Differentiated Instructional Strategies: One Size Doesn′t Fit All


Gayle H. Gregory - 2001
    This expanded second edition presents planners, templates, rubrics, graphic organizers, and a step-by-step guide to lesson planning and adjustable assignments to help all students succeed.

Preventing Misguided Reading: New Strategies for Guided Reading Teachers


Jan Miller Burkins - 2010
    Burkins and Croft help teachers prevent guided reading from going astray by presenting strategies, adaptations, and supports that help them work through common instructional problems.

No More "I'm Done!": Fostering Independent Writers in the Primary Grades


Jennifer Jacobson - 2010
    No More "I'm Done!" demonstrates how to create a more productive, engaging, and rewarding writer's workshop. Jennifer guides teachers from creating a supportive classroom environment through establishing effective routines; shows teachers how to set up a writer's workshop; and provides an entire year of developmentally appropriate mini-lessons that build confidence and, ultimately, independence.

The Together Teacher: Plan Ahead, Get Organized, and Save Time!


Norman Atkins - 2012
    This practical resource shows teachers how to be effective and have a life! Author and educator Maia Heyck-Merlin explores the key habits of Together Teachers?how they plan ahead, organize work and their classrooms, and how they spend their limited free time. The end goal is always strong outcomes for their students. So what does Together, or Together Enough, look like? To some teachers it might mean neat filing systems. To others it might mean using time efficiently to get more done in fewer minutes. Regardless, Together Teachers all rely on the same skills. In six parts, the book clearly lays out these essential skills. Heyck-Merlin walks the reader through how to establish simple yet successful organizational systems. There are concrete steps that every teacher can implement to achieve greater stability and success in their classrooms and in their lives. Contains templates and tutorials to create and customize a personal organizational system and includes a companion website: www.thetogetherteacher.com Recommends various electronic or online tools to make a teacher's school day (and life!) more efficient and productive Includes a Reader's Guide, a great professional development resource; teachers will answer reflection questions, make notes about habits, and select tools that best match individual needs and preferences

Conferring: The Keystone of Reader's Workshop


Patrick A. Allen - 2009
    Inside, he shows teachers how to overcome their perceived obstacles and shows them how they can make conferring tangible. Conferring lays the groundwork for effective reading instruction. Conferences with students are purposeful conversations that scaffold reading comprehension strategies to guide the reader’s progress. Ultimately, through the gradual release of responsibility, you will create engaged and independent readers. Starting with what conferring isn’t, Allen unpacks the essential components of the process:Intimacy: the social context of conferringRigor: the cognitive context of conferringInquiry: the analytical context of conferring With his guidance, you will be able to set goals for student conferring and elevate student reader conferences from start to finish.

Whole Novels for the Whole Class, Grades 5-12: A Student-Centered Approach


Ariel Sacks - 2013
    Rather than using novels simply to teach basic literacy skills and comprehension strategies, "Whole Novels" approaches literature as art. The book is fully aligned with the Common Core ELA Standards and offers tips for implementing whole novels in various contexts, including suggestions for teachers interested in trying out small steps in their classrooms first.Includes a powerful method for teaching literature, writing, and critical thinking to middle school studentsShows how to use the Whole Novels approach in conjunction with other programs Includes video clips of the author using the techniques in her own classroomThis resource will help teachers work with students of varying abilities in reading whole novels.

Where You Go Is Not Who You'll Be: An Antidote to the College Admissions Mania


Frank Bruni - 2015
    Over the last few decades, Americans have turned college admissions into a terrifying and occasionally devastating process, preceded by test prep, tutors, all sorts of stratagems, all kinds of rankings, and a conviction among too many young people that their futures will be determined and their worth established by which schools say yes and which say no. In Where You Go is Not Who You'll Be, Frank Bruni explains why this mindset is wrong, giving students and their parents a new perspective on this brutal, deeply flawed competition and a path out of the anxiety that it provokes. Bruni, a bestselling author and a columnist for the New York Times, shows that the Ivy League has no monopoly on corner offices, governors' mansions, or the most prestigious academic and scientific grants. Through statistics, surveys, and the stories of hugely successful people, he demonstrates that many kinds of colleges serve as ideal springboards. And he illuminates how to make the most of them. What matters in the end are students' efforts in and out of the classroom, not the name on their diploma. Where you go isn't who you'll be. Americans need to hear that--and this indispensable manifesto says it with eloquence and respect for the real promise of higher education.

Twenty Poems That Could Save America and Other Essays


Tony Hoagland - 2014
    The teaching of poetry languishes, and that region of youthful neurological terrain capable of being ignited only by poetry is largely dark, unpopulated, and silent, like a classroom whose shades are drawn. This is more than a shame, for poetry is our common treasure-house, and we need its vitality, its respect for the subconscious, its willingness to entertain ambiguity, its plaintive truth-telling, and its imaginative exhibitions of linguistic freedom, which confront the general culture's more grotesque manipulations. We need the emotional training sessions poetry conducts us through. We need its previews of coming attractions: heartbreak, survival, failure, endurance, understanding, more heartbreak.—from "Twenty Poems That Could Save America"Twenty Poems That Could Save America presents insightful essays on the craft of poetry and a bold conversation about the role of poetry in contemporary culture. Essays on the "vertigo" effects of new poetry give way to appraisals of Robert Bly, Sharon Olds, and Dean Young. At the heart of this book is an honesty and curiosity about the ways poetry can influence America at both the private and public levels. Tony Hoagland is already one of this country's most provocative poets, and this book confirms his role as a restless and perceptive literary and cultural critic.

Writing about Reading: From Book Talk to Literary Essays, Grades 3-8


Janet Angelillo - 2003
    She shows us how to teach students to manage all the thinking and questioning that precedes their putting pen to paper. More than that, she offers us smarter ways to have students write about their reading that can last them a lifetime. She demonstrates how students' responses to reading canstart in a notebook, in conversation, or in a read aloud lead to thinking guided by literary criticism reflect deeper text analysis and honest writing processes result in a variety of popular genres--book reviews, author profiles, commentaries, editorials, and the literary essay. She even includes tools for teaching-day-by-day units of study, teaching points, a sample minilesson, and lots of student examples-plus chapters on yearlong planning and assessment. Ensure that your students will be readers and writers long after they leave you. Get them enthused and empowered to use whatever they read-facts, statistics, the latest book--as fuel for writing in school and in their working lives. Read Angelillo.

How To Talk So Kids Can Learn


Adele Faber - 1995
    This breakthrough book demonstrates how parents and teachers can join forces to inspire kids to be self-directed, self-disciplined, and responsive to the wonders of learning.

Classroom Habitudes: Teaching Learning Habits and Attitudes in 21st Century Learning


Angela Maiers - 2008
    But how do you work those skills into the curriculum? Learn how to use the content you already teach to challenge students to think critically, collaborate with others, solve new problems, and adapt to change across new learning contexts. Help students build the seven habitudes habits of disciplined decisions and specific attitudes they need to succeed."

Choice Theory in the Classroom


William Glasser - 1986
    Glasser translates choice theory into a productive, classroom model of team learning with emphasis on satisfaction and excitement. Working in small teams, students find that knowledge contributes to power, friendship and fun. Because content and the necessary student collaboration skills must be taught, teachers need to develop skills if they are to use this model successfully. The dividends are 'turned-on ' students and satisfied teachers."--Madeline Hunter, University of California at Los Angeles "Choice Theory in the Classroom is a landmark book, without question one of the most important and useful books for teachers to appear in a long while. Written with rare lucidity and grace, the book has numerous instantly usable ideas that will contribute fundamentally to the success of classroom teachers. William Glasser combines his extensive theoretical expertise and wide practical experience to provide a practical and illuminating guide for teachers [that] should be required reading in every college of education in the country."--David and Roger Johnson, University of Minnesota"Choice Theory in the Classroom presents an insightful analysis of what is wrong with traditional school and what need to be done about it. Dr. Glasser gives a compelling rationale for the use of learning-teams in schools to capture the excitement and commitment students display in sports but rarely in the classroom. The book is well written and persuasive. I hope every teacher in America buys it, believes it, and behaves accordingly."--Robert Slavin, John Hopkins University

Word Matters: Teaching Phonics and Spelling in the Reading/Writing Classroom


Gay Su Pinnell - 1998
    Hailed for its practical, systematic approach, the book showed hundreds of thousands of teachers how to address the needs of the whole classroom as well as individual readers. Now, with the publication of Word Matters, Pinnell and Fountas offer K-3 teachers the same unparalleled support, this time focusing on phonics and spelling instruction.Word Matters presents essential information on designing and implementing a high-quality, systematic literacy program to help children learn about letters, sounds, and words. The central goal is to teach children to become "word solvers": readers who can take words apart while reading for meaning, and writers who can construct words while writing to communicate. Where similar books are narrow in focus, Word Matters presents the theoretical underpinnings and practical wherewithal of word study in three contexts:word study that includes systematically planned and applied experiences focusing on the elements of letters and wordswriting, including how children use phoneme-grapheme relationships, word patterns, and principles to develop spelling abilityreading, including teaching children how to solve words with the use of phonics and visual-analysis skills as they read for meaning.Each topic is supported with a variety of practical tools: reproducible sheets for a word study system and for writing workshop; lists of spelling minilessons; and extensive word lists, including frequently used words, antonyms, synonyms, and more. Armed with these tools-and the tried-and-true wisdom of Gay Su Pinnell and Irene Fountas-teachers can help students develop not just the "essential skills," but also a joyful appreciation of their own literacy.

But How Do You Teach Writing?: A Simple Guide for All Teachers


Barry Lane - 2008
    The book is divided into three parts: Out of the Gate contains easy ideas to help you get started, More Reasons to Write shows you how to teach across genre, both fiction and nonfiction writing, and Refining Writing addresses everything you need to know about revision, grammar, punctuation, and assessment. In every chapter you'll find two running features: 1) “Try This”, ready-to-use lessons for you and your students; and 2) “Yeah But” where Barry answers the real questions and concerns he's collected from teachers around the country.

Hacking Assessment: 10 Ways to Go Gradeless in a Traditional Grades School (Hack Learning #3)


Starr Sackstein - 2015
    Now, you can easily stop reducing students to a number, letter, or any label that misrepresents learning and assessment in education. Now, you can help children see the value in every single assignment. Today, you can make assessment a rich, ongoing conversation that inspires learning for the sake of learning, rather than as a punishment or a reward. All you have to do is go gradeless. Throw out your grade book tomorrow! In Hacking Assessment: 10 Ways to Go Gradeless in a Traditional Grades School, award-winning teacher and world-renowned formative assessment expert Starr Sackstein unravels one of education's oldest mysteries: how to assess learning without grades -- even in a school that uses numbers, letters, GPAs, and report cards. While many educators can only muse about the possibility of a world without grades, teachers like Sackstein are reimagining education. In this unique, eagerly-anticipated book, Sackstein shows you exactly how to create a remarkable no-grades classroom like hers, a vibrant place where students grow, share, thrive, and become independent learners who never ask, "What's this worth?" Learn what formative assessment really looks like. Summative assessment is typically an end-of-unit exam or standardized test, but what is formative assessment? Many teachers struggle with the concept. Hacking Assessment not only explains what formative assessment is, it provides blueprints for implementation and examples from educators around the world, who use this strategy successfully every day. Read It and You Can Take These Actions Immediately: Shift everyone's mindset away from grades Track student progress without a grade book Communicate learning to all stakeholders in real time Maximize time while providing meaningful feedback Teach students to reflect and "self-grade" Deliver feedback in a digital world Create e-portfolios and cloud-based learning archives Inspire Students to share their work openly This is not your average assessment book Hacking Assessment won't bore you with outdated research or unrealistic strategies. In her captivating, conversational style, Sackstein provides practical ideas woven into a user-friendly success guide with actionable steps for creating an amazing conversation about learning that does not require a traditional grade. Each chapter is neatly wrapped in this simple Hack Learning Series formula: The Problem (an assessment issue that plagues education) The Hack (a ridiculously easy solution that you've likely never considered) What You Can Do Tomorrow (no waiting necessary) Blueprint for Full Implementation (a step-by-step action plan for capacity building) The Hack in Action (yes, someone has actually done this)