Active Teaching and Learning Strategies

About the Book

Active Teaching and Active Learning Strategies: Creating a Blueprint for Success is the cumulative result of a year of reflecting, asking, and listening to questions, and comments, that many have concerning the education of our youth. The book's genesis however, started many years ago as the state of California, along with many other states, embraced a standards based accountability system. This accountability has now been coupled with the recent addition of The No Child Left Behind Legislation. In a real sense, we are entering both the best and worst of times. I say this because of the effects of high-stakes testing and the requirement that all students reach high levels of proficiency which admittedly, are very lofty goals. For this to be realized, changes will be required in teaching and assessment, as well as a more concentrated focus on student learning.

The instructional design introduced in this book advocates four components: academic, social/collaborative, contextual, and cognitive/developmental. These components work in tandem with Active Teaching and Learning Strategies. Combined, they form a student responsive instructional methodology, which optimizes student success, and academic achievement.

We wanted to create a book that demonstrated to those of us in the field of education the value of looking at academic standards with data about our students, and reflecting on how this information should influence our choices concerning instructional practices and our perceptions about the students that we are entrusted with. The focus of this endeavor is to see all students achieve and succeed, and to keep passion and compassion at the heart of all that we do.

It is the premise of this book that the difference between effective and outstanding teachers are that outstanding teachers care, know how to utilize data, practice active teaching strategies, and promote the active learning of students. Together these characteristics became the design, and course of action, that Created a Blueprint for Success.

About the Author

Rock D. Moore Ed.D is an Administrator in the Adelanto Elementary School District and a professor at Chapman University. He received his Doctorate from The University of Sarasota, Florida in 1996. He has written over fifty articles on various issues surrounding education and has done educational consultations for the last seven years at the Local, National, and International levels.

Michelle A. Moore M.Ed. is an Administrator in the Orange Unified School District. She has a Masters Degree in Cross-cultural Education with a Specialization in Curriculum and Instruction. She was recently accepted into the University of Southern California's Doctoral Program in Urban Education. She has spoken at the National and International levels on issues surrounding data-driven instruction.