Larry Ainsworth Consulting, LLC
“Timeless Essentials” for Integrating Teaching and Learning
As an education consultant, author, and keynote speaker, my motivation is to positively impact the many thousands of students I will never get to meet by helping their teachers and leaders—among them, you!—to learn and apply simple but highly effective methods I’ve created for bringing clarity to standards, instruction, curriculum, and assessments. As these timeless education practices have successfully worked for others, they will also work for you! Thank you for your interest in my education support services.
A COMPREHENSIVE SYSTEM TO OPTIMIZE INSTRUCTION AND MAXIMIZE STUDENT LEARNING!
Volume One:
Integrating Teaching and Learning: “Timeless Essentials” for Creating Integrated Units of Study is uniquely different from Larry’s previous works. The “timeless essentials" you will read about in this series are indispensable elements educators are successfully using to create new units of study or to enrich existing units that fully integrate their instruction with their students’ learning.
Each chapter of the Integrated Teaching and Learning System© begins with the “what” and “why” of the individual element in focus, illustrated with content-specific, grade-level and/or course-level examples. Relevant research, cited by prominent educational thought leaders, adds support to the practical value of these elements. Educators can experience the step-by-step ITLS design process firsthand by applying it, individually and/or collaboratively with colleagues, to a unit of choice. Through this direct engagement, they can determine for themselves the efficacy of this multi-step process for positively impacting their instruction and resultant students’ learning.
Volume One in this series presents the first set of “timeless essentials” that are fully described and illustrated with educator-created examples and A.I.-generated examples, along with guidance on how best to utilize these essential elements. You will learn straightforward, practical ways to simplify and clarify the often-complex process of identifying and aligning Essential Standards, PK-12, and how to “unwrap” Essential Standards for teacher clarity, write Student Learning Targets and Success Criteria for student clarity, and compose teacher-created and student-worded Big Ideas as the foundations for quality units of study.
BUILDING THE STANDARDS FOUNDATION
CHAPTER 1: Identify the Essential Standards +
CHAPTER 2: Align Essential Standards Across the Grades, PK-12 +
CHAPTER 3: Involve Everyone in the Process +
BEGINNING THE UNIT STRUCTURE
CHAPTER 4: “Unwrap” the Essential Standards for Teacher Clarity +
CHAPTER 5: Write Learning Targets for Student Clarity +
CHAPTER 6: Align Success Criteria to Student Learning Targets +
CHAPTER 7: Compose the Big Ideas +
VOLUME TWO:
Volume Two in this series presents the second set of “timeless essentials” that are fully described and illustrated with educator-created examples and A.I.-generated examples, along with key points on how to best utilize these essential elements in all grades and content areas. You will first learn how to create Essential Questions that fully engage students to discover and express in their own words the “Big Idea” responses about what they have learned. Next you will see how to improve your assessment literacy to write or select—with the aid of A.I.-generated questions—quality end-of-unit assessments that are a blend of selected-response and constructed-response questions. Then, you will learn a simple, “tried-and-true” format for creating student-friendly Scoring Guides with clearly understood criteria that will expedite the scoring of students’ assessment responses. Finally, you will see how to use guidelines from assessment experts to evaluate the quality of assessment questions before administering them to students.
CREATING THE END-OF-UNIT ASSESSMENT
CHAPTER 8: Create the Essential Questions +
CHAPTER 9: Improve Assessment Literacy to Create Quality Assessments +
CHAPTER 10: Develop Selected-Response Questions with Distracter Analyses +
CHAPTER 11: Develop Constructed-Response Questions with Elements of Correct Responses +
CHAPTER 12: Format Simple Scoring Guides to Evaluate Student Responses +
CHAPTER 13: Critique Assessment Questions with Quality Control Checks +
VOLUME THREE
Volume Three in this series presents the third and final set of “timeless essentials” that are fully described and illustrated with numerous educator-created examples and A.I.-generated examples, along with key points on how to best utilize these essential elements in all grades and content areas. You will first learn how to plan Learning Progressions as the instructional “ladder” that educators build and use to teach their students the prerequisite concepts and skills in the “unwrapped” Essential Standards. Next, you will see how to plan Quick Progress Checks to gain valuable feedback that both educators and students can use to make needed instructional and learning adjustments. Finally, you will learn how to design Standards-Aligned Learning Tasks—interactive “hands-on, minds-on” student learning experiences, distributed throughout a unit of study, that progressively develop and reveal students’ understanding of the Essential Standards’ “unwrapped” concepts, skills, and Big Ideas.