Real hard. In The Unstoppable Writing Teacher she takes on the common concerns, struggles, and roadblocks that we all face in writing instruction and helps us engage in the process of problem solving each one.From dealing with writing workshop skeptics to working with students both gifted and challenged, and of course combating that eternal barrier-lack of time-Colleen offers tried-and-true strategies to address and overcome obstacles.For the struggles unique to you, she includes a "Name Your Monster" section that helps you identify your own individual roadblocks and even offers sustainable support through her blog, colleencruz.com. "We can't solve all the problems we're faced with in writing instruction," Colleen promises, "but we can choose how to respond to them. And our responses will make all the difference."What makes you unstoppable, or what's stopping you? Connect with Colleen on her blog at www.colleencruz.com/blog.htm or on Twitter, #unstoppablewritingteacher.

    This book offers simple, ready-to-use, and evidence-proven mindfulness techniques to help educators manage the stresses of the classroom, cultivate an exceptional learning environment, and revitalize both their teaching and their students’ knowledge acquisition. Drawing on basic and applied research in the fields of neuroscience, psychology, and education, as well as the author’s extensive experience as a mindfulness practitioner, teacher, and scientist, it includes exercises in mindfulness, emotional awareness, movement, listening, and more, all with real-time classroom applications.

     Combining robust evidence from a range of fields with the practical wisdom of experienced, effective classroom teachers, this is a must-read for trainee and experienced teachers wishing to enhance their skills in teaching English.

    Written by Megan Tschannen-Moran--an expert on the topic of trust and schools--Trust Matters is based in solid research. It outlines the five key elements on which individuals base their trust judgments (benevolence, honesty, openness, reliability, and competency) and explores the factors that influence the development of trust. The book explores the leader's role in fostering high quality relationships among teachers, students, and parents and examines examples of positive outcomes of trusting school environments.

    The main difference is that our lessons put student curiosity and engagement first. -Harvey Smokey Daniels and Nancy SteinekeIn this highly anticipated follow-up to Texts and Lessons for Content-Area Reading, Harvey Smokey Daniels and Nancy Steineke share their powerful strategies for engaging students in challenging, meaningful reading of fiction and poetry using some of their favorite short, fresh texts-or, as they put it, full-strength adult literature that gives us English majors a run for our interpretive money- but is still intriguing enough to keep teen readers digging and thinking. Use the 37 innovative, step-by-step, common-core-correlated lessons with the reproducible texts provided, with selections from your literature textbook, or with your own best-loved texts to teach close reading skills and deep comprehension strategies. Give students opportunities to read and synthesize across texts with the 8 thematic text set lessons provided, or use the model unit outlines for using the lessons with The Giver, To Kill a Mockingbird, and The Great Gatsby as springboards for planning your own novel studies. Better Together! Used together, Texts and Lessons for Teaching Literature and Texts and Lessons for Content-Area Reading give you all the lesson ideas you need for all text types. Save 15% when you buy them together in a Texts and Lessons Bundle.

    He has forty children, and all of them have different mothers..."Jack Woodson was a thermal design engineer for four years until he was laid off from his job. Now, as a teacher, he faces new challenges. Conference calls have been replaced with parent conferences. Product testing has given way to standardized testing. Instead of business cards, Jack now passes out report cards. The only thing that hasn't changed noticeably is the maturity level of the people surrounding him all day.Learn Me Good is Jack's hilarious retelling of his harrowing rookie year, written as a series of emails to Fred Bommerson, his former engineering coworker. Inspired by real-life experiences of rambunctious and precocious children, lesson plans gone awry, and incredibly outrageous quotes, this laugh a minute page turner will give you a new appreciation for educators. Jack holds a March Mathness tournament, he faces a child's urgent declaration of "My bowels be runnin'!", and he mistakenly asks one girl's mother if she is her brother. With subject lines such as "Irritable Vowel Syndrome," "In math class, no one can hear you scream," and "I love the smell of Lysol in the morning," Jack fills each email with sarcastic (yet loving) humor, insightful observations, and plenty of irreverent wit.If you've ever taught, you will undoubtedly recognize aspects of your own students in Jack's classroom. If you've never set foot in a classroom, you will still appreciate the funny quirks, behaviors, and quotes from the kids and adults alike."I teach, therefore I am...poor!"

    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.

    The Tao of Teaching is written in the same style as the Tao Te Ching, and gives examples from the classrooms of three present-day teachers whom the author feels embody Taoist wisdom and "student-centered" educational methods. The Tao of Teaching is a labor of love, containing many important insights by a talented and respected professional whose emphasis is on the students' contribution in a learning environment, whatever the context.

    A guide for educators of students in K-12, readers will find a wealth of research evidence, statistical data, and case studies. Nine categories of instructional strategies that maximize student learning are introduced, along with the pertinent information to understand and synthesize each: * Studies in effect size and percentile gain units * Guiding principles for using the strategies * Classroom examples of model instructional practice * Charts, frames, rubrics, organizers, and other tools--will help teachers to apply the strategies immediately in the classoom.

    Glatthorn offers examples of how principals can incorporate curriculum leadership into their organizational behavior and re-examines the key issues that continue to influence principals in the real world.

    They explore the world around them through play, imagination, and discovery. They build meaning, they create understanding, and they unabashedly share their learning. It's in this process that they find joy in life and relevance in the world around them.Why, then, do some of our students become disconnected from their learning in school? Where does this natural curiosity go? And how, as educators, can we ensure all of our students experience a meaningful and wonder-filled journey through their education?It's these questions that Trevor MacKenzie, author of the critically acclaimed book Dive into Inquiry, answers in Inquiry Mindset. Co-written with kindergarten teacher Rebecca Bathurst-Hunt, Inquiry Mindset offers a highly accessible journey through inquiry in the younger years. You'll learn how to . . .Empower your learners, increase engagement, and accelerate achievement. Harness the wonderings and curiosities of your students and leverage them into powerful learning opportunities. Cultivate an inquiry mindset both as a teacher and in your students! Adopt an inquiry approach that results in the most authentic and inspiring learning you've ever experienced!

    But it is also the planning, the thinking, the writing, the journey: all I've been putting into my teaching for the last two decades. This is the book I wanted when I was first given ninth graders and a list of novels to teach. This is a book of vision and hope and joy, but it is also a book of genre units and minilessons and actual conferences with students." -Penny Kittle What makes the single biggest difference to student writers? When the invisible machinery of your writing processes is made visible to them. "Write Beside Them "shows you how to do it. It's the comprehensive book and DVD that English/language arts teachers need to ensure that teens improve their writing. Across genres, Penny Kittle presents a flexible framework for instruction, the theory and experience to back it up, and detailed teaching information to help you implement it right away. Each section of "Write Beside Them "describes a specific element of Kittle's workshop:Daily writing practice: writer's notebooks and quick writes Instructional frameworks: minilessons, organization, conferring, and sharing drafts Genre work: narrative, persuasion, and writing in multiple genres Skills work: grammar, punctuation, and style Assessment: evaluation, feedback, portfolios, and grading. All along the way, Kittle demonstrates minilessons that respond to students' immediate needs, and her Student Focus sections profile and spotlight how individual writers grew and changed over the course of her workshop. In addition, "Write Beside Them" provides a study guide, reproducibles, writing samples from Penny and her students, suggestions for nurturing your own writing life, and a helpful FAQ. Best of all, the accompanying DVD takes you right inside Penny's classroom. Its video clips explicitly model how to make the process of writing accessible to all kids. Penny Kittle's active coaching and can-do attitude alone will energize your teaching and inspire you to write with your students. But her strategies, expert advice, and compelling in-class video footage will help you turn inspiration into great teaching. Read "Write Beside Them "and discover that the most important influence for all young writers is their teacher. Write Beside Them debuts as the field's most comprehensive, contemporary, and practical book on high school writing. Kittle not only tells how a skillful writing teacher operates, she shows you on the accompanying DVD, with clips of kids at work in every stage of a writing workshop. And all this glorious teaching happens with real, sometimes struggling kids who remind us of our own classrooms and students. Write Beside Them "is the whole package." -Harvey Daniels Author of "Content-Area Writing" and "Subjects Matter" Click here to view a sample video from the DVD.

    Kids take a vacation from books and those with limited access to books lose ground to their peers. You may have thought there's nothing you can do about it, but there is. No More Summer-Reading Loss shows how to ensure that readers continue to grow year round.School-based practitioners Carrie Cahill and Kathy Horvath join with renowned researchers Anne McGill-Franzen and Dick Allington to help you make summer readers out of every student. You'll stop summer-reading loss as they help you:identify practices that inadvertently contribute to it understand the research on its implications and its prevention take research-based action with 8 instructional strategies. Building independence. Keeping kids on grade-level. Closing the achievement gap. These are just a few of the valuable outcomes that No More Summer-Reading Loss can support. Most importantly, it will help you pass on a love of reading that knows no season and gives readers confidence when they return in the fall. About the Not This, But That Series No More Summer-Reading Loss is part of the Not This, But That series, edited by Nell K. Duke and Ellin Oliver Keene. It helps teachers examine common, ineffective classroom practices and replace them with practices supported by research and professional wisdom. In each book a practicing educator and an education researcher identify an ineffective practice; summarize what the research suggests about why; and detail research-based, proven practices to replace it and improve student learning. Read a sample chapter from No More Summer-Reading Loss.

    Georgia HeardHumanity and warmth are the cornerstones of quality nonfiction writing. But how can students create them in genres that at first seem more informational than intimate? In Finding the Heart of Nonfiction, Georgia Heard shows how mentor texts can help students read for seven essential craft tools and then use them to create inviting nonfiction that keeps readers' interest.Lyrical and practical, Finding the Heart of Nonfiction describes how to choose mentor texts, use them, and mine them for exemplary instruction. Between these suggestions and the instructional ideas, Georgia shows how students can write nonfiction that informs and inspires. You'll find thoughtful, immediately useful support as you:introduce nonfiction with her handpicked, reproducible mentor texts get students writing with the instructional ideas in Georgia's Try This sections familiarize writers with nonfiction craft and text features connect nonfiction work to the Common Core State Standards collect mentor texts tailored to your students. My hope, writes Georgia, is that you and your students will be inspired by the mentor texts I've chosen-but also inspired to seek out your own mentor texts and continue to explore the world through nonfiction. Trust Finding the Heart of Nonfiction and help your students write with purpose, voice, and passion.Preview the book. Download and read a sample chapter.

    In his extensively revised fourth edition, Frank Smith brings teachers and teacher educators up to date on how reading should not be taught. It is a necessary reminder that reading and learning to read are natural activities.There is a massive assault on the independence of teachers of reading, mandated under the No Child Left Behind legislation, which regards reading as an unnatural act requiring contrived systematic instruction. Now more important than ever, Reading Without Nonsense, Fourth Edition provides the evidence and arguments that teachers need to resist this mechanistic view. As Frank Smith emphasizes, the act of reading has never changed despite all the changes in materials, procedures, and methodology proposed by people with an interest in how reading is taught.Reading Without Nonsense remains one of the most authoritative, influential, informative, and accessible texts on reading and learning to read. This bestseller is popular with classroom teachers and university professors as well as administrators, parents, and everyone concerned with literacy and education.