The Teaching Craft: Tools for Teaching

This book delivers practical, classroom-ready tools that strengthen instruction and directly boost student engagement and achievement. It shows how to teach concepts, facts, rules, and routines clearly and systematically—from cause-and-effect relationships to decoding, math problem solving, scientific processes, and productive learning behaviors such as attention and persistence.
You'll find step-by-step methods for organizing curriculum into coherent, connected units; designing lessons that move students from new learning to generalization, fluency, integration, and long-term retention; and establishing strong "learning readiness" at the start of every lesson. The book provides concrete scaffolds—Model-Lead-Test/check sequences, guided notes, worked examples, and structured practice—and demonstrates how to combine explicit instruction with inquiry in clear, 5-part lesson designs that make rigorous content accessible to all learners.