Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy


Gholdy Muhammad - 2019
    Gholdy E. Muhammad presents a four-layered equity framework—one that is grounded in history and restores excellence in literacy education. This framework, which she names, Historically Responsive Literacy, was derived from the study of literacy development within 19th-century Black literacy societies. The framework is essential and universal for all students, especially youth of color, who traditionally have been marginalized in learning standards, school policies, and classroom practices. The equity framework will help educators teach and lead toward the following learning goals or pursuits:  Identity Development—Helping youth to make sense of themselves and othersSkill Development— Developing proficiencies across the academic disciplinesIntellectual Development—Gaining knowledge and becoming smarterCriticality—Learning and developing the ability to read texts (including print and social contexts) to understand power, equity, and anti-oppression When these four learning pursuits are taught together—through the Historically Responsive Literacy Framework, all students receive profound opportunities for personal, intellectual, and academic success. Muhammad provides probing, self-reflective questions for teachers, leaders, and teacher educators as well as sample culturally and historically responsive sample plans and text sets across grades and content areas. In this book, Muhammad presents practical approaches to cultivate the genius in students and within teachers.

The EduProtocol Field Guide: 16 Student-Centered Lesson Frames for Infinite Learning Possibilities


Marlena Hebern - 2018
    In The EduProtocol Field Guide, Jon Corippo and Marlena Hebern outline sixteen classroom-tested protocols to break up clichéd lesson plans, build culture, and deliver content to K–12 students in a supportive, creative environment. Start Smart Smart Start activities set your students up for success by teaching them how to learn, using tools like Frayer Models and Venn Diagrams on fun subjects. In addition to preparing your students to learn, Smart Start activities help build a positive culture in your classroom. Finish Strong EduProtocols are customizable, frames that use your content to create lessons to help students master academic content, think critically, and communicate effectively while creating and working collaboratively. EduProtocols can be used with nearly all subjects and grade levels and are UDL (Universal Design for Learning)-friendly to support all learners. Simplify the process of creating engaging and personalized learning opportunities for every student. The EduProtocol Field Guide shows you how.

A Teacher's Guide to Writing Conferences: The Classroom Essentials Series


Carl Anderson - 2018
    With clear and accessible language, Carl guides you through the three main parts of a writing conference, and shows you the teaching moves and intentional language that can be used in each one. He helps you understand: - how to get started with conferring, or improve your existing conferences - how to use conferences to meet the diverse needs of your student writers - how to fit conferences into your busy writing workshop schedule. More than 25 videos bring the content to life, while Teacher Tips, Q&A's, and Recommended Reading lists provide everything you need to help you become a better writing teacher.

Teach Like a Champion: 49 Techniques that Put Students on the Path to College


Doug Lemov - 2010
    In this book, author Doug Lemov offers the essential tools of the teaching craft so that you can unlock the talent ond skill waiting in your students, no matter how many previous classrooms, schools, or teachers have been unsuccessful.

The English Teacher's Companion: A Complete Guide to Classroom, Curriculum, and the Profession


Jim Burke - 1999
    Covering the entire English curriculum, from basic reading and writing to digital literacy, media literacy, and integrated instruction, it proved to be a revolutionary guide for preservice and inservice teachers alike. And with it author Jim Burke became one of the most trusted names in secondary English.Now, in this new edition, "ETC"2, Jim incorporates his current thinking. He also shows how teachers can address standards and assessment issues while maintaining their commitment to meaningful, engaging curriculum. With all this, plus updated revisions and 40 percent completely new material, his "ETC2" is a must-have addition to every English teacher's bookshelf.Written for the way most teachers read-on the run, in search of a particular solution-the second edition retains the original's highly structured format with a new more open design for ease of use. Chapters are clearly subdivided; lessons are presented step-by-step; and assessment is integrated throughout. Outstanding new features include: increased emphasis on theoretical foundations completely revised major curriculum areas, especially reading and writing changes that reflect the latest use of technology in the classroom updated recommendations for the latest resources improved alignment with the latest standards and assessments sample instructional sequences to show how a complete unit looks new instructional design and planning tools expanded strategies for helping English Language Learners. Discover-or rediscover-a valued colleague who challenges you to reexamine your own classroom practice. Read "ETC2," reference it, share it, but most of all USE it-as your primary source of information about classroom management, curriculum content, professional development, and more.

Strategies That Work: Teaching Comprehension for Understanding and Engagement


Stephanie Harvey - 2007
    In this revised and expanded edition, Stephanie and Anne have added twenty completely new comprehension lessons, extending the scope of the book and exploring the central role that activating background knowledge plays in understanding. Another major addition is the inclusion of a section on content literacy which describes how to apply comprehension strategies flexibly across the curriculum. The new edition is organized around four sections:Part I highlights what comprehension is and how to teach it, including the principles that guide practice, a review of recent research, and a new section on assessment. A new chapter, Tools for Active Literacy: The Nuts and Bolts of Comprehension Instruction, describes ways to engage students in purposeful talk through interactive read alouds, guided discussion and written response.Part II contains lessons and practices for teaching comprehension. A new first chapter emphasizes the importance of teaching students to monitor their understanding before focusing on specific strategies. Five lessons on monitoring provide a sound basis for launching comprehension instruction. At the end of each strategy chapter, the authors outline learning goals and ways to assess students' thinking, sharing examples of student work, and offering suggestions for differentiating instruction.Part III, Comprehension Across the Curriculum is new. Comprehension strategies are essential for content-area reading, where information can be challenging, and presented in unfamiliar formats. This section includes chapters on social studies and science reading, topic study research, textbook reading and the genre of test reading.Part IV shows that kids need books they can sink their teeth into and the updated appendix section recommends a rich diet of fiction and nonfiction, short text, kid's magazines, websites and journals that will assist teachers as they plan and design comprehension instructionThrough its focus on instruction that is responsive to kids' interests and learning needs, the first edition of Strategies That Work helped transform comprehension instruction for teachers across the country. For them, this new edition will be a welcome extension of that work. Those coming to it for the first time will find a current and essential resource. When readers use these strategies, they enjoy a more complete, thoughtful reading experience. Engagement is the goal. When kids are engaged in their reading they enhance their understanding, acquire knowledge, and learn from and remember what they read. And best yet, they will want to read more!

The Unstoppable Writing Teacher: Real Strategies for the Real Classroom


M. Colleen Cruz - 2015
    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.

What Readers Really Do: Teaching the Process of Meaning Making


Dorothy Barnhouse - 2012
    And you'll look into the authors' own teaching minds and hearts as they unpack the moves and decisions they make to design and implement instruction that allows every student to make significant and personally relevant meaning of texts. Along the way, you'll learn how to: notice and name what students are doing as readers to build their identity and agency move beyond simple strategy instruction to step students into more complex texts show students how readers draft and revise as they read to promote engagement, self-monitoring, and deeper comprehension.Filled with student voices and classroom examples including read-alouds, small groups, and conferences, What Readers Really Do will challenge, inspire, and empower you to become the insightful, independent teacher your students need you to be. And it will remind both you and your students why and how we really read.

Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain: Promoting Authentic Engagement and Rigor Among Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students


Zaretta Lynn Hammond - 2014
    With the introduction of the rigorous Common Core State Standards, diverse classrooms need a proven framework for optimizing student engagement and facilitating deeper learningCulturally responsive pedagogy has shown great promise in meeting this need, but many educators still struggle with its implementation. In this book, Zaretta Hammond draws on cutting-edge neuroscience research to offer an innovative approach for designing and implementing brain-compatible culturally responsive instruction.The book includes:*Information on how one’s culture programs the brain to process data and affects learning relationships*Ten “key moves” to build students’ learner operating systems and prepare them to become independent learners*Prompts for action and valuable self-reflectionWith a firm understanding of these techniques and principles, teachers and instructional leaders will confidently reap the benefits of culturally responsive instruction.

The Epic Classroom: How to Boost Engagement, Make Learning Memorable, and Transform Lives


Trevor Muir - 2017
    A story or narrative centered around a hero 2. Spectacular; impressive; memorable. If learning is not memorable, should it even be considered learning? For too long, traditional education has used outdated practices to deliver complex and well-intended content to students with very little hope of that subject matter being retained. It often looks like this: Lectures are given --->Students write the information down ---> Students take a test on that information ---> Information is discarded from the brain ---> Repeat. In the The Epic Classroom, Trevor Muir presents a project based learning method that uses the power of storytelling and brain science to give educators practical and proven practices to achieve real student engagement. In return, learning that is permanent and memorable. Any teacher, in any subject area, and in any grade level can use the story-centered project based learning framework of The Epic Classroom to transform their classrooms into settings where students are engaged, challenged, and transformed. In this book you will discover - How to increase student engagement - How to plan and execute effective high quality project based learning experiences- Specific strategies for leading engaged students - Outlines and tools to plan, manage, and assess projects - Methods to increase academic performance in students.

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.

Conferring: The Keystone of Reader's Workshop


Patrick A. Allen - 2009
    Inside, he shows teachers how to overcome their perceived obstacles and shows them how they can make conferring tangible. Conferring lays the groundwork for effective reading instruction. Conferences with students are purposeful conversations that scaffold reading comprehension strategies to guide the reader’s progress. Ultimately, through the gradual release of responsibility, you will create engaged and independent readers. Starting with what conferring isn’t, Allen unpacks the essential components of the process:Intimacy: the social context of conferringRigor: the cognitive context of conferringInquiry: the analytical context of conferring With his guidance, you will be able to set goals for student conferring and elevate student reader conferences from start to finish.

No More Independent Reading Without Support


Barbara Moss - 2013
    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.

Why They Can't Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities


John Warner - 2018
    In Why They Can't Write, John Warner, who taught writing at the college level for two decades, argues that the problem isn't caused by a lack of rigor, or smartphones, or some generational character defect. Instead, he asserts, we're teaching writing wrong.Warner blames this on decades of educational reform rooted in standardization, assessments, and accountability. We have done no more, Warner argues, than conditioned students to perform "writing-related simulations," which pass temporary muster but do little to help students develop their writing abilities. This style of teaching has made students passive and disengaged. Worse yet, it hasn't prepared them for writing in the college classroom. Rather than making choices and thinking critically, as writers must, undergraduates simply follow the rules--such as the five-paragraph essay--designed to help them pass these high-stakes assessments.In Why They Can't Write, Warner has crafted both a diagnosis for what ails us and a blueprint for fixing a broken system. Combining current knowledge of what works in teaching and learning with the most enduring philosophies of classical education, this book challenges readers to develop the skills, attitudes, knowledge, and habits of mind of strong writers.

Awakened: Change Your Mindset to Transform Your Teaching


Angela Watson - 2011
    This book will empower you to develop the resilient, flexible, positive mindset you need to:-Consciously challenge the negative thoughts that discourage you-Raise your tolerance for frustration so you become less 'disturbable'-Live beyond your feelings to stay motivated when you don't see results-Change your perception of setbacks so they feel less stressful-Let go of unrealistic expectations, standards, and comparisons-Realize a sense of accomplishment in a job that's truly never doneAwakened provides simple steps to help you feel peaceful and energized, no matter what's happening around you. Drawing upon principles of stress management, cognitive behavioral therapy, spiritual truths, and personal experiences, Awakened helps you develop thought habits that produce an unshakeable sense of contentment, motivation, and purpose. Learn how to renew your mind and take a fresh approach to the challenges of teaching!