Day by day and week by week, The First Six Weeks of School shows you how to set students up for a year of engaged and productive learning by: using positive teacher language to establish high academic and behavioral expectations; getting students excited about schoolwork by offering engaging academics; and teaching the classroom and academic routines that enable a collaborative learning community to thrive.

    It will guide you through each step of communicating and reinforcing your expectations. Learn how to create a vision for your classroom and TEACH for it!

    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.

    The same charts that Rozlyn creates with students when she models and teaches in classrooms across the nation are all included here. Packed with over seventy photographs, Chart Sense is an invaluable guide for novice or veteran reading teachers who want authentic visuals to reinforce and provide guidance for reading skills. Organized in a simple, easy-to-use format, Rozlyn shares multiple charts for every reading informational text and literature standard. Don't mistake this as just a collection of anchor chart ideas. At over 180 pages, this book is filled with actual charts, step-by-step instructions to create your own, teaching tips, and instructional strategies. This book includes: Over sixty-five photographs of teacher-tested charts and examples Easy to navigate chapters, organized by the 3-8 reading standards Step-by-step instructions to create each chart Teaching notes and instructional strategies Ideas and tips for scaffolding and differentiation . . . and MORE! Not a bunch of theory or philosophy . . . just hands-on, teacher-tested charts that you can use in your classroom . . . TODAY!

    Pat Cunningham's and Dick Allington's clear and friendly writing style emphasizes the importance of promoting the integration of phonics and literature-based process writing and reading instruction to enhance ALL students' learning and reading skills. It clarifies concepts, defines key terms, and offers just the right balance of research and practical coverage to make the content complete without being overwhelming. This affordable book helps teachers engage ALL children in meaning-centered reading by fostering powerful decoding and comprehension strategies and implementing a balanced reading program. Classrooms That Work identifies and explores five components: real reading and writing, guided reading, guided writing, decoding/spelling, and word/word knowledge. The Fourth Edition is filled with workable, practical strategies and activities to use in the classroom. offering a modern, applied approach to 'traditional' reading topics and an in-depth look at areas of reading instruction not covered by other books (e.g. Chapters 9, 10 & 11 describe a sample day in a Building Blocks kindergarten, a sample day in a Four Blocks primary classroom and a sample week in a Big Blocks intermediate classroom, respectively. Combined, these chapters show how all of the important components of a balanced literacy programs can be integrated.) The flexibility gained by using this comprehensive approach gives instructors the opportunity to tailor course coverage and topic sequence making this a perfect book to be used in reading and language arts methods courses.

    This professional resource will help to maximize the impact of instruction through the use of whole-class instruction, small-group instruction, and Math Workshop. Incorporate ideas for using ongoing assessment to guide your instruction and increase student learning, and use hands-on, problem-solving experiences with small groups to encourage mathematical communication and discussion. Guided Math supports the College and Career Readiness and other state standards.

    This book focuses on the quantitative and qualitative factors of text complexity as well as the ways in which readers can be matched with texts and tasks. Examine how close readings of complex texts scaffold students understanding and allow them to develop the skills necessary to read like a detective.

    Jan Burkins and Kim Yaris rethink traditional teaching practices in  Who's Doing the Work: How to Say Less So Readers Can Do More . They review some common instructional mainstays such as read-aloud, guided reading, shared reading, and independent reading and provide small, yet powerful, adjustments to help hold students accountable for their learning.Next generation reading instruction is much more responsive to student needs and aims to remove some of the scaffolding that can hinder reader development. Instead of relying on teacher prompts,  Who's Doing the Work  asks teachers to have students take ownership of their reading by managing their challenges independently and working through any plateaus they encounter. Whether you are an elementary teacher, literacy coach, reading specialist, or parent,  Who's Doing the Work  provides numerous examples on how to readjust the reading process and teach students to gain proficiency and joy in their work.

    It is a multilayered, multivoiced literary experience. Genres of narrative thinking require writers to make an imaginative leap, melding the factual with the imaginative. Writers cant just tell. They must show. They must make their topics palpable. They must penetrate experience. Multigenre papers enable their authors to do that. Blending Genre, Altering Style is the first book to address the practicalities of helping students compose multigenre papers. Romano discusses genres, subgenres, writing strategies, and stylistic maneuvers that students can use in their own multigenre papers. Each idea is supported with actual student writing, including five full-length multigenre papers that demonstrate the possibilities of a multigenre approach to writing. There are also discussions of writing poetry, fiction, and dialogue, in which readers will discover how students can create genres out of indelible moments, crucial processes, and important matters in the lives of the subject under inquiry. One chapter alone is devoted to helping writers create unity and coherence in their papers.Imbued with Romanos passion for teaching, Blending Genre, Altering Style is an invaluable reference for any inservice or preservice English language arts teacher. The only prerequisite is a desire to help students write.

    Now, you can easily stop reducing students to a number, letter, or any label that misrepresents learning and assessment in education. Now, you can help children see the value in every single assignment. Today, you can make assessment a rich, ongoing conversation that inspires learning for the sake of learning, rather than as a punishment or a reward. All you have to do is go gradeless. Throw out your grade book tomorrow! In Hacking Assessment: 10 Ways to Go Gradeless in a Traditional Grades School, award-winning teacher and world-renowned formative assessment expert Starr Sackstein unravels one of education's oldest mysteries: how to assess learning without grades -- even in a school that uses numbers, letters, GPAs, and report cards. While many educators can only muse about the possibility of a world without grades, teachers like Sackstein are reimagining education. In this unique, eagerly-anticipated book, Sackstein shows you exactly how to create a remarkable no-grades classroom like hers, a vibrant place where students grow, share, thrive, and become independent learners who never ask, "What's this worth?" Learn what formative assessment really looks like. Summative assessment is typically an end-of-unit exam or standardized test, but what is formative assessment? Many teachers struggle with the concept. Hacking Assessment not only explains what formative assessment is, it provides blueprints for implementation and examples from educators around the world, who use this strategy successfully every day. Read It and You Can Take These Actions Immediately: Shift everyone's mindset away from grades Track student progress without a grade book Communicate learning to all stakeholders in real time Maximize time while providing meaningful feedback Teach students to reflect and "self-grade" Deliver feedback in a digital world Create e-portfolios and cloud-based learning archives Inspire Students to share their work openly This is not your average assessment book Hacking Assessment won't bore you with outdated research or unrealistic strategies. In her captivating, conversational style, Sackstein provides practical ideas woven into a user-friendly success guide with actionable steps for creating an amazing conversation about learning that does not require a traditional grade. Each chapter is neatly wrapped in this simple Hack Learning Series formula: The Problem (an assessment issue that plagues education) The Hack (a ridiculously easy solution that you've likely never considered) What You Can Do Tomorrow (no waiting necessary) Blueprint for Full Implementation (a step-by-step action plan for capacity building) The Hack in Action (yes, someone has actually done this)

    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.

    From one of America s most celebrated educators, an inspiring guide to transforming every child s education In a Los Angeles neighborhood plagued by guns, gangs, and drugs, there is an exceptional classroom known as Room 56. The fifth graders inside are first-generation immigrants who live in poverty and speak English as a second language. They also play Vivaldi, perform Shakespeare, score in the top 1 percent on standardized tests, and go on to attend Ivy League universities. Rafe Esquith is the teacher responsible for these accomplishments. From the man whom The New York Times calls a genius and a saint comes a revelatory program for educating today s youth. In Teach Like Your Hair s on Fire!, Rafe Esquith reveals the techniques that have made him one of the most acclaimed educators of our time. The two mottoes in Esquith s classroom are Be Nice, Work Hard, and There Are No Shortcuts. His students voluntarily come to school at 6:30 in the morning and work until 5:00 in the afternoon. They learn to handle money responsibly, tackle algebra, and travel the country to study history. They pair Hamlet with rock and roll, and read the American classics. Teach Like Your Hair s on Fire! is a brilliant and inspiring road map for parents, teachers, and anyone who cares about the future success of our nation s children. "

    Students need to know how writers’ and speakers’ choices are shaped by elements of the rhetorical situation, including audience, occasion, and purpose. In Teaching Arguments: Rhetorical Comprehension, Critique, and Response , Jennifer Fletcher provides teachers with engaging classroom activities, writing prompts, graphic organizers, and student samples to help students at all levels read, write, listen, speak, and think rhetorically. Fletcher believes that, with appropriate scaffolding and encouragement, all students can learn a rhetorical approach to argument and gain access to rigorous academic content. Teaching Arguments opens the door and helps them pay closer attention to the acts of meaning around them, to notice persuasive strategies that might not be apparent at first glance. When we analyze and develop arguments, we have to consider more than just the printed words on the page. We have to evaluate multiple perspectives; the tension between belief and doubt; the interplay of reason, character, and emotion; the dynamics of occasion, audience, and purpose; and how our own identities shape what we read and write. Rhetoric teaches us how to do these things. Teaching Arguments will help students learn to move beyond a superficial response to texts so they can analyze and craft sophisticated, persuasive arguments—a major cornerstone for being not just college-and career-ready but ready for the challenges of the world.

    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.

    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.