Teaching English language arts at grades K-5 is both a science and an art. Educators must teach literacy skills and content with best practices, while also keeping focus on each student’s individual needs. They are challenged to monitor students working independently while also conducting small group instruction. And they must focus on providing differentiated support with a rather complicated text. With increased attention to rigor, requirements, and personalized instruction, it can be a ...

Creating differentiated instruction is an essential yet time-consuming component of effective teaching. Since students learn at different paces and in different ways, some students may be able to apply a targeted comprehension skill in cognitively complex ways immediately after being taught the skill while other students may need additional scaffolding in order to grasp it. All students, regardless of their skill level, benefit from activities that are at their just right level. This means...

In the second book in the Uncomplicating Mathematics Series, professional developer Marian Small shows teachers how to uncomplicate the teaching of algebra by focusing on the most important ideas that students need to grasp. Organized by grade level around the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics, Small shares approaches that will lead to a deeper and richer understanding of algebra for both teachers and students. The book opens with a clear discussion of algebraic thinking...

Literacy continues to be a hot topic for educators and parents. I Don't Get It! Helping Students Understand What They Read is a practical, easy-to-use resource for classroom teachers and literacy coaches. Parents will also find the information helpful as they assist their children with homework and support for reading comprehension.This book will help to improve student literacy by offering a variety of strategies designed to help students think as they read printed text. ...

Teachers know how important it is to develop children’s fine motor skills as a stepping stone to future learning. Christy Isbell’s book, Mighty Fine Motor Fun, provides teachers with the tools and information to teach fine motor skills to children ages three to five. Isbell covers a wide range of current research on fine motor development, from developmental differences between boys and girls to guideposts for what is developmentally appropriate for children at each age. The activ...

Writing With, Through, and Beyond the Text: An Ecology of Language elaborates an understanding of writing, its influences on our interpretations of experience and identity, and its potential for enabling individuals to learn about and connect to the world beyond themselves. Rather than considering writing a process, the author describes it as a system, an ecology that engages the individual in a variety of socially constituted and interacting systems. The book examines the pedagog...

Middle-school students must be able to write explanatory/informational, argument, and narrative genre pieces and respond to literature, both for standardized tests and, more importantly, real-world writing. With a balanced literacy approach, Wolfe provides core instruction, teaching strategies, and mini-lessons on these text types, each of which can be delivered in a four- to six-week time period. Each mini-lesson includes applicable Common Core Standards, materials lists, overviews, plann...

This collection highlights the diverse ways comics and graphic novels are used in English and literature classrooms, whether to develop critical thinking or writing skills, paired with a more traditional text, or as literature in their own right. From fictional stories to non-fiction works such as biography/memoir, history, or critical textbooks, graphic narratives provide students a new way to look at the course material and the world around them. Graphic novels have been widely and succe...

A Reason to Read is the culminating work of the ArtsLiteracy Project, an ambitious and wide-ranging collaborative that aims to promote literacy through rich and sustained instruction in the arts.At the heart of the book is the “Performance Cycle,” a flexible framework for curriculum and lesson planning that can be adapted to all content areas and age groups. Each of the book’s main chapters delineates and explores a particular component of the cycle.

Reading to children at home is a joyful and celebratory time for parents and children alike. Both relish in the story and the time spent together. Early exposure to texts provides other benefits as well because it prepares children for school and builds a love of reading. Living Literacy at Home provides tips and strategies to help parents build those connections. Included is a snapshot of what literacy looks like in today’s classroom and support on how to make that home-to-school connecti...

This definitive look at teaching English in rural secondary schools contests current definitions and discussions of rural education, examines their ideological and cultural foundations, and presents an alternative perspective that conceptualizes rural communities as diverse, unique, and conducive to pedagogical and personal growth in teaching and learning. Authentic narratives document individual teachers’ moments of struggle and success in learning to understand, value, and incorporate ru...

Teachers and prospective teachers read children's books, but that reading is often done as a "teacher" – that is, as planning for instruction – rather than as a "reader" engaged with the text. Children’s Books for Grown-Up Teachers models the kind of thinking about teaching and learning – the sort of curriculum theorizing – accomplished through teachers’ interactions with the everyday materials of teaching. It starts with children’s books, branches out into other youth culture tex...