How many authors would travel coast to coast on a bus to get their book into as many hands as possible? Not many. But that's just what Ron Clark, author of The Essential 55, did to keep his book and message in the public eye. And it worked. After his Oprah appearance, sales skyrocketed: we've sold more than 850,000 copies in six months! The book sat tenaciously on the New York Times bestseller list for 11 weeks. Ron Clark was featured on the Today show, and in the Chicago Tribune, Good Housekeeping, and the New York Daily News--not to mention the calls we've received from teachers and parents who want to get their hands on Ron's guidelines for teaching children. Now in paperback, The Essential 55 will be the perfect book for parents and teachers to slip into their own backpacks, to read on the train or at lunch, and to highlight the sections that resonate for them. And with an author who is truly a partner in getting his message to the masses, we just can't lose.

    Achieving success in this more challenging world requires knowing many more words. 100 Words Every Middle Schooler Should Know helps students in grades 6 to 8 (ages 11-14) to express themselves with distinction and get the most out of school.The 100 words are varied and interesting, ranging from verbs like muster and replenish to nouns like havoc and restitution to adjectives like apprehensive and imperious. Knowing these words enables students to express themselves with greater clarity and subtlety. Each word has a definition and a pronunciation and appears with at least one quotation—a moving or dramatic passage—taken from a book that middle schoolers are assigned in the classroom or enjoy reading on their own.Both classic and contemporary works of fiction and nonfiction are represented. Among the authors are young adult favorites and award-winners such as Kate Di Camillo, Russell Freedman, Neil Gaiman, E.L. Konigsberg, Lois Lowry, Walter Dean Myers, Katherine Paterson, J. K. Rowling, and Gary Soto. Readers can see for themselves that the words are used by the very best writers in the very best books. It stands to reason that they will see them again and again in higher grades and throughout their lives.100 Words Every Middle Schooler Should Know helps students to gain useful knowledge and prepares them to step into a broader world.

    The authors mix inspirational anecdotes with practical guidance on how to find a voice, develop characters and plot,make revisions, and overcome writer's block. Fun writing prompts will help young writers jump-start their own projects, and encouragement throughout will keep them at work.

    She proclaims, in her delightfully urbane, witty, and very English way, that it is time to look at our commas and semicolons and see them as the wonderful and necessary things they are. Using examples from literature, history, neighborhood signage, and her own imagination, Truss shows how meaning is shaped by commas and apostrophes, and the hilarious consequences of punctuation gone awry.Featuring a foreword by Frank McCourt, and interspersed with a lively history of punctuation from the invention of the question mark in the time of Charlemagne to George Orwell shunning the semicolon, Eats, Shoots & Leaves makes a powerful case for the preservation of proper punctuation.

    Foster gives tweens the tools they need to become thoughtful readers.With funny insights and a conversational style, he explains the way writers use symbol, metaphor, characterization, setting, plot, and other key techniques to make a story come to life.From that very first middle school book report to that first college course, kids need to be able to understand the layers of meaning in literature. Foster makes learning this important skill fun and exciting by using examples from How the Grinch Stole Christmas to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, from short stories and poems to movie scripts.This go-to guide unlocks all the hidden secrets to reading, making it entertaining and satisfying.

    As we dream with him, we are taken further and further into mathematical theory, where ideas eventually take flight, until everyone--from those who fumble over fractions to those who solve complex equations in their heads--winds up marveling at what numbers can do.Hans Magnus Enzensberger is a true polymath, the kind of superb intellectual who loves thinking and marshals all of his charm and wit to share his passions with the world. In The Number Devil, he brings together the surreal logic of Alice in Wonderland and the existential geometry of Flatland with the kind of math everyone would love, if only they had a number devil to teach them.

    As you complete the exercises in this book, you will learn how to tell if you’re using the right word as well as how to pronounce and spell it. You will also learn how to avoid illiterate expressions and how to speak grammatically, without making embarrassing mistakes.A complete handbook for building a superior vocabulary, Word Power Made Easy will teach you how to speak and write with confidence as well as how to read more effectively and efficiently. It will help you to learn more quickly, develop social contacts, and increase your earning power.Each chapter ends with review. Each section ends with a progressive check. Numerous tests will help you increase and retain the knowledge you acquired. Word Power Made Easy does more than just add words to your vocabulary; it teaches ideas and a method of broadening knowledge as an integral part of the vocabulary building process.

    The Human Face of FractionsIf you know your addition and multiplication tables by heart, your next step is to get to know Fred.In this book (Life of Fred: Fractions) and the next book (Life of Fred: Decimals and Percents) you can learn everything you need to know to begin algebra!In one morning, our hero:Teaches a class at the universityBuys a bicycleIn his office, he hurts his foot and is taken to the hospital....and that's just the beginning of his day!Less Than, Billion, Cardinal and Ordinal Numbers, Diameter and Radius, Savings and Expenses, Definition of a Fraction, Sectors, Comparing Fractions, Reducing Fractions, Adding and Subtracting Fractions, Common Denominators, Roman Numerals, Least Common Multiples, Improper Fractions, Lines of Symmetry, Division by Zero, Circumference, Multiplying Mixed Numbers, Commutative Law, Canceling, Definition of a Function, Area, Unit Analysis, Division of Fractions, Geometric Figures, Estimating Answers.

     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.

    Gain the language skills you want."Practice Makes Perfect: Basic Spanish" is a trusted companion to your Spanish-learning experience. In each bite-sized lesson, author Dorothy Richmond explains one--and only one--grammar concept and illustrates it with many clear examples. The accompanying fun and interesting exercises let you practice, practice, practice what you have learned. Although these lessons are purposely short so you can complete them in twenty minutes or less, you can go at a pace that works for you.This guide/workbook will help you master present tense verb conjugation the "ser" and "estar" verb forms adjectives possessive pronouns sentence structures the contractions "al" and "del" indefinite articles "tener" idioms and moreWhether you are learning on your own or taking a beginning Spanish class, "Practice Makes Perfect: Basic Spanish" will help you build your confidence."

    Bringing new insight to the comprehensive HODGES' HARBRACE HANDBOOK, Fifteenth Edition, rhetorician Cheryl Glenn and linguist Loretta Gray add their expertise to this market-leading handbook.

    How manyCan you master?From sonnets to double dactyls,Odes to limericks—Raschka and Janeczko (and a frisky mule)Make learning the rules of poetrySo much fun!In this splendid and playful volume, acclaimed poetry anthologist Paul B. Janeczko and Caldecott Honor illustrator Chris Raschka present lively examples of twenty-nine poetic forms, demonstrating not only the (sometimes bendable) rules of poetry, but also the spirit that brings these forms so wonderfully to life. Featuring formal poems, some familiar and some never before published, from the likes of Eleanor Farjeon (aubade), X. J. Kennedy (elegy), Ogden Nash (couplet), Liz Rosenberg (pantoum), and William Shakespeare, the sonnet king himself, A KICK IN THE HEAD perfectly illustrates Robert Frost's maxim that poetry without rules is like a tennis match without a net.

    Rather than a set of fixed lessons, Visible Thinking is a varied collection of practices, including thinking routines, small sets of questions or a short sequence of steps as well as the documentation of student thinking. Using this process thinking becomes visible as the students' different viewpoints are expressed, documented, discussed and reflected upon. Helps direct student thinking and structure classroom discussion.Can be applied with students at all grade levels and in all content areas. Includes easy-to-implement classroom strategies.The book also comes with a DVD of video clips featuring Visible Thinking in practice in different classrooms.

    Expertly designed in a vibrant, full-color format, this streamlined text not only serves as a valuable resource by providing the most current reference lists and examples from which to select texts from all genres, but it also emphasizes the critical skills needed to search for and select literature--researching, evaluating, and implementing quality books in the pre-K-to-8 classroom--to give readers the tools they need to evaluate books, create curriculum, and share the love of literature. It includes unique features that spur critical thinking and direct application in the classroom and curriculum.

    Although the structure of the parent volume has been preserved so that reference to it can easily be made, this grammar has been especially written to take into account the needs of advanced students of grammar in colleges and universities.