It is imperative that teachers build community in their classrooms and across their academic teams and grades in order to make school a safe and supportive place for adolescents. Teachers must help their students acknowledge that they belong to a group together, that they are part of a “we” or “us,” and that any differences—divergent talents, backgrounds, experiences, cultures, and skills—only make “us” stronger and better.No More “Us” and “Them” delineates what steps educators can...

Talking Texts is a guide for teachers to the steps and strategies of implementing text clubs in many forms— fiction and nonfiction book clubs, textbook clubs, article clubs, and even poetry clubs—in the classroom. All strategies presented are applicable to any discipline so that text clubs can be employed across the curriculum in any grade level.

Bridging the Gap: Reading Critically and Writing Meaningfully to Get to the Core helps provide literary and literacy access to reluctant adolescent readers and writers. They can also help bridge the achievement gap by motivating students to read more critically and write more meaningfully about what matters most to them. Memoirs can help students learn about themselves and connect with their environment or community while also meeting a variety of Common Core standards. Memoirs an...

Mastering the art of storytelling isn’t just a goal for professional writers. Analyzing and creating stories can boost critical literacy skills for all learners—and this comprehensive resource will show teachers and SLPs how.Aligned with the science of reading, this innovative guidebook reveals how to unlock literacy and learning skills by captivating K–12 students with the power of stories: how they’re structured, how they reflect and change lives, and how students can cr...

Use reader response strategies to achieve Common Core goals in reading and in writing!Response journals—brief, personal writing in response to reading—can significantly improve reading comprehension. What′s more, when scaffolded over the year, reader response strategies promote engagement, build understanding of complex literary and informational text, and even help students provide supporting evidence in their writing—all goals of the Common Core...