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We've learned a lot in recent years about the important role vocabulary plays in making meaning, yet many teachers still struggle with vocabulary instruction that goes beyond weekly word lists. Effective vocabulary instruction is particularly vital in the content areas, where the specialized language used by “insiders” often creates a barrier to understanding for those new to the subjects. In Inside Words, Janet Allen merges recent research and key content-area teaching strategies to show teachers how to help students understand the academic vocabulary found in textbooks, tests, articles, and other informational texts.Inside Words builds on Janet's previous books Words, Words, Words and Tools for Teaching Content Literacy, to provide a much-needed middle and secondary school resource for teaching vocabulary, not only in the language arts, but in all of the content areas.

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Exploring Themes is a unique interactive approach to the study of literature. It presents authentic literature about people, their experiences, their differing value systems, and their ways of thinking. As students read they are asked to apply their prior knowledge, culture, and values to the content of each selection.

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When teachers are asked, "What's the toughest thing about teaching writing?" they usually answer, "Revision." Here, finally, is a book that will change their opinion. Janet Angelillo offers a rigorous, yet accessible guide that treats revision as the rich, satisfying activity that it is meant to be. She provides ideas, inspiration, and classroom illustrations to bring it alive and make it possible for all students. In short, she makes revision matter.

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Exciting and engaging vocabulary instruction can set students on the path to a lifelong fascination with words. This book provides a research-based framework and practical strategies for vocabulary development with children from the earliest grades through high school. The authors emphasize instruction that offers rich information about words and their uses and enhances students' language comprehension and production. Teachers are guided in selecting words for instruction; developing student-friendly explanations of new words; creating meaningful learning activities; and getting students involved in thinking about, using, and noticing new words both within and outside the classroom. Many concrete examples, sample classroom dialogues, and exercises for teachers bring the material to life. Helpful appendices include suggestions for trade books that help children enlarge their vocabulary and/or have fun with different aspects of words.

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In Adolescent Literacy renowned educators Kylene Beers, Bob Probst, and Linda Rief lead twenty-eight of the most important and widely read educators across the country in a conversation about where we are in the teaching of literacy to adolescents and how best to move forward. From researchers to classroom teachers, from long-treasured voices to important new members of the education community, Adolescent Literacy includes the thoughts of central figures in the field today. Adolescent Literacy discusses the most provocative issues of our time, including: English language learners struggling readers technology in the classroom multimodal literacy compelling writing instruction teaching in a "flat world"young adult literature.Each of its chapters builds on the previous to create a unified story of adolescent literacy that will help all middle and secondary teachers and administrators envision literacy instruction in exciting new ways. In addition Adolescent Literacy's assessment rubrics for teachers, administrators, and staff developers make it an ideal resource for school wide and districtwide professional development, while its accompanying study guide is perfect for small-group discussions.

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Less Is More is full of powerful ideas for teaching with short, provocative text. This book broadens and extends our available teaching tools and materials, and can help engage all students. It is a valuable resource for language arts teachers. The classroom reality is that many students are not ready or motivated to immerse themselves in an entire novel. In order to reach and engage all students, teachers need to look beyond novels alone and embrace a richer variety of literature.In Less Is More Kimberly Hill Campbell draws on research as well as her own classroom experiences to show how short texts engage a wide range of middle and high school students. She shares her discovery of the power of short texts to support her students' skills as readers, writers, and students of literature.

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A practical, inspirational book offering essays,lesson plans, and a remarkable collection of student writing, all rooted in an unwavering focus on language arts teaching for justice. An excellent resource for colleagues, staff development, teacher education, and school libraries.

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This book features:23 practical classroom activities that help students understand and remember what they read, in mathematics, science, social studies, English, and more a tough analysis of today’s textbooks, along with specific ways to use them more effectively a new “balanced diet” of reading, including 150 books of interest to teenagers instructions for growing a rich classroom library in your subject area plans for setting up student book clubs and reading groups in any discipline group-building techniques that create a productive community of readers a do-it-yourself exploration of the ways smart readers think models for developing ambitious thematic units within your classroom or with colleagues special help and materials for students who struggle scientific proof that the book’s recommended activities do improve reading and learning.

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A couple years ago, Denny Taylor and Catherine Dorsey Gaines made the first of what were to be many visits to families living in the inner city of a major metropolitan area in the Northeast. Their aim: to study the familial contexts in which young Black children living in urban poverty are growing up literate. Through their focus on children who were successfully learning to read and write despite extraordinary economic hardship, this multiracial team presents new images of the strengths of the family as educator and the ways in which the personal biographies and educative styles of families shape the literate experiences of children. Through the stories of the Shay Avenue families, Taylor and Dorsey-Gaines reach several conclusions that some readers may find surprising.

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Background knowledge simply has to become an instructional focus if we want to help students make sense of school. We will lose a generation of learners if we don't act now."-Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey Why background knowledge?Because the Grapes of Wrath is dry reading if students don't know about the Dust Bowl.Because the Boston Tea Party is a non-event if students don't know loyalists from patriots.Because knowing a triangle has 180 degrees isn't the same as knowing why.Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey help you develop lasting subject-area understanding with ideas for modeling, guided practice, productive group work, and independent work that effectively engage adolescents. You'll learn to: distinguish incidental knowledge from core background knowledge check students' understanding prior to a unit with tools such as opinionnaires, interest surveys, and anticipation guides model how to activate and apply prior knowledge so kids can wrestle with new content build up students' background knowledge through virtual field trips, YouTube, guest experts, and more provide collaborative ways for students to develop expertise, show what they know, and own their learning.Doug and Nancy also build your background knowledge with multimedia book-study resources at www.heinemann.com/backgroundknowledge.

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Fountas and Pinnell's teaching and assessment frames will give you a firm understanding of your students' reading levels: where they are, where they should be, and what they need to do to get there-for any reader, in any grade, at any moment. You'll also gain insight about the specific demands that fiction and nonfiction texts place on readers and about how effective readers think within a text, beyond a text, and about a text to gain rich understandings. As you learn about how the characteristics of texts help or hinder a reader's improvement, you'll find effective teaching strategies for: comprehending, word solving, fluency, and vocabulary writing about reading in a variety of genres and using writing as a tool for thinking using guided reading with fiction and nonfiction books discussing books during interactive read-aloud and literature study taking part in shared and performance reading.

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Your class will not be able to resist these 30 high-interest writing challenges on such diverse topics as idiom stories, character studies, myths, tall tales, jokes, poetry, spooky stories, and more. The easy-to-use format means you can start teaching right away, with complete teacher-directed lessons from start to finish. This book includes a summary of the writing process and a writing skills checklist.

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“Sherlock Holmes could glance at a bowler hat and tell that its owner's wife had ceased to love him. In this brilliant book about metaphor James Geary is no less astonishing, as he deciphers the subtle implications embedded in advertising slogans, familiar slang and government double-talk…. You'll scarf down every page of I Is an Other and then ask for more.” —Michael Dirda, Pulitzer Prize-winning critic and author of Book by Book and Classics for Pleasure. For lovers of language and fans of Blink and Freakonomics, New York Times bestselling author James Geary offers this fascinating look at metaphors and their influence in every aspect of our lives, from art to medicine, psychology to the stock market.

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Is It Done Yet? takes a new, refreshing look at revision. It acknowledges that while writing manuals often suggest general guidelines for writing, few target the specific and recurring issues of style and argumentation that students typically encounter in their assignments. Gilmore offers a variety of practical strategies for incorporating revision at all stages of the writing process - especially in content and style - as well as in numerous genres, including literary analysis, on-demand writing, and the college entrance essay. He goes beyond marking up grammar and spelling, differentiates editing from revising, and presents a multifaceted approach that moves students toward an understanding of revision as a process that helps them write fluently and communicate more effectively. All the while, Gilmore will help you change your own sense of revision so that you can use it to match up student needs with specific instructional focuses.

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Informed by the latest research on topics ranging from phonemic awareness and phonics to teaching comprehension strategies, motivation, and assessment, this text provides the knowledge base, skills, and research-based strategies that you need to guide K-8 students successfully toward literacy for the 21st century—using reading and writing for thinking, problem solving, and communicating. Principal themes include balancing phonemic skills with more holistic approaches; fostering the love of reading; and successfully teaching all students to become able and eager readers.Motivating Struggling Readers features provide real-life examples of research-based strategies in action that help make reading exciting for all learners. Motivating Children with Technology features provide access to technological resources related to chapter concepts and explain why a technology-based approach can sometimes be more motivating for students than a traditional approach.

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When we open the gates to nonfiction inquiry, we open our thinking and expect the unexpected, making reading discoveries, research discoveries, and writing discoveries on our way. Nonfiction Matters offers teachers the tools to help students explore nonfiction and dig deep to reach more complete understanding of the real world and report these insights in a compelling manner. Stephanie Harvey shows how students can read expository text, engage in research, and write authentic nonfiction that is captivating, visual, and full of voice. The inquiry projects she describes require in-depth learning: topic selection, question development, research exploration, reading for content, organization, synthesis, writing to convey meaning, and presenting findings—all skills that develop independent thinkers who know how to make decisions, solve problems, and apply their knowledge insightfully.

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Do your students struggle to express what they want to say? Do you search for help, only to find programs that don't really address your students' needs? From Talking to Writing gives you tools to help children find topics, retrieve words, formulate sentences, or sequence their ideas. Help your students "get the words out" and "get them down on paper". Here's a brief look at what you'll find: * Research-based approaches that are tailored to children with oral and written language difficulties * Techniques for "priming the word pump" to aid students' word finding * Frameworks for sentence, paragraph, and essay instruction to use in your language arts or content classes * Teacher-friendly examples and templates to use with your students The teaching methodology in this book has been refined through over 30 years of teaching students with language-based learning disabilities. (Appropriate for individuals who work with students of any age or grade level who experience difficulty writing at the sentence and paragraph levels.)

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In this forceful manifesto, Hirsch argues that children in the U.S. are being deprived of the basic knowledge that would enable them to function in contemporary society. Includes 5,000 essential facts to know.

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This timely book uses research on literacy outside of school to challenge how we think about literacy inside of school. Bringing together highly respected literacy researchers, this volume bridges the divide in the literature between formal education and the many informal settings - homes, community organizations, after-school programs, etc. - in which literacy learning flourishes. To help link research findings with teaching practices, each chapter includes a response from classroom teachers (K-12) and literacy educators. This book's unique blending of perspectives will have a profound effect on how literacy will be taught in school.

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In “provocative and entertaining essays [that] will appeal to reflective readers, parents, and educators” (Library Journal), one of the country’s foremost education writers looks at the stories we tell our children. Available now in a revised edition, including a new essay on the importance of “stoop-sitting” and storytelling, Should We Burn Babar? challenges some of the chestnuts of children’s literature. Highlighting instances of racism, sexism, and condescension that detract from the tales being told, Kohl provides strategies for detecting bias in stories written for young people and suggests ways to teach kids to think critically about what they read.

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This one-of-a-kind mixture of essays, interviews, and lesson plans gathers the best thinking about how we can impart the value and joy of poetry to kids. The essays in the first section—from Matthea Harvey, Ron Padgett, William Stafford, Eileen Myles, Kenneth Koch, Theodore Roethke, and many others—illuminate the importance of poetry to a well-rounded education, in and out of traditional classroom settings. The next section is a roundtable conversation among a handful of creative men and women who’ve helped set up or run poetry education centers around the United States. In the book’s final segment, award-winning poets (Matthew Zapruder, Yusef Komunyakaa, many others) offer an array of brilliant lesson plans for people teaching poetry to kids of all ages. Open the Door will be useful for first-time and veteran teachers, as well as parents, babysitters, MFAs with no job, and anyone else with an interest in poetry’s place in the lives of our younger citizens.

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Now, with their latest collaboration, Lyons and Pinnell turn their eye to K-6 literacy teachers' professional development, offering the theories, designs, guidelines, examples, and materials needed to bring about schoolwide, long-lasting change. Lyons and Pinnell asked themselves: "What if we could create more and better ways for teachers to learn from their own teaching? What if we could provide high-quality, ongoing professional development and coaching for literacy teachers that result in improving their students' achievement?" Well, they could . . . and they did. Systems for Change offers specific - and, quite often, unique - suggestions for planning and implementing a literacy professional development course. Everything is covered, including how to get started the right way, what materials are needed and where to find them, what are the best activities for effective, hands-on practice, and how to develop K-6 inservice courses throughout the year. Particular emphasis is placed on how to help teachers of the reading and writing processes improve via coaching.

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The most comprehensive text available on multisensory teaching, this book shows preservice educators how to use specific multisensory approaches to dramatically improve struggling students' language skills and academic outcomes in elementary through high school. They'll be prepared to help students develop skills in key areas such as phonological awareness, letter knowledge, handwriting, phonics, fluency, spelling, comprehension, composition, and mathematics plan structured, explicit multisensory language lessons that incorporate two or more senses create a positive classroom environment conducive to effective teaching and learning for struggling students conduct successful assessment of reading difficulties and monitor progress teach older students who struggle with reading work effectively with high-functioning adults with dyslexia conduct biliteracy instruction for Spanish-speaking students meet the needs of students who use assistive technology know the rights of individuals with dyslexia. A text to keep and use long after the course is over, this book includes practical strategies and guidelines on planning lessons, conducting assessment, helping students with learning disabilities develop good study skills, and more.

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Contributors to this book have illuminated the practices of literacy and learning in the lives of urban youth. Their descriptions and assessments of these practices are anchored in perspectives of «New Literacy Studies». The ten studies explore a number of urban scenes in order to engage, understand, and present multiple youth identities, attitudes, activities, representations, and stories connected to a range of situated, adaptive, and voluntary uses of literacy. The authors use a variety of conceptual and methodological approaches to explicate the various skills, the distinct methods of production or composition, the subjective and collective meanings, the mutable and variegated texts, and the dynamic contexts that urban youth utilize for expression, affirmation, and pleasure. There is a response to each chapter by a major scholar in its area of focus. Together, these studies and responses contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of the pedagogies, politics, and possibilities of literacy and learning in and out of school.

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This book outlines practical procedures for teachers, including ways to stimulate students to write through pictures, readings, and discussions, and effective, motivating ways to respond to student writing. Follow at every stage are outlined, including ways to stimulate students to write through pictures, readings and discussions, and ways to respond to student writing as a form of communication.

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Short Takes in Fiction engages students in reading, speaking, and writing English, using brief selections by 20th-century writers. The content is designed to help students relate what they read to their own lives. Authors include Rumer Godden, Amy Tan, Margaret Atwood, Somerset Maugham, William Saroyan, Raymond Carver, and Marjorie Kellogg.

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The new edition of this classic research review offers a broad and balanced perspective of the latest theory, research, and practice to provide a solid foundation for the important work of teaching students to read.

Chapters such as ''Implementing a Response to Intervention Model to Improve Reading Outcomes for All Students,'' ''Integrating Reading Strategies and Knowledge Building in Adolescent Literacy Instruction,'' and ''Reading Engagement Among African American and European American Students'' reflect changes and current thinking in the field. Others focus on core and timeless elements of reading instruction, such as word recognition, fluency, and comprehension.

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Many students find themselves struggling to learn from texts because glitches in their reading process block learning, cause frustration, and impede success. The source of these problems can be difficult to discern. Where's the Glitch? identifies why readers stumble and presents strategies designed to get them back on track and reading well. In Where's the Glitch? Mary Shea shows you how to use modified running records (MRRs) to pinpoint where readers struggle with comprehension, to determine their current reading level, and to assess the specific skills they already possess. Shea explains how to take an MRR and get meaningful assessment data on the spot - even in a busy classroom. Then, she describes how to use that information to plan interventions that integrate instruction in literacy skills with content - area studies. As a result, students increase their reading fluency, overall achievement, and motivation to learn.

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This book answers theoretical and practical questions on the teaching of reading. It offers numerous suggestions on how to teach expository prose, non prose reading, fiction, poetry, and songs.

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This text provides a humanistic antidote to the managed "systems" approach to reading instruction. Its theme is that reading must make sense to the learner and so must reading instruction. Revised and expanded, this edition has been restructured to provide separate (and updated) chapters on: phonics and meaningful reading; comprehension and learning; the act and range of reading; and teaching reading and "reading disabilities". The underlying learner-friendly, teacher-supportive approach that characterized the previous editions remains unchanged. Dr Smith notes that the research and debate of the past ten years, though often acrimonious, have done nothing to undermine this book's account of the basic nature of reading and of learning to read.

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Understanding Reading revolutionized reading research and theory when the first edition appeared in 1971 and continues to be a leader in the field. In the sixth edition of this classic text Smith’s purpose remains the same: to shed light on fundamental aspects of the complex human act of reading – linguistic, physiological, psychological, and social – and of what is involved in learning to read. The text critically examines current theories, instructional practices, and controversies, covering a wide range of disciplines but always remains accessible. Careful attention is given to the ideological clash that continues between whole language and direct instruction and currently permeates every aspect of theory and research into reading and reading instruction. In every edition, including the present one, Smith has steadfastly resisted giving teachers a recipe for teaching reading, while aiming to help them make their own decisions, based on research about reading, which is accessible to anyone, and their experience and personal knowledge of their students, which only they possess. To aid readers in making up their own minds, each chapter concludes with a brief statement of "Issues."

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At last, noted language researcher and educator Frank Smith weighs in! Using his razor-sharp analytical skills in linguistics and intimate understanding of professional teaching, Smith dismantles the shoddy science undergirding direct, intensive, and early phonics training. His book title is to be taken literally. The very reading instruction that claims to be "scientific," "research based," and "evidence based"-imposed on teachers and enforced through innumerable mandated tests-is founded on activities that are unspeakable and practices that are unnatural. The mandated approach to language teaching is, in fact, linguistically impossible, as Smith proves.

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The problems of boys in schools, especially in reading and writing, have been the focus of statistical data, but rarely does research point out how literacy educators can combat those problems. That situation has changed. Michael Smith and Jeff Wilhelm, two of the most respected names in English education and in the teaching of reading, worked with a very diverse group of young men to understand how they use literacy and what conditions promote it. In this book they share what they have learned. Through a variety of creative research methods and an extended series of interviews with 49 young men in middle and high school who differ in class, race, academic achievement, kind of school, and geography, the authors identified the factors that motivated these young men to become accomplished in the activities they most enjoyed-factors that marked the boys' literate activities outside of school, but were largely absent from their literate lives in school. Their study questions the way reading and literature are typically taught and suggests powerful alternatives to traditional instruction.

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Creating Writers: 6 Traits, Process, Workshop, and Literature, 6/e, truly puts the six traits of writing in context, showing how they are best taught—within writing workshop and as a way of enriching writing process by combining the elements of traits, literature, workshop, and process. Written by the pioneer of 6-trait writing, this edition organizes all materials by trait, features new one-page writing guides, and offers an increased emphasis on literature, connecting writing to reading as never before. It also provides a clear link between the six traits and the Common Core Standards for Writing and presents new lessons, engaging classroom activities, suggestions for using technology, and an expanded collection of student writing sure to promote lively discussions.

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I Read It, but I Don't Get It is a practical, engaging account of how teachers can help adolescents develop new reading comprehension skills. Cris Tovani is an accomplished teacher and staff developer who writes with verve and humor about the challenges of working with students at all levels of achievement—from those who have mastered the art of "fake reading" to college-bound juniors and seniors who struggle with the different demands of content-area textbooks and novels. Enter Cris' classroom, a place where students are continually learning new strategies for tackling difficult text. You will be taken step-by-step through practical, theory-based reading instruction that can be adapted for use in any subject area. The book features: anecdotes in each chapter about real kids with real universal problems. You will identify with these adolescents and will see how these problems can be solved;a thoughtful explanation of current theories of comprehension instruction and how they might be adapted for use with adolescents;a What Works section in each of the last seven chapters that offers simple ideas you can immediately employ in your classroom.