Look at good writing in any genre, and you'll find these traits. Think of them as the fuel that stokes the engine of writing. With this book, teachers will learn how to assess student work for these traits and plan instruction. And they'll be amazed at how the writing in their classroom improves. Includes scoring guides, focus lessons, and activities for teaching each trait.

    At its heart is the argument that most education policy discussions are disconnected from the daily realities of urban schools, especially those in poor and beleaguered neighborhoods. Charles M. Payne argues that we have failed to account fully for the weakness of the social infrastructure and the often dysfunctional organizational environments of urban schools and school systems. The result is that liberals and conservatives alike have spent a great deal of time pursuing questions of limited practical value in the effort to improve city schools.Payne carefully delineates these stubborn and intertwined sources of failure in urban school reform efforts of the past two decades. Yet while his book is unsparing in its exploration of the troubled recent history of urban school reform, Payne also describes himself as guardedly optimistic. He describes how, in the last decade, we have developed real insights into the roots of school failure, and into how some individual schools manage to improve. He also examines recent progress in understanding how particular urban districts have established successful reforms on a larger scale.

    And teachers, like the rest of the population, aren't perfect. Yet good teaching happens, and great teachers continue to inspire and educate generations of students. See Me After Class helps those great teachers of the future to survive the classroom long enough to become great.Fueled by hundreds of hilarious--and sometimes shocking--tales from the teachers who lived them, Elden provides tips and strategies that deal head-on with the challenges that aren't covered in new-teacher training. Lessons can go wrong. Parents may yell at you. Sunday evenings will sometimes be accompanied by the dreaded countdown to Monday morning. As a veteran teacher, Elden offers funny, practical, and honest advice, to help teachers walk through the doors of their classrooms day after day with clarity, confidence...and sanity!"You know how you've always thought that if you were a teacher you'd go insane? Well, this very funny book proves that you definitely would. But in a good way."--Dave Barry, Pulitzer Prize winning humor writer"A useful, empathetic guide to weathering the first-year lumps...a frothy, satisfying Guinness for the teacher's soul."--Dan Brown, NBCT, Director of the Future Educators Association, and author of The Great Expectations School"See Me After Class is a must-have book for any teacher's bookshelf. On second thought, you'll probably want to keep it on your classroom desk since you'll use it so much!"--Larry Ferlazzo, teacher and author of Helping Students Motivate Themselves"This is the kind of no-nonsense straight talk that teachers are starved for, but too rarely get...Roxanna Elden tells it like it is, with a heavy dose of practicality, a dash of cynicism, a raft of constructive suggestions, and plenty of wry humor."--Rick Hess, Director of Education Policy Studies at AEI, author of Education Week blog, "Rich Hess Straight Up"

    A bachelor’s degree is now required for entry into a growing number of professions. And some parents begin planning for the expense of sending their kids to college when they’re born. Almost everyone strives to go, but almost no one asks the fundamental question posed by Academically Adrift: are undergraduates really learning anything once they get there?For a large proportion of students, Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa’s answer to that question is a definitive no. Their extensive research draws on survey responses, transcript data, and, for the first time, the state-of-the-art Collegiate Learning Assessment, a standardized test administered to students in their first semester and then again at the end of their second year. According to their analysis of more than 2,300 undergraduates at twenty-four institutions, 45 percent of these students demonstrate no significant improvement in a range of skills—including critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing—during their first two years of college. As troubling as their findings are, Arum and Roksa argue that for many faculty and administrators they will come as no surprise—instead, they are the expected result of a student body distracted by socializing or working and an institutional culture that puts undergraduate learning close to the bottom of the priority list.Academically Adrift holds sobering lessons for students, faculty, administrators, policy makers, and parents—all of whom are implicated in promoting or at least ignoring contemporary campus culture. Higher education faces crises on a number of fronts, but Arum and Roksa’s report that colleges are failing at their most basic mission will demand the attention of us all.

    "Ace Your Teacher Interview" offers specific questions and responses gathered from dozens of principals and administrators across the country, along with a creative range of inside information on what impresses interview committees. This book is designed to provide readers with practical and realistic advice that informs and illustrates without being dogmatic or professorial. Teachers and college students majoring in education as well as people entering teaching from other professions will find this book a valuable resource. Key Features 149 of the most frequently asked interview questions, including the one question you must be able to answer, 99 basic questions, and 39 zingers to watch out for Comprehensive information on preparing for job interviews 10 questions you should ask interviewers, etc.

    'Roadville' is a white working-class community of families steeped for generations in the life of textile mills; 'Trackton' is an African-American working-class community whose older generations grew up farming the land, but whose existent members work in the mills. In tracing the children's language development the author shows the deep cultural differences between the two communities, whose ways with words differ as strikingly from each other as either does from the pattern of the townspeople, the 'mainstream' blacks and whites who hold power in the schools and workplaces of the region. Employing the combined skills of ethnographer, social historian, and teacher, the author raises fundamental questions about the nature of language development, the effects of literacy on oral language habits, and the sources of communication problems in schools and workplaces.

    They did that—and more. In their early twenties, by sheer force of talent and determination never to take no for an answer, they created a wildly successful fifth-grade experience that would grow into the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP), which today includes sixty-six schools in nineteen states and the District of Columbia. KIPP schools incorporate what Feinberg and Levin learned from America's best, most charismatic teachers: lessons need to be lively; school days need to be longer (the KIPP day is nine and a half hours); the completion of homework has to be sacrosanct (KIPP teachers are available by telephone day and night). Chants, songs, and slogans such as "Work hard, be nice" energize the program. Illuminating the ups and downs of the KIPP founders and their students, Mathews gives us something quite rare: a hopeful book about education.

    In this groundbreaking book, Berit Gordon offers the complete solution, a blended model that combines the benefits of classic literature with the motivational power of choice reading. With the blended model, teachers lead close examinations of key passages from classic texts, guiding students to an understanding of important reading strategies they can transfer to their choice books. Teachers gain a platform for demonstrating the critical reading skills students so urgently require, and students thrive on reading what they want to read. In this research-backed book, Gordon leads you step by step to classroom success with the blended model, showing:The basics of getting your classroom library up and running How to build a blended curriculum for both fiction and non-fiction units, keeping relevant standards in mind Tips and resources to help with day-to-day planning Ideas for selecting class novel passages that provide essential cultural capital and bolster students' reading skills Strategies for bringing talk into your blended reading classroom How to reach the crucial learning goal of transfer A practical, user-friendly approach for assessing each student's progress No More Fake Reading gives you all the tools you need to put the blended model to work for your students and transform your classroom into a vibrant reading environment. Berit Gordon coaches teachers as they nurture lifelong readers and writers. Her path as an educator began in the classroom in the Dominican Republic before teaching in New York City public schools. She also taught at the Teachers College of Columbia University in English Education. She currently works as a literacy consultant in grades 3-12 and lives in Maplewood, New Jersey with her husband and three children.

    Readers will develop an understanding of the multiple research methods and strategies used in education and related fields, the ability to read and critically evaluate published research, and the ability to write a proposal, construct a questionnaire, and conduct an empirical research study on their own.

    After a brief overview of current issues in the field, the book discusses crucial topics in the field, including the characteristics of gifted students, strategies for identification, considerations in planning sound gifted and talented programs, contemporary program models, varieties of acceleration, differentiated curriculum models, problems of underachievement of disadvantaged, twice-exceptional, and female gifted students, and the evaluation of gifted programs. The authors also address affective needs, leadership, and counseling. A chapter on parenting gifted children includes a section on advocating for gifted education and communication with schools. The sixth edition has been thoroughly revised, most notably with the latest research on acceleration, curriculum models, underachievement, culturally and economically disadvantaged students, gender issues, and dual exceptionalities. The content is further supported and enhanced by the inclusion of numerous practical strategies that can be implemented in the classroom, case studies that help teachers identify student needs, summaries of research on effective programs, emphasis on pedagogy and on social-emotional needs, heightened awareness of less visible sub-groups within gifted populations, and an amusing, witty writing style that adds to the appeal of this best-selling book.

     The time-tested secrets this book discloses include Cicero’s three-step strategy for moving an audience to action—as well as Honest Abe’s Shameless Trick of lowering an audience’s expectations by pretending to be unpolished. But it’s also replete with contemporary techniques such as politicians’ use of “code” language to appeal to specific groups and an eye-opening assortment of popular-culture dodges—including The Yoda Technique, The Belushi Paradigm, and The Eddie Haskell Ploy. Whether you’re an inveterate lover of language books or just want to win a lot more anger-free arguments on the page, at the podium, or over a beer, Thank You for Arguing is for you. Written by one of today’s most popular language mavens, it’s warm, witty, erudite, and truly enlightening. It not only teaches you how to recognize a paralipsis and a chiasmus when you hear them, but also how to wield such handy and persuasive weapons the next time you really, really want to get your own way.

    Understanding Youth bridges the gap between adolescent development theory and practice.Nakkula and Toshalis explore how factors such as social class, peer and adult relationships, gender norms, and the media help to shape adolescents’ sense of themselves and their future expectations and aspirations.

    But she's also seen too many kids struggle too much to read them--and consequently, check out of reading altogether. Kate's had better success getting kids to actually read - and enjoy it-when they choose their own books within a workshop model. And yet, she says, I missed my whole-class novels.In A Novel Approach, Kate takes a deep dive into the troubles and triumphs of both whole-class novels and independent reading and arrives at a persuasive conclusion: we can find a student-centered, balanced approach to teaching reading. Kate offers a practical framework for creating units that join both teaching methods together and helps you: - Identify the skills your students need to learn - Choose whole-class texts that will be most relevant to your kids - Map out the timing of a unit and the strategies you'll teach - Meet individual needs while teaching whole novels - Guide students to choice books and book clubs that build on the skills being taught. Above all, Kate's plan emphasizes teaching reading skills and strategies over the books themselves. By making sure that our classes are structured in a way that really sees students and strives to meet their needs, she argues, we can keep reaching for the dream of a class where no student is unmoved, no reader unchanged by the end of the year. Video clips of Kate working with students in diverse classrooms bring the content to life throughout the book.

    This book offers exciting -- and useful -- information about the mind and the brain that provides some answers on how people actually learn.

    Now in a fourth edition, this remarkably successful book features a newchapter by Daniel Anderson on teaching with computers and adds updated material on invention, intellectual development, and responding to students' writing. Describing in straightforward terms the cross-disciplinary scholarship that underlies composition teaching, it opens with chapters onprewriting techniques, organizing material, paragraphing, sentence structure, words, and revising that show teachers how to lead students through composing. Sections on writing workshops, collaborative learning, and instructional technology reflect current views of writing as a social interaction.Chapters on rhetoric, cognition, and linguistics explain theoretical principles that support classroom practices and make teachers' performances more effective. Treating both the theory and practice of writing, this classic book encourages teachers to adopt the methods that best meet their students' needs and to develop a style of teaching based on informed decisions. It provides an extensive updated bibliography--including useful Web sites as well asimportant books and articles--and an updated table of important dates in the history of composition. A Rhetoric for Writing Teachers, 4/e, offers both prospective and seasoned writing teachers convenient access to influential scholarship in the field and inspires them to examine what it means toteach well.