Spaces Places: Designing Classrooms for Literacy


Debbie Diller - 2008
    You'll love the "before and after" pictures and the step-by-step processes outlined for organizing your furniture and cabinets, setting up your room space by space, and using your walls thoughtfully. Debbie has even documented how to pack your room at the end of the year to save time next fall (so you can focus on thinking about instruction) and what to do if you must move all your belongings.Through pictures and text, this unique visual reference answers tough questions educators ask, such as:What do I really need in my room and what's the best way to set it up?How does my physical classroom impact student learning?How can I find the space I need to teach more effectively? What can I get rid of and how?Where do I put all my stuff?Charts, reproducible forms, motivating quotes, a list of shopping sources, and reflection questions are included, along with a section outlining ten specific suggestions for on-going staff development. Whether or not you implement literacy work stations in your classroom, Spaces & Places includes everything you need to look deeply at classroom space and how it supports instruction.

Reading Like a Historian: Teaching Literacy in Middle and High School History Classrooms


Samuel S. Wineburg - 2011
    Chapters cover key moments in American history, beginning with exploration and colonization and ending with the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Easy to Love, Difficult to Discipline: The 7 Basic Skills for Turning Conflict into Cooperation


Becky A. Bailey - 2000
    But how can you guide them without resorting to less-than-optimal behavior yourself? Dr. Becky Bailey's unusual and powerful approach to parenting has made thousands of families happier and healthier.Focusing on self-control and confidence-building for both parent and child, Dr. Bailey teaches a series of linked skills to help families move from turmoil to tranquility:7 Powers for Self-Control to help parents model the behavior they want their kids to follow. These lead to:7 Basic Discipline Skills to help children manage sticky situations at home and a t school, which will help your children develop:7 Values for Living, such as integrity, respect, compassion, responsibility, and more.Dr. Bailey integrates these principles in a seven-week program that gets families off to a good start, offering plenty of real-life anecdotes that illustrate her methods at work. With this inspiring and practical book in hand, you'll find new ways of understanding and improving children's behavior, as well as your own.

Extraordinary Parenting: the essential guide to parenting and educating at home


Eloise Rickman - 2020
    Whether you’re planning to make a permanent move to homeschooling or you’re temporarily balancing it alongside paid work, Extraordinary Parenting shows that you don’t need a huge house, endless free time, or a host of expensive resources to unlock your child’s potential.Instead, this straightforward and empathic book will teach you to:— Deepen your connection with your child to create an attachment that promotes learning and openness.— Build strong, adaptable family rhythms to provide your child with security and stimulation every day, every month, and every year.— Create a calm, simplified home environment which will encourage deep play and independence — whatever your living situation.— Discover enjoyable ways of learning together as a family, identify your child’s interests, and use traditional teaching materials in a creative way.— Take care of your own needs as a parent, in order to become the parent your child needs.Based on years of research and hands-on work with parents, this book will reassure you that, whilst extraordinary times call for extraordinary parenting, you can be sure that you are up to the challenge.

The Bridge to Brilliance: How One Principal in a Tough Community Is Inspiring the World


Nadia Lopez - 2016
    Everything was an uphill battle--to get the school approved, to recruit faculty and students, to solve a million new problems every day, from violent crime to vanishing supplies--but Lopez was determined to break the downward spiral that had trapped too many inner-city children. The lessons came fast: unengaged teachers, wayward students, and the educational system itself, rarely in tune with the already disadvantaged and underprepared.Things were at a low ebb for everyone when one of her students told a photographer that his principal, "Ms. Lopez," was the person who most influenced his life. The posting on Brandon Stanton's Humans of New York site was the pebble that started a lucky landslide for Lopez and her team. Lopez found herself in the national spotlight and headed for a meeting with President Obama, as well as the beneficiary of a million-dollar campaign for the school, to fund her next dream: a field trip for her students to visit another school--Harvard.The Bridge to Brilliance is a book filled with common sense and caring that will carry her message to communities and classrooms far from Brooklyn. As she says, modestly, "There are hundreds of Ms. Lopezes around this country doing good work for kids. This honors all of them."

The Way It Spozed to Be


James Herndon - 1968
    This work deals with what is still the root problem of ghetto schools: their failure to reach the kids, their obsession with rote learning, and imposed discipline, which only drives kids further into apathy and rebellion.

Responsive Classroom for Music, Art, PE, and Other Special Areas


Responsive Classroom - 2016
    Here you'll find practical suggestions, charts, planners, and examples from experienced special area teachers who use Responsive Classroom practices every day. You'll learn how to: Open and close each period in calm, orderly ways Set students up for success by modeling and practicing skills and routines Use positive teacher language Engage students more deeply Refocus and recharge students with quick, fun, movement breaks Respond to misbehavior to get students back to learning

Guiding Readers and Writers: Teaching Comprehension, Genre, and Content Literacy


Irene C. Fountas - 2000
    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.

Just Eat: One Reporter's Quest for a Weight-Loss Regimen That Works


Barry Estabrook - 2021
    . . This will completely change your ideas about what you should be eating."--Ruth Reichl, author of Save Me the PlumsInvestigative journalist Barry Estabrook was often on the receiving end of his doctor's scowl. Realizing he had two options--take more medication or lose weight--Estabrook chose the latter, but was paralyzed by the options. Which diet would keep the weight off? What program could he maintain over time? What diet works best--or even at all?Over the course of three years, Estabrook tried the regimens behind the most popular diets of the past forty years--from paleo, keto, gluten-free, and veganism to the Master Cleanse, Whole30, Atkins, Weight Watchers--examining the people, claims, and science behind the fads, all while recording his mental and physical experience of following each one. Along the way, he discovered that all the branded programs are derived from just three diets. There are effective, scientifically valid takeaways to be cherry-picked . . . and the rest is just marketing. Perhaps most alarming, Estabrook uncovered how short-term weight loss can do long-term health damage that may go undetected for years. Estabrook contextualizes his reporting with an analysis of our culture's bizarre dieting history, dating back to the late 1800s, to create a thorough--and thoroughly entertaining--look at what specific diets do to our bodies, why some are more effective than others, and why our relationship with food is so fraught.Estabrook's account is a relatable, pragmatic look into the ways we try to improve our health through dieting, revealing the answer may be to just eat.

Thinking for a Living: How to Get Better Performances and Results from Knowledge Workers


Thomas H. Davenport - 2005
    Yet, companies continue to manage this new breed of employee with techniques designed for the Industrial Age. As this critical sector of the workforce continues to increase in size and importance, that's a mistake that could cost companies their future. Thomas Davenport argues that knowledge workers are vastly different from other types of workers in their motivations, attitudes, and need for autonomy--and, so, they require different management techniques to improve their performance and productivity.Based on extensive research involving over 100 companies and more than 600 knowledge workers, Thinking for a Living provides rich insights into how knowledge workers think, how they accomplish tasks, and what motivates them to excel. Davenport identifies four major categories of knowledge workers and presents a unique framework for matching specific types of workers with the management strategies that yield the greatest performance.Written by the field's premier thought leader, Thinking for a Living reveals how to maximize the brain power that fuels organizational success. Thomas Davenport holds the President's Chair in Information Technology and Management at Babson College. He is director of research for Babson Executive Education; an Accenture Fellow; and author, co-author, or editor of nine books, including Working Knowledge: How Organizations Manage What They Know (HBS Press, 1997).

Improbable Scholars: The Rebirth of a Great American School System and a Strategy for America's Schools


David L. Kirp - 2013
    It can't start from scratch, and it can't fire all its teachers and principals when students do poorly. Great charter schools can only serve a tiny minority of students. Whether we like it or not, most of our youngsters willcontinue to be educated in mainstream public schools.The good news, as David L. Kirp reveals in Improbable Scholars, is that there's a sensible way to rebuild public education and close the achievement gap for all students. Indeed, this is precisely what's happening in a most unlikely place: Union City, New Jersey, a poor, crowded Latino communityjust across the Hudson from Manhattan. The school district--once one of the worst in the state--has ignored trendy reforms in favor of proven game-changers like quality early education, a word-soaked curriculum, and hands-on help for teachers. When beneficial new strategies have emerged, like usingsophisticated data-crunching to generate pinpoint assessments to help individual students, they have been folded into the mix.The results demand that we take notice--from third grade through high school, Union City scores on the high-stakes state tests approximate the statewide average. In other words, these inner-city kids are achieving just as much as their suburban cousins in reading, writing, and math. What's even moreimpressive, nearly ninety percent of high school students are earning their diplomas and sixty percent of them are going to college. Top students are winning national science awards and full rides at Ivy League universities. These schools are not just good places for poor kids. They are good placesfor kids, period.Improbable Scholars offers a playbook--not a prayer book--for reform that will dramatically change our approach to reviving public education.

Kids Deserve It: Pushing Boundaries and Challenging Conventional Thinking


Todd Nesloney - 2016
    In Kids Deserve It!, Todd and Adam encourage you to think big and make learning fun and meaningful for students. While you’re at it, you just might rediscover why you became an educator in the first place. - Learn why you should be calling parents to praise your students (and employees). - Discover ways to promote family interaction and improve relationships for kids at school and at home.- Be inspired to take risks, shake up the status quo, and be a champion for your students.#KidsDeserveIt"For anyone working with young people and in need of a pep talk, this is the book for you.” -Brad Montague, creator of Kid President“Kids Deserve It! provides real-life takeaways for anyone involved in making the world a better place for our kids." -Steve Mesler, Olympic Gold Medalist, co-founder and CEO of Classroom Champions"Kids Deserve It! is a brilliant—and much-needed—invitation to educators to dare to innovate.” -Peter H. Reynolds, author of The Dot “After reading this book, you will be crazy about all kids. They deserve it!” -Salome Thomas-EL, award-winning principal and author of The Immortality of Influence“It's an outstanding read for educators at any level.” -Angela Maiers, educator, author, speaker, founder of Choose2Matter“Whether you are a parent, teacher, or administrator, this powerful little collection of ideas and stories will nurture your spirit and refresh your memory about why you chose to work with kids in the first place.” -Erik Wahl, artist, author, ambassador for kids

Exit Ramp: A Short Case Study of the Profitability of Panhandling


David P. Spears II - 2013
    During the summer of his senior year at college, while earning a B.A. in Economics and Political Science, David P. Spears spent eighty hours undercover as a panhandler. Systematically recording every transaction at the exit ramp, Spears captured a rarely seen picture of how modern urban charity works.This book is the record of his adventures, part economic research, part investigative journalism. Both the numbers and the stories behind the numbers provide answers to the questions we’ve all been wondering: Who gives more to panhandlers—men or women? What percentage of drivers roll down their windows to donate? And most important of all, how much can a panhandler earn per hour?Get out your bi-weekly pay stub—by the end of this book you’ll know if you make more or less than the guy with the cardboard sign.

Making Learning Whole: How Seven Principles of Teaching Can Transform Education


David N. Perkins - 2008
    He describes how teaching any subject at any level can be made more effective if students are introduced to the "whole game," rather than isolated pieces of a discipline. Perkins explains how learning academic subjects should be approached like learning baseball or any game, and he demonstrates this with seven principles for making learning whole: from making the game worth playing (emphasizing the importance of motivation to sustained learning), to working on the hard parts (the importance of thoughtful practice), to learning how to learn (developing self-managed learners).Vividly explains how to organize learning in ways that allow people to do important things with what they know Offers guidelines for transforming education to prepare our youth for success in a rapidly changing world Filled with real-world, illustrative examples of the seven principles At the end of each chapter, Perkins includes "Wonders of Learning," a summary of the key ideas.

The Fundamental 5: The Formula for Quality Instruction


Sean Cain - 2011
    The Fundamental Five: The Formula for Quality Instruction, shares with teachers and school leaders the five practices that every teacher can, and should, use to dramatically improve instuctional rigor and relevance, and student performance.