How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading


Mortimer J. Adler - 1940
    It is the best and most successful guide to reading comprehension for the general reader. And now it has been completely rewritten and updated. You are told about the various levels of reading and how to achieve them – from elementary reading, through systematic skimming and inspectional reading, to speed reading, you learn how to pigeonhole a book, X-ray it, extract the author's message, criticize. You are taught the different reading techniques for reading practical books, imaginative literature, plays, poetry, history, science and mathematics, philosophy and social science. Finally, the authors offer a recommended reading list and supply reading tests whereby you can measure your own progress in reading skills, comprehension and speed.This a previously-published edition of ISBN 9780671212094

A Handbook to Literature


William Harmon - 1936
    The text itself is an alphabetical listing of the terms that pertain to literature in English. Now in its eighth edition, it has been used by more than one million students.

Hidden Gems: Naming and Teaching from the Brilliance in Every Student's Writing


Katherine Bomer - 2010
     -Lucy Calkins, Author of Units of Study for Teaching WritingHidden Gems will transform the way we read student work. -Thomas Newkirk, Author of Holding On to Good Ideas in a Time of Bad OnesYou don't get true, fire-in-the-belly energy for writing because you fear getting a bad grade, but because you have something to say and your own way of saying it. -Katherine BomerIf you're like Katherine Bomer, you've grown weary of searching for what's wrong in student writing, and you want better ways to the respond to pieces whose beauty and intelligence doesn't shine on the first read. Now she shares how she learned instead to search-sometimes near the surface, sometimes deep beneath-to find, celebrate, and teach from writers' Hidden Gems.My hope is that as teachers we can respond to all students' writing with astonished, appreciative, awe-struck eyes, writes Katherine. Through protocols, sample assessments, and demonstrations with actual student work, she shows how to bring the brilliant facets of your writers to the surface as you:spot hidden stylistic gems in writing that is unconventional or vernacular uncover content and organizational gems even when you don't find the subject matter engaging or significant respond by naming and celebrating writers' gems instead of hunting for mistakes give lasting compliments using the inspiring language of published writers that motivate students to keep writing, revising, and polishing their gems. Accept Katherine Bomer's invitation to read work by young, unseasoned writers the way we would inquire our way into a poem by Nikki Giovanni, Jimmy Santiago Baca, or Naomi Shihab Nye and to notice the quirky brilliance and humor, the heartbreaking honesty, and surreal beauty in even the slightest bits of writing. You'll soon discover that student writers often perform remarkable feats in the craft of writing, and that you can achieve remarkable results with them when you uncover theirHidden Gems.

Habits of Mind Across the Curriculum: Practical and Creative Strategies for Teachers


Arthur L. Costa - 2009
    Costa and Bena Kallick present this collection of stories by educators around the world who have successfully implemented the habits in their day-to-day teaching in K-12 classrooms. The collective wisdom and experience of these thoughtful practitioners provide readers with insight into the transdisciplinary nature of the 16 Habits of Mind--intelligent behaviors that lead to success in school and the larger world--as well as model lessons and suggestions for weaving the habits into daily instruction in language arts, music, physical education, social studies, math, foreign language, and other content areas. Readers will come to understand that, far from an add-on to the curriculum, the habits are an essential element for helping students at all grade levels successfully deal with the challenges they face in school and beyond.As in all their books on the Habits of Mind, Costa and Kallick have a broad and worthwhile goal in mind. As they say in the concluding chapter of this volume, If we want a future that is much more thoughtful, vastly more cooperative, greatly more compassionate, and a whole lot more loving, then we have to invent it. That future is in our homes, schools, and classrooms today. The Habits of Mind are the tools we all can use to invent our desired vision of the future.

Teaching Arguments: Rhetorical Comprehension, Critique, and Response


Jennifer Fletcher - 2015
    Students need to know how writers’ and speakers’ choices are shaped by elements of the rhetorical situation, including audience, occasion, and purpose. In Teaching Arguments: Rhetorical Comprehension, Critique, and Response , Jennifer Fletcher provides teachers with engaging classroom activities, writing prompts, graphic organizers, and student samples to help students at all levels read, write, listen, speak, and think rhetorically. Fletcher believes that, with appropriate scaffolding and encouragement, all students can learn a rhetorical approach to argument and gain access to rigorous academic content. Teaching Arguments opens the door and helps them pay closer attention to the acts of meaning around them, to notice persuasive strategies that might not be apparent at first glance. When we analyze and develop arguments, we have to consider more than just the printed words on the page. We have to evaluate multiple perspectives; the tension between belief and doubt; the interplay of reason, character, and emotion; the dynamics of occasion, audience, and purpose; and how our own identities shape what we read and write. Rhetoric teaches us how to do these things. Teaching Arguments will help students learn to move beyond a superficial response to texts so they can analyze and craft sophisticated, persuasive arguments—a major cornerstone for being not just college-and career-ready but ready for the challenges of the world.

Reading Don't Fix No Chevys: Literacy in the Lives of Young Men


Michael W. Smith - 2002
    That situation has changed. Michael Smith and Jeff Wilhelm, two of the most respected names in English education and in the teaching of reading, worked with a very diverse group of young men to understand how they use literacy and what conditions promote it. In this book they share what they have learned.Through a variety of creative research methods and an extended series of interviews with 49 young men in middle and high school who differ in class, race, academic achievement, kind of school, and geography, the authors identified the factors that motivated these young men to become accomplished in the activities they most enjoyed-factors that marked the boys' literate activities outside of school, but were largely absent from their literate lives in school. Their study questions the way reading and literature are typically taught and suggests powerful alternatives to traditional instruction.Building their findings on their understanding of the powerful and engaging experiences boys had outside of school, Smith and Wilhelm discuss why boys embrace or reject certain ways of being literate, how boys read and engage with different kinds of texts, and what qualities of texts appeal to boys. Throughout, the authors highlight the importance of choice, the boys' need to be shown how to read, the cost of the traditional teaching of difficult canonical texts, and the crucial place of meaningful social activity.The authors' data-driven findings are provocative, explaining why boys reject much of school literacy and how progressive curricula and instruction might help boys engage with literacy and all learning in more productive ways. Providing both challenges and practical advice for overcoming those challenges, Smith and Wilhelm have produced a book that will appeal to teachers, teacher educators, and parents alike.

Teach Like a Pirate: Increase Student Engagement, Boost Your Creativity, and Transform Your Life as an Educator


Dave Burgess - 2012
    You'll learn how to: - Tap into and dramatically increase your passion as a teacher - Develop outrageously engaging lessons that draw students in like a magnet - Establish rapport and a sense of camaraderie in your classroom - Transform your class into a life-changing experience for your students This groundbreaking inspirational manifesto contains over 30 hooks specially designed to captivate your class and 170 brainstorming questions that will skyrocket your creativity. Once you learn the Teach Like a PIRATE system, you'll never look at your role as an educator the same again.

Letters to a Young Teacher


Jonathan Kozol - 2007
    "Letters to a Young Teacher" reignites a numberof the controversial issues Jonathan has powerfully addressed in recent years: the mania of high-stakes testing that turns many classrooms into test-prep factories where spontaneity and critical intelligence are no longer valued, the invasion of our public schools by predatory private corporations, and the inequalities of urban schools that are once again almost as segregated as they were a century ago. But most of all, these letters are rich with the happiness of teaching children, the curiosity and jubilant excitement children bring into the classroom at an early age, and their ability to overcome their insecurities when they are in the hands of an adoring and hard-working teacher.

The Elements of Style


William Strunk Jr. - 1918
    Throughout, the emphasis is on promoting a plain English style. This little book can help you communicate more effectively by showing you how to enliven your sentences.

Games for Writing: Playful Ways to Help Your Child Learn to Write


Peggy Kaye - 1995
    Peggy Kaye, renowned teacher and author of the widely praised Games for Math, Games for Reading, and Games for Learning, now gives parents more than fifty ways to help their children become skilled, confident, and enthusiastic writers.

Teaching Grammar in Context


Constance Weaver - 1996
    Suggesting that teachers need to know key aspects of grammar in order to teach writing more effectively, Weaver also argued that students need to be guided in learning and applying grammatical concepts as they revise and edit their writing. Attention to sentence structure and mechanics during the process of writing would result in better products.With Teaching Grammar in Context, Weaver extends her philosophy by offering teachers a rationale and practical ideas for teaching grammar not in isolation but in the context of writing. She begins by introducing some common meanings of grammar and provides a historical overview of traditional reasons for teaching grammar as a school subject. After examining those reasons, she questions them, citing decades of research which suggests that grammar taught in isolation has little, if any, effect on most students' writing.To lay the groundwork for a more effective approach, Weaver considers how preschoolers learn the basic structures of their native language and how second-language grammar is acquired. She goes on to suggest a research-based perspective on the concept of error and on the writing errors our students make, concluding with practical alternatives to what Lois Rosen has dubbed the error hunt. Equally useful is Weaver's examination of the aspects of grammar on which we might focus as we guide our students in writing and revising sentences and in editing selected pieces. Her final chapter addresses the teaching of grammar from the perspective of learning theory.The appendix includes numerous sample lessons from Weaver's own teaching, illustrating the five broad topics suggested in the text:teaching concepts of subject, verb, clause, sentence, and related editing concepts teaching style through sentence combining and generating teaching sentence sense and style through manipulation of syntactic elements teaching the power of dialects and dialects of power teaching punctuation and mechanics for convention, clarity, and style. Teaching Grammar in Context fills a long-standing gap in the literature on teaching writing. It will prove invaluable to all practicing and preservice teachers, especially those at the middle and high school levels, where grammar is taught most intensively.

Teach Like a Champion: 49 Techniques that Put Students on the Path to College


Doug Lemov - 2010
    In this book, author Doug Lemov offers the essential tools of the teaching craft so that you can unlock the talent ond skill waiting in your students, no matter how many previous classrooms, schools, or teachers have been unsuccessful.

Craft in the Real World: Rethinking Fiction Writing and Workshopping


Matthew Salesses - 2021
     The traditional writing workshop was established with white male writers in mind; what we call craft is informed by their cultural values. In this bold and original examination of elements of writing—including plot, character, conflict, structure, and believability—and aspects of workshop—including the silenced writer and the imagined reader—Matthew Salesses asks questions to invigorate these familiar concepts. He upends Western notions of how a story must progress. How can we rethink craft, and the teaching of it, to better reach writers with diverse backgrounds? How can we invite diverse storytelling traditions into literary spaces?Drawing from examples including One Thousand and One Nights, Curious George, Ursula K. Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea, and the Asian American classic No-No Boy, Salesses asks us to reimagine craft and the workshop. In the pages of exercises included here, teachers will find suggestions for building syllabi, grading, and introducing new methods to the classroom; students will find revision and editing guidance, as well as a new lens for reading their work. Salesses shows that we need to interrogate the lack of diversity at the core of published fiction: how we teach and write it. After all, as he reminds us, "When we write fiction, we write the world."

Understanding Poetry


Cleanth Brooks - 1938
    Keeping it teachable and flexible, the material allows for full and innocent immersion as well as raising inductive questions to develop critical and analytical skills. Students will be led to understand poetry as a means of imaginatively extending their own experience and indeed, probing the possibilities of the self. This latest incarnation of the landmark text facilitates a thorough study of poetry.

Essentials of Assessing, Preventing, and Overcoming Reading Difficulties


David A Kilpatrick - 2015
    It provides a detailed discussion of the nature and causes of reading difficulties, which will help develop the knowledge and confidence needed to accurately assess why a student is struggling. Readers will learn a framework for organizing testing results from current assessment batteries such as the WJ-IV, KTEA-3, and CTOPP-2. Case studies illustrate each of the concepts covered. A thorough discussion is provided on the assessment of phonics skills, phonological awareness, word recognition, reading fluency, and reading comprehension. Formatted for easy reading as well as quick reference, the text includes bullet points, icons, callout boxes, and other design elements to call attention to important information.Although a substantial amount of research has shown that most reading difficulties can be prevented or corrected, standard reading remediation efforts have proven largely ineffective. School psychologists are routinely called upon to evaluate students with reading difficulties and to make recommendations to address such difficulties. This book provides an overview of the best assessment and intervention techniques, backed by the most current research findings.Bridge the gap between research and practice Accurately assess the reason(s) why a student struggles in reading Improve reading skills using the most highly effective evidence-based techniques Reading may well be the most important thing students are taught during their school careers. It is a skill they will use every day of their lives; one that will dictate, in part, later life success. Struggling students need help now, and Essentials of Understanding and Assessing Reading Difficulties shows how to get these students on track.