What does great writing instruction look like and sound like How do successful teachers of writing get great writers who enjoy writing Where do they find the time for instruction assessment and test prep In Writing Essentials Regie Routman demystifies the process of teaching writing well and gives you the knowledge research precise instructional language and confidence you need to succeed With Regie s help you ll transform your classroom into an organized joyful writing environment where students connect reading with writing every day across the curriculum learn essential skills like grammar and spelling and achieve higher scores on high stakes tests through sensible writing based test preparation and daily classroom based assessment Writing Essentials specifically and explicitly demonstrates practical easy to do strategies that turn your writing instruction practices into best practices Follow Routman s path for successfully leading all students including English language learners writers who struggle and students coping with learning disabilities from first draft to publication You ll find expert advice and specific demonstrations on a wide variety of techniques including demonstrating your own writing process for students organizing and managing the writing classroom conducting effective efficient writing conferences creating meaningful rubrics for better assessment teaching various forms of narrative and informational writing and poetry applying shared writing across the grades and across the curriculum teaching editing and revision mapping out your writing instruction with Regie s own flexible five day lesson planning model In addition Writing Essentials includes a DVD with eight three to four minute video clips from primary and intermediate classrooms that show Regie conferring with writers and celebrating their work as she teaches and assesses These invaluable clips and the detailed notes that accompany them take you insi

    Together with interviews from authors, agents and publishers (including the CEO of Harper Studio, and the Editorial Director of Macmillan New Writing) as well as buyers from Waterstones and Asda, it offers advice on:* finding an agent or publisher * successful approaches for covering letters and synopses* understanding contractual terms * working with publishers and the editorial process * your role in helping to publicise your workThe Writers' and Artists' Yearbook Guide to Getting Published will enable you to market your work more professionally, understand the relationship you will have with both agent and publisher and offers a contemporary inside view of the publishing industry. Along with the essential contacts in the Writers' and Artists' Yearbook, this is a professional tool you will not want to be without.

    Now, with Guiding Readers and Writers (Grades 3-6), Fountas and Pinnell support teachers on the next leg of the literacy journey, addressing the unique challenges of teaching upper elementary students. The product of many years of work with classroom teachers, Guiding Readers and Writers (Grades 3-6) is one of the most comprehensive, authoritative guides available today. It explores all the essential components of a quality literacy program in six separate sections:Breakthrough to Literacy: Fountas and Pinnell present the basic structure of the language/literacy program within a breakthrough framework that encompasses the building of community through language, word study, reading, writing, and the visual arts. The framework plays out as three blocks, which can be interpreted as conceptual units as well as segments of time within the school day. Specific information on how to structure a reading and writing workshop is provided. A practical chapter on organizing and managing the classroom will help you implement the principles in your own classroom.Independent Reading: It is essential for students to develop interests and tastes as readers, selecting books for themselves every day. Fountas and Pinnell devote four chapters to independent reading, exploring how to structure teaching, minilessons, conferences, groupshare, and ways to use response journals as part of a reading workshop.Guided Reading: The chapters in this section provide detailed information on planning for guided reading, dynamic grouping for effective teaching, and selecting, introducing, and using leveled texts. Fountas and Pinnell describe characteristics of texts related to difficulty and ways to organize texts in your classroom and school.Literature Study: This section of the book discusses how to make students experiences with literature as rich as possible. The authors offer specific suggestions for forming groups, guiding student choices, and establishing and teaching routines for literature discussion. A full chapter explores reader response and ways to help readers dig deep to uncover the meaning of texts.Teaching for Comprehension and Word Analysis: This detailed look at the reading process explores both oral and silent reading, processes and behaviors related to comprehension, and ways to help students construct meaning. Included are twelve systems for sustaining the reading process and expanding meaning, plus discussions of the important areas of phonics, spelling, and vocabulary.The Reading and Writing Connection: These chapters showcase the instructional contextspoetry, writers notebooks, writers talks, genre, content literacy, and student researchthat support students in connected reading and writing. An informative overview of the characteristics of fiction and nonfiction will help you teach students to read and write a variety of genre. Whats more, the authors suggest ways to help students learn the genre of testing and perform the kinds of reading and writing tasks that tests require. They also detail the continuous thoughtful assessment that guides all aspects of effective teaching.A special feature appears at the end of each section, in which Fountas and Pinnell provide indispensable suggestions for working with struggling readers and writers.

    From America's favorite playwright (Plaza Suite, The Odd Couple, and Lost in Yonkers), comes a "screamingly funny" (Philadelphia Inquirer) Broadway hit about a team of comedy writers in television's Golden Era.

    Drawing on her own efforts to balance the demands of motherhood with her dream of writing, she shows readers how everyday life can be a rich source of stories, and how writing can provide a means to both understand and document their experiences. Whether you are a new mother or a grandmother, someone who has long aspired to write or someone who has never written before, "Writing Motherhood" will help you find your voice and tap into your creative self.Filled with insight, honesty, and humor, each chapter of "Writing Motherhood" weaves together stories from the author's life with wisdom from other writers and mothers. In daily writing Invitations, Lisa then encourages readers to tell their own stories. Along the way, she reveals how to:Start and fill a Mother's Notebook -- in just fifteen minutes a day. Silence the critical voices that stifle creativity. Throw away the rules that bind the imagination. Carve out the time and space for writing. Find a community of other mothers who want to write.Beautifully written and thought-provoking, this inviting and inspiring book will strike a chord with any mother looking to explore and reflect on her experience of motherhood. Here she will discover that mothering provides endless material for writing at the same time that writing brings clarity and wisdom to mothering. "Writing Motherhood" is an essential guidefor mothers at every age and stage of life.

    Army Humvee, an embedded reporter alongside soldiers from the 1st Armored Division, when he heard a metallic thunk. Looking down, he saw a small, dark object rolling inches from his feet. He reached down and took it in his hand. Then everything went black.Weisskopf lost his hand and was sent for treatment to Ward 57 at Walter Reed Medical Center, the wing of the armed forces hospital reserved for amputees. There he crossed paths with Pete Damon, Luis Rodriguez, and Bobby Isaacs, three soldiers whose stories he learned during months in the ward. Alongside these men, Weisskopf navigated the bewildering process of recovery and reentry, and began reconciling life before that day in Baghdad with everything that would follow his release. "Blood Brothers" is the story of this difficult passage--for Weiss-kopf, Damon, Rodriguez, Isaacs, and hundreds of others--a story that began with healthy men heading off to a war zone, and continued through the months in Ward 57 as they prepared their minds and bodies for a different life than the one they left. A chronicle of devastation and recovery, this is a deeply affecting portrait of the private aftermath of combat casualties.

    Coraghessan Boyle, DOUBLETAKES: PAIRS OF CONTEMPORARY SHORT STORIES gives readers the opportunity to enjoy the works of today's literary lights through close reading and analysis.

    Professor Peddiwell reports that the three fundamentals taught to youngsters in the paleolithic curriculum were (1) fish-grabbing-with-the-bare-hands,(2) horse-clubbing,and (3) saber-tooth-tiger-scaring-with-fire. When fish became too agile to catch with the bare hands and horses and tigers disappeared,schools nevertheless went on teaching the old fundamentals for their cultural value. The eventual revolt of the progressive educators against traditional curriculum is described in one of the most entertaining passages in this amusing satire.

    One of his best-loved and most famous plays, it exposes the lies plaguing the family of a wealthy Southern planter of humble origins.

    In Keepin' It Real: School Success beyond Black and White, Prudence Carter turns the conventional wisdom on its head arguing that what is needed is a broader recognition of the unique cultural styles and practices that non-white students bring to the classroom. Based on extensive interviews and surveys of students in New York, she demonstrates that the most successful negotiators of our school systems are the multicultural navigators, culturally savvy teens who draw from multiple traditions, whether it be knowledge of hip hop or of classical music, to achieve their high ambitions. Keepin' it Real refutes the common wisdom about teenage behavior and racial difference, and shows how intercultural communication, rather than assimilation, can help close the black-white gap.

    Told with striking humor and honesty, her story begins when the School District of Philadelphia, in desperate need of 1,500 new teachers, instituted a policy of hiring “emergency certified” instructors. Asquith, then a 25-year-old reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer, joined their untrained ranks. More challenging than her classroom in the crime-infested neighborhood known as “the Badlands” are the trials she faced outside, including a corrupt principal, the politics that prevented a million-dollar grant from reaching her students, and the administration’s shocking insistence that teachers maintain the appearance of success in the face of utter defeat—even if it means falsifying test scores. Her story will inspire, educate, and entertain.

    Based on recent interviews with 40 grantmakers, the Guide illuminates the latest trends in grantmaking and proposal reviews. It includes the most current techniques for researching funders and an all-new chapter on crafting the project evaluation component of a grant proposal.

    Renowned classicist Lionel Casson takes us on a lively tour, from the royal libraries of the most ancient Near East, through the private and public libraries of Greece and Rome, down to the first Christian monastic libraries. To the founders of the first public libraries of the Greek world goes the credit for creating the prototype of today’s library buildings and the science of organizing books in them.Casson recounts the development of ancient library buildings, systems, holdings, and patrons, addressing questions on a wide variety of topics, such as:• What was the connection between the rise in education and literacy and the growth of libraries?• Who contributed to the early development of public libraries, especially the great library at Alexandria?• What did ancient libraries include in their holdings?• How did ancient libraries acquire books?• What was the nature of publishing in the Greek and Roman world?• How did different types of users (royalty, scholars, religious figures) and different kinds of “books” (tablets, scrolls, codices) affect library arrangements?• How did Christianity transform the nature of library holdings?Just as a library yields unexpected treasures to a meandering browser, this entertaining book offers to its perusers the surprising history of the rise and development of ancient libraries—a fascinating story never told before.

    Written for the prospective or new middle and high school-level teacher, the text's content is ready to be applied in a classroom setting. The book addresses the planning decisions teachers must make, including arranging the physical space; creating a positive climate; establishing expectations, rules, and procedures; planning and conducting instruction; encouraging appropriate behavior; addressing problem behavior; and using good communication skills, with particular attention paid to the growth of diverse and inclusive classrooms.