proven classroom practices, this book offers a practical guide to teachers on how they can create a more impactful classroom for their students.
In a similar vein to other greats like Engelmann, Rosenshine, and Archer, Lemov emphasises that it is the instruction that counts, and emphasises that it is a combination of teacher knowledge, high expectations, and the ability to control the room that make the biggest difference.
One of our big take-aways from Lemov is the importance of being ambitious with what we aim for with our students, and to be utterly relentless in our pursuit of it. Not to give our students a hard time, but to help them reach their full potential. Few describe the moral imperative of teaching better than Doug Lemov.
With 63 larger strategies and many more embedded in between, Lemov’s model includes many great ideas like cold calling (non-volunteers), “right is right”, and “do nows” that can be hugely impactful. We highly recommend Teach like a Champion, and other writing by the great Doug Lemov.
For more information visit www.teachlikeachampion.org
Bringing Words to Life
By Isabel Beck, Margaret G. McKeown, and Linda Kucan
Bringing Words to Life by Isabel Beck, Margaret McKeown, and Linda Kucan is a brilliant guide for how to consistently and effectively teach vocabulary.
Beck categorises words into 3 tiers:
1 – conceptually simple everyday words
2 – challenging words that can be used in many contexts
3 – challenging words that are context-specific (complex or rare jargon)
Due to their high frequency in written language and their broad application for students, tier 2 words are often given priority. Words like ominous and colossal are good examples in how they might appear in a range of texts and be used by students in a variety of contexts. In this sense, they are high value.
The text unpacks research and introduces various strategies for explicitly unpacking and practising the conceptual understanding related to each vocabulary word using instructional routines. Aligning with the work of Engelmann and Carnine, the Queens of Vocabulary (Beck et al.) make a strong case for using examples and non-examples to create rich and interconnected schema for each word (concept). This is powerful knowledge that is ultra transferable.
The book’s insightful strategies for word selection and instruction have significantly enhanced our approach to vocabulary education. We’ve successfully used these techniques for introducing meanings and engaging students in learning new vocabulary. The improvement in students’ vocabulary at our school was impossible to ignore. The book is easy to process and apply, and it led to the development of our hugely successful writing project at Dawson Park Primary that systematically exposed students to over 1500 tier 2 words in our English curriculum.
We highly recommend this book to anyone interested in vocabulary instruction. For more information visit here.
The Writing Revolution
By Judith Hochman and Natalie Wexler
The Writing Revolution by Judith C. Hochman and Natalie Wexler has been a vital addition to our educational toolkit. The book, known for its highly structured system of unpacking and explicitly teaching writing, was just the kind of no-nonsense resource we needed.
Natalie Wexler is emphatic that writing is one of, if not the hardest, things that we ask students to do at school. As such, students need a lot of guidance, modelling, and scaffolds to help them when engaging in writing practice. The text itself is not a ‘plug-and-play’ type of student workbook but rather a practical guide to inform teachers.
The benefit is two-fold: we can guide students to be effective writers while also rehearsing important conceptual knowledge. Our personal favourites from the book are the various uses of conjunctions and the sentence summarising and expansion exercises, but there is so much more in this book.
We highly recommend the Writing Revolution. To find out more click here.
Teach your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons
By Siegfried Engelman
How to Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons by Siegfried Engelmann stands as a testament to the power of direct instruction in literacy. This practical manual (lesson by lesson) has been a cornerstone in our educational toolkit, both in remote regions like the Pilbara and in urban classrooms, and even within the walls of our homes. It is essentially a scripted workbook that you can do alongside individual students or in small groups. It is a good example of Direct Instruction, as it is a scripted program that is explicitly guided.
The transformation of our students felt like a miracle. We were at a point where the deficits in these students felt too great to overcome, but that was simply because we lacked the knowledge and resources to do it. There may be no greater feeling in teaching that helping a struggling student to overcome something as important as being illiterate.
The book’s structured, incremental lessons cater to the needs of students who require remediation in reading. Its concise, scripted instructions and the systematic build-up of skills have allowed us to guide students effectively on their journey to literacy. The success of the program is evident in its versatility and effectiveness across diverse settings and various learners, including our own children.
This book is not just a guide — it’s a solution for students who are really struggling to grasp the fundamentals of reading and writing.
For more information on the text, click here.
Why Don’t Students Like School
By Daniel T. Willingham
Why Don’t Students Like School? by Daniel T. Willingham provides a compelling look into the cognitive underpinnings of student engagement and learning challenges. Willingham combines Cognitive Science with educational psychology, addressing the same issues faced by teachers all over the world. His insights have been integral in shaping our understanding of how students think and learn, and consequently, how we teach.
Willingham explores ideas around Cognitive Load Theory (CLT) and the importance of background knowledge, and these ideas align well with other legends in that space like John Sweller and Barak Rosenshine. This book is a nice introduction to the educational perspectives from Cognitive Science. Some of our favourite quotes from the book are:
“Memory is the residue of thought”
If you consider that creating changes in long-term memory is the goal of teaching, then it is through having students think about the content that achieves this. Much of what we do as teachers is about engineering meaningful opportunities for students to think and wrestle with our important content, as this creates the conditions for learning to occur.
Why Don’t Students Like School? by Daniel Willingham is a great book that we think is relevant to all educators and those working or living with students. For more information click here.
How I Wish I Taught Maths
By Craig Barton
“How I Wish I’d Taught Maths” by Craig Barton is an enlightening read that has significantly influenced our approach to mathematics education. Barton’s candid reflections and insights into the use of worked examples, alongside the necessity for consistent retrieval and rehearsal practice, have reshaped our instructional strategies.
Barton’s book has provided us with a robust framework for constructing math lessons that are both engaging and effective. The emphasis on worked examples has been a game-changer, allowing us to demonstrate clear and concise problem-solving methods. This approach has made complex mathematical concepts more accessible and understandable for our students.
The importance of retrieval practice and the role it plays in reinforcing learning is another key element of Barton’s methodology that we’ve embraced. By incorporating regular opportunities for students to recall and apply what they’ve learned, we’ve noticed substantial improvements in their mathematical fluency and confidence.
Barton’s practical advice, grounded in research and personal experience, has been transformative in our teaching practice. It has not only helped us enhance the way we teach math but also instilled in our students a stronger foundation for lifelong mathematical thinking.
For more information visit https://www.mrbartonmaths.com
Tools for Teaching
By Fred Jones
Tools for Teaching by Fred Jones stands out as a highly practical guide in our teaching arsenal, particularly in the realms of effective classroom management and student engagement. Jones’s unique approach, using stories and anecdotes, makes the fundamentals of effective teaching both relatable and memorable.
Jones’s book delves into the intricacies of classroom dynamics, offering strategies that are immediately applicable in day-to-day teaching. His insights on managing student behavior, maintaining a positive learning environment, and fostering student engagement have been invaluable. The book’s engaging narrative style, filled with real-life examples, has helped us visualize and implement these strategies effectively.
One of the strengths of “Tools for Teaching” is its ability to communicate complex educational concepts through simple, engaging stories. This method has not only made the book a delightful read but also ensured that the lessons stay with us and become integrated into our teaching practices. Jones’s techniques have empowered us to handle classroom challenges with greater ease and confidence.
Incorporating the principles from “Tools for Teaching” has led to a noticeable improvement in our classroom management skills and overall teaching effectiveness. The story style made it very relatable.
For more information https://www.fredjones.com/
How We Learn
By Stanislas Dehaene
How We Learn by Stanislas Dehaene has been a pivotal resource for us, bridging the gap between cognitive science and practical teaching methodologies. Dehaene’s exploration of the human learning process, particularly the limitations of working memory, has reshaped the way we design our teaching moments and lesson materials.
The book delves into the intricacies of how we absorb and process information, offering insights that are deeply rooted in neuroscience. This understanding has enabled us to create learning experiences that account for the cognitive load of our students, ensuring that we present information in a way that is digestible and retainable.
Applying Dehaene’s scientific findings to our educational practices has led to a more nuanced approach to teaching. We’ve learned to recognize the signs of cognitive overload and to structure our lessons accordingly, which has resulted in more effective and meaningful learning outcomes. “How We Learn” has not just informed us about the theoretical aspects of learning; it has provided us with a foundation to craft educational experiences that align with how students naturally learn, making our teaching efforts more impactful and rewarding.
How We Learn is a fascinating book that is well worth a read. For more information click here.
Speech to Print
By Louisa Moats
“Speech to Print” by Louisa Moats has been a transformative resource in our journey as educators, shedding light on the critical connection between language structure and literacy instruction. Moats presents a detailed exploration of the English language, illuminating how its history, phonology, and morphology affect reading and writing. This book, especially in its third edition, has been pivotal in enhancing our approach to teaching reading, both in our classrooms and at home.
Moats’ expert guidance, rooted in research and practical examples, has equipped us with the tools to effectively support students with diverse learning needs. The book’s comprehensive coverage, from the underpinnings of language instruction to strategies for student engagement, has been invaluable. Its focus on structured literacy instruction, coupled with practical techniques for classroom application, has had a profound impact, allowing us to address reading difficulties more effectively.
Our experience with “Speech to Print” has been deeply rewarding, reinforcing Moats’ conviction that every student can achieve literacy success with the right support. Her approach to literacy education, characterized by a relentless commitment to student success, has resonated with us, inspiring us to be more effective and compassionate educators. This book is more than just a textbook; it’s a crucial guide for any educator dedicated to fostering robust language and reading skills.
This is such a powerful book, especially for those working to remediate students with weaker literacy skills. For more information click here.
There are many more incredible education books out there for teachers, here are just some of them 😊
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