`Communities of Practice

It started with a simple observation: students need their teachers present to answer questions or to provide help if they get stuck on an assignment; they don't need their teachers present to listen to a lecture or review content. From there, Jonathan Bergmann and Aaron Sams began the flipped classroom-students watched recorded lectures for homework and completed their assignments, labs, and tests in class with their teacher available.What Bergmann and Sams found was that their students demonstrated a deeper understanding of the material than ever before. This is the authors' story, and they are confident it can be yours too. Learn what a flipped classroom is and why it works and get the information you need to flip a classroom.

Teachers of Earth and environmental sciences in grades 8 - 12 will welcome this activity book centered on six "data puzzles" that foster critical-thinking skills in students and support science and math standards. Earth Science Puzzles presents professionally gathered Earth science data, including graphs, maps, tables, images, and narratives, and asks students to step into sicientists' shoes to use temporal, apatial, quantitative, and concept-based reasoning to draw inferences from the data. For the teacher, each puzzle is supported by an extensive Pedagogical Content Knowledge Guide with background information, required skills, common student misconceptions, an answer key to the questions in the student section, and a bank of resources for further exploration of the topics. Paleoclimate, weather forecasting, earthquakes, estuaries, watersheds, and hydrothermal vents are all covered. The time-efficient puzzles, taking approximately one period to complete, can be the beginning of an exciting, data-rich classroom environment.