Teach Like a Pirate: Increase Student Engagement, Boost Your Creativity, and Transform Your Life as an Educator


Dave Burgess - 2012
    You'll learn how to: - Tap into and dramatically increase your passion as a teacher - Develop outrageously engaging lessons that draw students in like a magnet - Establish rapport and a sense of camaraderie in your classroom - Transform your class into a life-changing experience for your students This groundbreaking inspirational manifesto contains over 30 hooks specially designed to captivate your class and 170 brainstorming questions that will skyrocket your creativity. Once you learn the Teach Like a PIRATE system, you'll never look at your role as an educator the same again.

Improving Comprehension with Think-Aloud Strategies: Modeling What Good Readers Do


Jeffrey D. Wilhelm - 2001
    Finally, students can "see" what good readers do and apply it to their own reading process. Think alouds are great for struggling readers, because they make reading an active, social experience. Includes engaging activities like Open Mind, Fish Bowl, Thought Bubbles, Post its, and more. For use with Grades 3-8.

Cross-Talk in Comp Theory: A Reader


Victor Villanueva - 1997
    Expert text includes coverage of various areas, from acid rain and atomic energy, to waste disposal and wetlands. Touches upon the many statutory and common-law regulations shaping the world in which we live.

The Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry


Kim Addonizio - 1997
    The ups and downs of writing life—including self-doubt and writer's block—are here, along with tips about getting published and writing in the electronic age. On your own, this book can be your "teacher," while groups, in or out of the classroom, can profit from sharing weekly assignments.

The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction


Ann Charters - 1983
    This brief edition of the most widely adopted book of its kind offers all of the editorial features of the longer book with about half the stories and writer commentaries in a shorter, less expensive format.

Reading Poetry in the Middle Grades: 20 Poems and Activities That Meet the Common Core Standards and Cultivate a Passion for Poetry


Paul B. Janeczko - 2011
    Here's the cool thing: poetry can get you there. It is inherently turbo-charged. Poets distill a novel's worth of content and emotion in twenty lines. The literary elements and devices you need to teach are all there, powerful and miniature as a Bonsai tree. Paul B. JaneczkoYou'd like to teach poetry with confidence and passion, but let's face it: poetry can be intimidating to both you and your students. Here is the book that takes the fear factor out of poetry and shows you how to use this powerful genre to spark student engagement and meet language arts requirements. Award-winning poet Paul B. Janeczko is the master for creating anthologies for pre-teen and adolescent readers, and here he's chosen 20 contemporary and classic selections with step-by-step, detailed lessons for investigating each poem from the inside out. Kids learn to become active readers of poetry, using graphic organizer worksheets to help them jump over their fear and dive into personal, smart, analytical responses. There's no better genre than poetry for helping students gain perspective on their own identities and their own worlds, and Paul provides a space on each reproducible poem for private thoughts, questions, feelings, and ideas. Your students will discover what each poem means to them.The 20 poems in this collection were chosen for their thought-provoking topics; compelling real-world themes that lead to conversation and collaboration in middle school classrooms. And by showing you how the poems and activities address the common core standards for English Language Arts (complete with a sample chart linking the poems to the standards), Paul provides a clear understanding of how you can get there using poetry.You can cultivate a passion for poetry in your classroom. Take the journey with Paul B. Janeczko and grow in confidence with your students, meeting some standards along the way.

How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One


Stanley Fish - 2011
    Drawing on a wide range of  great writers, from Philip Roth to Antonin Scalia to Jane Austen, How to Write a Sentence is much more than a writing manual—it is a spirited love letter to the written word, and a key to understanding how great writing works.

The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories


Christopher Booker - 2004
    Using a wealth of examples, from ancient myths and folk tales via the plays and novels of great literature to the popular movies and TV soap operas of today, it shows that there are seven archetypal themes which recur throughout every kind of storytelling. But this is only the prelude to an investigation into how and why we are 'programmed' to imagine stories in these ways, and how they relate to the inmost patterns of human psychology. Drawing on a vast array of examples, from Proust to detective stories, from the Marquis de Sade to E.T., Christopher Booker then leads us through the extraordinary changes in the nature of storytelling over the past 200 years, and why so many stories have 'lost the plot' by losing touch with their underlying archetypal purpose. Booker analyses why evolution has given us the need to tell stories and illustrates how storytelling has provided a uniquely revealing mirror to mankind's psychological development over the past 5000 years.This seminal book opens up in an entirely new way our understanding of the real purpose storytelling plays in our lives, and will be a talking point for years to come.

On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction


William Zinsser - 1976
    It is a book for everybody who wants to learn how to write or who needs to do some writing to get through the day, as almost everybody does in the age of e-mail and the Internet. Whether you want to write about people or places, science and technology, business, sports, the arts or about yourself in the increasingly popular memoir genre, On Writing Well offers you fundamental priciples as well as the insights of a distinguished writer and teacher. With more than a million copies sold, this volume has stood the test of time and remains a valuable resource for writers and would-be writers.

The Making of a Story: A Norton Guide to Writing Fiction and Nonfiction


Alice LaPlante - 2007
    Its hands-on, completely accessible approach walks writers through each stage of the creative process, from the initial triggering idea to the revision of the final manuscript. It is unique in combing the three main aspects of creative writing instruction: process (finding inspiration, getting ideas on the page), craft (specific techniques like characterization), and anthology (learning by reading masters of the form). Succinct, clear definitions of basic terms of fiction are accompanied by examples, including excerpts from masterpieces of short fiction and essays as well as contemporary novels. A special highlight is Alice LaPlante's systematic debunking of many of the so-called rules of creative writing. This book is perfect for writers working alone as well as for creative writing classes, both introductory and advanced.

Revision Decisions: Talking Through Sentences and Beyond


Jeff Anderson - 2014
    In  Revision Decisions: Talking Through Sentences and Beyond,  authors Jeff Anderson and Deborah Dean create a book to help teachers simplify the revision process and start building students' writing and reading skills.In this book, Anderson and Dean use mentor texts to show the myriad possibilities that exist for revision. You will also find:How students find the "why" by talking through revisions during group and classroom discussions Easy-to-follow lessons and exercises to lead student discourse during rewrites and make challenging writing processes accessibleTeacher Tips to help apply new knowledge and develop both the writer and the writingReading and writing practices that keep the goals of Common Core and other standards in mindThe noted language arts teacher James Britton once said that good writing “floats on a sea of talk.” Revision Decisions supports those genuine conversations we naturally have as readers and writers, leading the way to the essential goal of making meaning.

The Century vocabulary builder


Garland Greever - 2003
    This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.

It Was The Best Of Sentences, It Was The Worst Of Sentences: A Writer's Guide To Crafting Killer Sentences


June Casagrande - 2010
    But too many writers--and writing guides--overlook this most important unit. The result? Manuscripts that will never be published and writing careers that will never begin. In this wickedly humorous manual, language columnist June Casagrande uses grammar and syntax to show exactly what makes some sentences great--and other sentences suck. With chapters on "Conjunctions That Kill" and "Words Gone Wild," this lighthearted guide is perfect for anyone who's dead serious about writing, from aspiring novelists to nonfiction writers, conscientious students to cheeky literati. So roll up your sleeves and prepare to craft one bold, effective sentence after another. Your readers will thank you. "From the Trade Paperback edition."

Sentence Composing for High School: A Worktext on Sentence Variety and Maturity


Don Killgallon - 1998
    In this expanded series, Killgallon presents the same proven methodology but offers all-new writing exercises for middle school, high school, and college students.Unlike traditional grammar books that emphasize sentence analysis, these worktexts asks students to imitate the sentence styles of professional writers, making the sentence composing process enjoyable and challenging. Killgallon teaches subliminally, nontechnically-the ways real writers compose their sentences, the ways students subsequently intuit within their own writing.Designed to produce sentence maturity and variety, the worktexts offer extensive practice in four sentence-manipulating techniques: sentence unscrambling, sentence imitating, sentence combining, and sentence expanding. It's demonstrably true that Sentence Composing can work anywhere--in any school, with any student.

Teaching Music with Passion: Conducting, Rehearsing and Inspiring


Hal Leonard Corporation - 2002
    Teaching Music with Passion is a one-of-a-kind, collective masterpiece of thoughts, ideas and suggestions about the noble profession of music education. Both inspirational and instructional, it will surely change the way you teach (and think) about music. Filled with personal experiences, anecdotes and wonderful quotations, this book is an easy-to-read, essential treasure! "One of the most 'real' writings I have read during my 35 years in music education." Mel Clayton, President, MENC: The National Association for Music Education Click here for a YouTube video on Teaching Music with Passion