Teach on Purpose!: Responsive Teaching for Student Success

Great teaching is not just a matter of talent or creativity or passion. Teachers are made, not born, and great teachers know why they do what they do in their classrooms. They do it strategically and purposefully based on technique. Teach on Purpose demonstrates a high-quality research-based and practical approach to teaching that focuses on how to use data about students' identities, experiences, and knowledge to design responsive curriculum and instruction that ensures learning. The authors provide secondary school teachers with scientifically proven strategies for creating learning environments that increase student motivation, engagement, and academic achievement. The text features model units authored and taught by practicing classroom teachers in math, science, social studies, and language arts to demonstrate key principles that can be used in any classroom to be a true professional educator. Teach on Purpose empowers teachers across all content areas to create meaningful teaching and learning experiences together with their students for the success of all.

Teach on Purpose will show secondary teachers how to:

• Respond to diverse learners' needs while also meeting academic standards across content areas.
• Help youth actively apply what they learn to purposes in their lives beyond school.
• Use information about students' out-of-school knowledge to enhance academic engagement and motivation to learn.
• Use evolving technologies to enhance traditional curriculum.
• Use multiple media and multimodal texts to reach students and engage them for success in contemporary ways.

Leslie David Burns is associate professor of literacy for the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Kentucky, and a winner of the Edward Fry Book Award from the Literacy Research Association. Stergios Botzakis is associate professor of reading education at The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and is known for his work in multimodal literacies.