With new standards emphasizing higher-order thinking skills, students will have to demonstrate their ability to do far more than simply remember facts and procedures. But what's the best way for teachers to ensure that students have such skills? In this highly accessible guide, author Susan M. Brookhart shows how to do just that, by providing specific guidelines for designing targeted questions and tasks that align with standards and assess students' ability to think at higher levels. Aided by dozens of examples across grade levels and subject areas, readers will learn how to: Take a student perspective and view assessment questions and tasks as ""problems to solve."" Design multiple-choice questions that require higher-order thinking. Understand the difference between ""open"" and ""closed"" questions and how to use open questions effectively. Vary and control the features of performance assessment tasks, including cognitive level and difficulty, to target different thinking skills. Manage the assessment of higher-order thinking within the larger context of teaching and learning. Brookhart also provides an ""idea bank"" that teachers can use to jump-start their own thinking as they create assessments. Timely and practical, How to Design Questions and Tasks to Assess Student Thinking is essential reading for 21st century teachers who want their students to excel in the classroom and beyond.

An anthology of essays, letters, and creative work reflecting on the experience of Black girlhood, by an inspiring group of teenage girls. The voices of young Black girls are too often left out of conversations on the Black girl experience; in this collection, the founder of South London-based organisation Milk Honey Bees seeks to bring their voices to the front. Girlhood Unfiltered will reach those readers who relate, those who want to learn and those who care deeply about their community.

Urban violence, poverty, and racial injustice are ongoing sources of traumatic stress that affect the physical, emotional and cognitive development and well-being of millions of children each year. Growing attention is therefore directed toward the study of child trauma and incorporation of trauma-sensitive practices within schools. Currently such practices focus on social and emotional learning for all children, with some in-school therapeutic approaches, and outside referrals for serious trauma. There is inadequate attention to racial injustice as an adverse childhood experience (ACE) confronting Black males among other youth of color. Although there are guidelines for trauma-sensitive approaches, few are culturally responsive. And it is now critical that educators consider the traumatic impacts of a dual pandemic (covid-19 and racism) on children and their education. This timely book thus serves to inform and inspire transformative healing and empowerment among traumatized children and youth in pandemic/post-pandemic school and after-school settings. The reader will learn about trauma through actual experiences. Researchers and practitioners present approaches to healing that can be adapted to local situations and settings. The book consists of four parts: Youth Voices on Traumatic Experience; Trauma-focused Research; Culturally Responsive and Trauma Sensitive Practices; and Where do we go from Here? Suggestions for Next Steps. Each part contains a set of themed chapters and closes with a youth authored poetic expression. The book is especially designed for those working in urban education. However, anyone whose work is related to traumatized children and youth will find the book informative, especially in a post-pandemic educational environment.