A game-changing resource for educators looking to elevate their unit and lesson plans, increase student engagement, and improve home-school communication.

With so many standards to address and templates to fill out, curriculum design and lesson planning can be cumbersome and overwhelming. And every teacher knows the struggle of trying to cover all the required content, which may or may not resonate with their students.

In Streamlining the Curriculum, experts Heidi Hayes Jacobs and Allison Zmuda take a hard look at our overburdened, dated curricular practices and offer a better way-one built on the power of narrative. Their storyboard approach casts students as the heroes of the learning journey. Instead of passive recipients, they become protagonists, actively engaged in exploring new ideas, solving problems, finding connections, enlisting allies, and acquiring new skills and understandings to apply to both present and future challenges.

This innovative book teaches you how to

• Decide what to cut out, cut back, consolidate, and create in your lessons and units.
• Find the throughlines in your required content and approach lesson design and teaching as storytelling, no matter what subject area or grade level you teach.
• Apply genre lenses to make courses, units, and lessons more compelling.
• Communicate clear learning targets to your students and their families.
• Create space for exploring essential questions, investigating intriguing ideas, and conducting projects that feel relevant and important.
• Determine purposeful and authentic evidence of learning.

Filled with examples and insights, this book shows educators how to break free from the tyranny of templates and start streamlining curriculum, assessment, and planning to make learning experiences more immersive, interesting, and emotionally resonant.

What year are you preparing your students for? 1973? 1995? Can you honestly say that your school's curriculum and the program you use are preparing your students for 2015 or 2020? Are you even preparing them for today?

With those provocative questions, author and educator Heidi Hayes Jacobs launches a powerful case for overhauling, updating, and injecting life into the K-12 curriculum. Sharing her expertise as a world-renowned curriculum designer and calling upon the collective wisdom of 10 education thought leaders, Jacobs provides insight and inspiration in the following key areas:

* Content and assessment: How to identify what to keep, what to cut, and what to create, and where portfolios and other new kinds of assessment fit into the picture.

* Program structures: How to improve our use of time and space and groupings of students and staff.

* Technology: How it's transforming teaching, and how to take advantage of students' natural facility with technology.

* Media literacy: The essential issues to address, and the best resources for helping students become informed users of multiple forms of media.

* Globalization: What steps to take to help students gain a global perspective.

* Sustainability: How to instill enduring values and beliefs that will lead to healthier local, national, and global communities.

* Habits of mind: The thinking habits that students, teachers, and administrators need to develop and practice to succeed in school, work, and life.

The answers to these questions and many more make Curriculum 21 the ideal guide for transforming our schools into what they must become: learning organizations that match the times in which we live.

What will it take to create truly contemporary learning environments that meet the demands of 21st-century society, engage learners, and produce graduates who are prepared to succeed in the world? What skills and capacities do teachers and leaders need to create and sustain such schools? What actions are necessary?

Bold Moves for Schools offers a compelling vision that answers these questions--and action steps to make the vision a reality. Looking through the lenses of three pedagogies--antiquated, classical, and contemporary--authors Heidi Hayes Jacobs and Marie Hubley Alcock examine every aspect of K-12 education, including curriculum, instruction, assessment, and the program structures of space (both physical and virtual), time, and grouping of learners and professionals. In a new job description for teachers, Jacobs and Alcock highlight and expound on the following roles:

• self-navigating professional learner,
• social contractor,
• media critic and media maker,
• innovative designer,
• globally connected citizen, and
• advocate for learners and learning.
With thought-provoking proposals and practical strategies for change, Bold Moves for Schools sets educators on the path to redefining their profession and creating exciting new learning environments. The challenge is unprecedented. The possibilities are unlimited.

Discover the role media can play in preparing students to compete in a global society in which cultures, economies, and people are constantly connected. Learn how to merge technology and instruction successfully, giving students greater access to knowledge and making learning more meaningful. The authors provide practical tips for incorporating media literacy into the traditional curriculum.