1st Edition
Joyful Learning Tools to Infuse Your 6-12 Classroom with Meaning, Relevance, and Fun
Joyful Learning: Tools to Infuse Your 6-12 Classroom with Meaning, Relevance, and Fun is a guide for teachers seeking to energize their practice and deeply engage students. Author Stephanie Farley shows how to create student-centered learning experiences that immerse students in meaning, relevance, and joy. She shows how you can foster student engagement and motivation with a combination of choice, challenge, and play, thereby improving learning outcomes.
Practical strategies are included in each chapter, such as how to write rubrics that foster effective feedback, how to incorporate performance and competency-based assessment, and how to have students grade themselves through a process of self-evaluation and reflection. Throughout, she offers tools such as targets and rubrics, checklists to guide planning, and prompts that help you apply the ideas to your own assignments and assessments.
With the book’s specific, immediately applicable examples, you’ll be able to help your students feel connected to the lessons, happy about their progress, and joyfully engaged in the learning process.
Biography
Stephanie Farley is a writer and consultant working with schools and teachers on issues of curriculum, assessment, instruction, SEL, and building relationships. She is a former English teacher and independent school administrator and has served as a member of California Association of Independent School accreditation teams.
"Student apathy towards learning is something that is even more prevalent now than it was pre-Covid. The idea of finding ways to make all aspects of the teaching and learning process joyful is exciting for educators both new and tenured. I am always looking for ways to help students become more engaged in their learning. I was very interested when reading Chapter 5 "Joyful Grading." A few things really stuck out for me in the chapter that I want to incorporate into my own classroom, specifically for the writing process. I like that the author includes examples of rubrics and activities that we can use in our own classroom."
—Nicole Coolican, ELA Teacher
"Farley offers a simple, powerful and clearly articulated approach to designing what schools can and should be- places of joyful teaching, joyful learning and joyful relationships. Her practical examples and easy to implement strategies will transform your classroom and provide not only a blueprint for education but an approach for life."
—Marina Kheel, EdD, Associate Head for Teaching and Learning, Campbell Hall Episcopal
