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.

    Keeping themorganized can be a challenge, but an organized classroom is essential and allows students and the teacher to fully focus on learning by eliminating distractions. Organized Teacher, Happy Classroom provides practical, proven methods for maintaining an organized classroom throughout the entire school year.Inside you’ll find:• Strategies for managing students’ papers, curriculum material, and essential paperwork• Time management tips to maximize your instruction time and lesson planning• Organizing systems you can teach your students to improve self reliance andaccountability• Checklists for starting and ending the year well organized• Helpful forms and templates you can use in your classroom• Plans for arranging a classroom that promotes positive student participation• Support to simplify your classroom• Efficient storage solutions for all teacher and student materialsWhether you teach primary, intermediate, middle school or high school, this bookwill help you organize your time, paperwork, and classroom spaces.

    And not just for kids who read well. They also work for kids who struggle in reading, who don't respond to abstract concepts. -Tanny McGregorInside, every kid wants to love reading-sometimes they need our help to see it.That's where Tanny McGregor's memorable, sensory-driven lessons come in.The chapters in this book, she writes, are a collection of ideas about how to launch genres, how to introduce your students to the personalities of each, and how to build a curiosity and appreciation for what each genre has to offer. Use the seed ideas suggested in this volume with a genre of your choice and see how it grows!Genre Connections makes learning achievable, accessible, and incremental for all readers-including struggling readers. Tanny's lessons use everyday objects, works of art, music, and her much-loved anchor charts to help readers get acquainted with seven commonly taught genres and to discover what makes them unique.Her launching sequences gradually release responsibility for learning about text types, and they can be adapted for any genre. They help readers weave creative, sensory threads into a tapestry of understanding by taking them from a fun introductory object lesson to an immersive experience.Looking for the perfect partner for Tanny's Comprehension Connections? Or for a new way to bring the inner reader out in any student? Let the ideas in Genre Connections inspire you to help your students get to know genres quickly, confidently, and effectively.

    Through the stories and experiences of eight successful teacher-transmitters, The Dreamkeepers keeps hope alive for educating young African Americans. --ReverAnd Jesse L. Jackson, president and founder, National Rainbow Coalition In this beautifully written book Ladson-Billings illustrates the inspiring influence of a select group of teachers who keep the dreams alive for African American students. ?Henry M. Levin, David Jacks professor of Higher Education, Stanford University Ladson-Billing's portraits, interwoven with personal reflections, challenge readers to envision intellectually rigorous and culturally relevant classrooms that have the power to improve the lives of not just African American students but all children.

    Would you take it? -Debbie Miller and Barbara MossWe know children learn to read by reading. Is independent reading valuable enough to use precious classroom minutes on? Yes, writes Debbie Miller and Barbara Moss, but only if that time is purposeful.DEAR and SSR aren't enough. Research shows that independent reading must be accompanied by intentional instruction and conferring. Debbie and Barbara clear a path for you to take informed action that makes a big difference, with:a rationale for independent reading that's worth finding the time for research evidence on its effectiveness and instructional best practices a framework with 10 teaching tactics for starting and sustaining success. When we set children loose day after day with no focus or support, it can lead to fake reading and disengagement, write Debbie and Barbara. It's our job to equip children with the tools they need when we're not there. Read No More Independent Reading Without Support and find out how.About the Not This, But That Series No More Independent Reading Without Support 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 Independent Reading Without Support.

    Ken O'Connor updates eight guidelines for good grading, provides practical applications, and examines a number of additional grading issues, including grade point average calculation and computer grading programs. Thoroughly revised, this edition includes:A greater emphasis on standards-based grading practices Updated research and additional information on feedback and homework New sections on academic dishonesty, extra credit, and bonus points Additional information on utilizing level scores Reflective exercises

    Harvey Smokey Daniels and Sara Ahmed How can we meet today's elevated academic goals and engage middle school kids-but not simply replicate our competitive, winner-take-all society? How can our students achieve an even higher standard-demonstrating the capacity and the commitment to bend the world toward justice?In a word, inquiry.Welcome to the classroom of Sara Ahmed. With Smokey Daniels as your guide you'll see exactly how Sara uses inquiry to turn required curricular topics into questions so fascinating that young adolescents can't resist investigating them. Units so engaging that they provide all the complexity the standards could ever expect, while helping students grow from bystanders to Upstanders.Smokey and Sara describe precisely how to create, manage, and sustain a classroom built around choice, small-group collaboration, and critical thinking. You'll be inspired by what Sara's students accomplish, but you'll also come away from Upstanders with a can-do plan for teaching your own classes thanks to:a developmental look at what makes middle school kids special, challenging, and fun specific lessons that develop collaboration, self-awareness, and compassion a toolbox filled with teaching strategies, structures, tools, and handouts Point-Outs from Smokey that highlight key teaching moves Game-Time Decisions from Sara that reveal in-the-moment instructional choices narratives that document the incredible work that inquiry allows kids to do ambitious, engaging, and important units on commonly taught middle school themes. What kind of classroom do we want for our middle schoolers? How about one that develops the skills the standards demand and prepares kids to take action in the world right now? We can do it-if we help kids become Upstanders.

    Based on a profound understanding of the ways in which young children learn, it shows teachers how to launch a writing workshop by inviting children to do what they do naturallymake stuff. So why not write books?Gifted educator and author of the best-selling What You Know by Heart (Heinemann, 2002), Katie Wood Ray has seen young authors do just that. And she wants your students to be able to do the same. Beautifully describing young children in the act of learning, she demonstrates what it takes to nourish writing right from the start:a supportive environment that enables even the youngest students to write respect and sensitivity to the way children really learn inviting instruction that both encourages and elevates young writers rich language that stimulates writing classroom talk and children's literature that energize young writers developmental considerations that shape the structure of the workshop, making it natural, joyful, and absolutely appropriate. What's more, Ray explains step by step how to set up and maintain a primary writing workshop, detailing eleven units of study that cover idea generation, text structures, different genres, and illustrations that work with text. She also draws on data, projects, and the language of teaching used in the classroom of first-grade teacher Lisa Cleaveland. Ray allows readers to listen in to Lisa as she helps her young students learn from professional writers, work with intention, and think about their own process. Chockfull of examples of little books by young children, About the Authors is proof positive that a primary writing workshop is a smart writing move.

    Now, in Disrupting Thinking they take teachers a step further and discuss an on-going problem: lack of engagement with reading. They explain that all too often, no matter the strategy shared with students, too many students remain disengaged and reluctant readers. The problem, they suggest, is that we have misrepresented to students why we read and how we ought to approach any text - fiction or nonfiction. With their hallmark humor and their appreciated practicality, Beers and Probst present a vision of what reading and what education across all the grades could be. Hands-on-strategies make it applicable right away for the classroom teacher, and turn-and-talk discussion points make it a guidebook for school-wide conversations. In particular, they share new strategies and ideas for helping classroom teachers:–Create engagement and relevance–Encourage responsive and responsible reading–Deepen comprehension–Develop lifelong reading habits“We think it’s time we finally do become a nation of readers, and we know it’s time students learn to tell fake news from real news. It’s time we help students understand why how they read is so important,” explain Beers and Probst. “Disrupting Thinking is, at its heart, an exploration of how we help students become the reader who does so much more than decode, recall, or choose the correct answer from a multiple-choice list. This book shows us how to help students become the critical thinkers our nation needs them to be." Includes online resource bank.

    Despite our best intentions, grades seem to reflect student compliance more than student learning and engagement. In the process, we inadvertently subvert the learning process. After careful research and years of experiences with grading as a teacher and a parent, Cathy Vatterott examines and debunks traditional practices and policies of grading in K -12 schools. She offers a new paradigm for standards-based grading that focuses on student mastery of content and gives concrete examples from elementary, middle, and high schools. Rethinking Grading will show all educators how standards-based grading can authentically reflect student progress and learning--and significantly improve both teaching and learning.

    He tells jokes with the kind of mocking humor that gets a laugh, yet can be safely shared in school. After all, even great schools have bad days -- when lesson plans fall through, disgruntled parents complain, kids throw temper tantrums because they have to use the same spoon for their applesauce and mashed potatoes, and of course, dealing with...The Horror! The Horror!...dreaded assessments. Ranging from practical topics like social media use in the class­room and parent-teacher conferences to more lighthearted sections such as "Pickup and Dropoff: An Exercise in Humanity" and "School Supplies: Yes, We Really Need All That Stuff," Go See the Principal offers comic relief, inspiration, and advice to those who need it the most.

    Concepts illustrate how writers use image grammar to develop their art, while strategies provide classroom-tested lessons, as offered on the CD-ROM.

     This illuminating book shows how to make this scenario an everyday reality. With its foundation in principles introduced in the authors' bestselling Visible Learning for Literacy, this resource delves more deeply into the critical component of self-assessment, revealing the most effective types of assessment and how each can motivate students to higher levels of achievement.

    Words, Words, Words describes the research that changed the way she and many other teachers teach vocabulary. It offers educators practical, research-based solutions for helping students fall into new language, learn new words, and begin to use those words in their speaking and writing lives.This book offers teachers detailed strategy lessons in the following areas:activating and building background word knowledge;making word learning meaningful and lasting;building concept knowledge;using word and structural analysis to create meaning;using context as a text support;making reading the heart of vocabulary instruction.Words, Words, Words provides educators with a strong research base, detailed classroom-based lessons, and graphic organizers to support the strategy lessons. At a time when teachers are struggling to meet content standards in reading across the curriculum, this book offers some practical solutions for meeting those standards in ways that are meaningful and lasting.

    You want to make everything about reading or math. It's not always about that. At school, you guys do everything except listen to me. Y'all want to use your essays and vocabulary words to save my future, but none of y'all know anything about saving my now.In We Got This Cornelius Minor describes how this conversation moved him toward realizing that listening to children is one of the most powerful things a teacher can do. By listening carefully, Cornelius discovered something that kids find themselves having to communicate far too often. That my lessons were not, at all, linked to that student's reality.While challenging the teacher as hero trope, We Got This shows how authentically listening to kids is the closest thing to a superpower that we have. What we hear can spark action that allows us to make powerful moves toward equity by broadening access to learning for all children. A lone teacher can't eliminate inequity, but Cornelius demonstrates that a lone teacher can confront the scholastic manifestations of racism, sexism, ableism and classism by showing:exactly how he plans and revises lessons to ensure access and equity ways to look anew at explicit and tacit rules that consistently affect groups of students unequally suggestions for leaning into classroom community when it feels like the kids are against you ideas for using universal design that make curriculum relevant and accessible advocacy strategies for making classroom and schoolwide changes that expand access to opportunity to your students We cannot guarantee outcomes, but we can guarantee access Cornelius writes. We can ensure that everyone gets a shot. In this book we get to do that. Together. Consider this book a manual for how to begin that brilliantly messy work. We got this.