Storybook characters and situations are perfect for launching discussions of social emotional learning—why not let them help?In picture books, well-loved characters deal with many of the same problems students face in their own lives. What better resource could there be for encouraging students to think about their actions and responses? Using classroom texts to start SEL conversations— during an interactive read- aloud or an extension of shared close- reading less...

Help students appreciate texts and write about them with conviction.Responding to a comprehension question is a surprisingly complex task. It draws on multiple skills: students must be able to read and analyze a text passage; consider what aspect of the text the question addresses; and then quickly and concisely write about their ideas, citing evidence to support them. Hence the prominence of constructed-response questions in standardized testing.In this re...

What does rigor, a word that frequently pops up in conversations about education, really mean? More specifically, what does it mean for literacy instruction, and how does it relate to challenging standards-based assessments? In this informative and practical guide, literacy expert Nancy Boyles uses the framework from Webb's Depth of Knowledge (DOK) to answer these questions, offering experience-based advice along with specific examples of K–8 assessment items.Boyl...

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 ...

Every teacher who is struggling to make close reading a cohesive and coherent part of the curriculum, take notice: relief is in sight, thanks to Nancy Boyles’ Lessons and Units for Closer ReadingHere, Nancy redefines what it means to publish on demand with a resource that answers your most urgent questions around how to implement close reading within the literacy block. What’s more, she delivers all the goods: eight three-week units on close reading to immediately drop in ...

Close Reading. Not in a very long while has a term been freighted with so much responsibility to pull every student out of a reading tailspin and into a great future of college and career readiness. Finally, here’s a book that tunes out all of the hubbub and gets down to the business of showing how exactly to "get close reading right."What makes Closer Reading such a have-to-have resource? Nancy Boyles knows full well that we’ll never realize the promise o...

Every teacher in K-2 who has ever wished for comprehension lessons that get students where they need to be in reading, talking, and writing about texts, take notice: your wish just came true.With Lessons and Units for Closer Reading: K-2 you get 20 initial close reading lessons and 80 follow-up comprehension skill lessons that expertly scaffold young readers. What makes these lessons so spot-on is that Nancy combed through hundreds of standards and standar...

Discerning insights into how an Ignatian principle can redefine leadership and recenter organizationsCura apostolica is a Latin phrase used by the Jesuits that simply means "care for the apostolate." More amply, this term implies the stewarding of a God-given collective enterprise, and thus it connotes caring for work that precedes the present moment and has the potential to accomplish something necessary and important for the human community across the ho...

A direct sequel to Aliens and Alien 3—Weyland-Yutani, the Colonial Marines, and Bishop’s creator all pursue the android for the deadly Xenomorph data contained in his brain. Written by T. R. Napper, author of the acclaimed 36 Streets, whose explosive work explores the artificial intelligence and what it is to be human.Massively damaged in Aliens and Alien 3, the synthetic Bishop asked to be shut down forever. His creator...

Choice Highly Recommended ReadAddiction is a complex problem that requires more nuanced responses. Transforming Addiction advances addictions research and treatment by promoting transdisciplinary collaboration, the integration of sex and gender, and issues of trauma and mental health. The authors demonstrate these shifts and offer a range of tools, methods, and strategies for responding to the complex factors and forces that produce and shape addiction. In...

In the footsteps of Charles Bukowski comes Hosho McCreesh's magnum opus of drunk poetry. Mammoth in size and scope, DrunkSkull books is pleased to release the audiobook version of A Deep & Gorgeous Thirst, a drunken, epic collection about death and love that is unlike any of McCreesh's previous work."Because writing and drinking go hand in hand, it may seem an impossible challenge for a poet to offer new perspective of this well-worn, symbiotic relationship. But Hosho Mc...

It’s 2336, and the future needs heroes! They must reach back in time to find them. What if they come for you? In 2336 there is no war, no pollution, no disease, no crime—but utopia has a price …