Book excerpt: Become an Architect of Learning! (blueprints included). The brain constructs new learning, sorting and labeling new data, comparing it with prior experience, and using resulting understandings to interact with the environment. Written for teachers, educational leaders, and instructional designers, this guide presents tools for developing teaching that engages the student thinking needed to construct learning. With applied research from neuroscience and cognitive psychology, The Architecture of Learning introduces a series of blueprints that strategically direct a teacher s thinking and planning. The resulting instruction capitalizes on the brain s penchant for patterns and moves students from recognizing a reference point for constructing new understanding to using new learning to think about and act on the real world. The Architecture of Learning addresses: Understanding how students learn, building blocks of learning, subject matter types and focus processes of learning, aligning learning, teaching, and assessment, critical and creative thinking in teaching and learning, evaluating and revising instruction