top of page

Professional ELA Texts

Great Habits, Great Readers: A Practical Guide for K-4 Reading in the Light of Common Core

By Paul Bambrick-Santoyo, Aja Settles, and Juliana Worrell

 

The book offers: Clear teaching strategies for teaching reading to all students, no matter what level.· An abundance of practical content such as 40+ video examples from real classrooms, Common Core lesson plans, and tips on text selection for guided and independent reading.· Professional Development resources--including a comprehensive guide for school leaders and instructional coaches on how to support and develop teachers to make them effective instructors of reading. Also includes PD agendas, activities, scripts, and presentations.· Written by PaulBambrick-Santoyo, bestselling author of Driven by Data and Leverage Leadership and his co-authors, Aja Settles and Juliana Worrell, founding principals of the award-winning North Star Academy’s West Side Park and Fairmount Elementary Schools, both part of the Uncommon Schools network.

Notice and Note: Strategies for Close Reading

By Kylene Beers, Robert E Probst

 

"Just as rigor does not reside in the barbell but in the act of lifting it, rigor in reading is not an attribute of a text but rather of a reader's behavior-engaged, observant, responsive, questioning, analytical. The close reading strategies in Notice and Note will help you cultivate those critical reading habits that will make your students more attentive, thoughtful, independent readers."-Kylene Beers and Robert E. Probst

 

In Notice and Note Kylene Beers and Bob Probst introduce 6 "signposts" that alert readers to significant moments in a work of literature and encourage students to read closely. Learning first to spot these signposts and then to question them, enables readers to explore the text, any text, finding evidence to support their interpretations. In short, these close reading strategies will help your students to notice and note.In this timely and practical guide Kylene and Bob:

  • examine the new emphasis on text-dependent questions, rigor, text complexity, and what it means to be literate in the 21st century

  • identify 6 signposts that help readers understand and respond to character development, conflict, point of view, and theme

  • provide 6 text-dependent anchor questions that help readers take note and read more closely

  • offer 6 Notice and Note model lessons, including text selections and teaching tools, that help you introduce each signpost to your students.

Notice and Note will help create attentive readers who look closely at a text, interpret it responsibly, and reflect on what it means in their lives. It should help them become the responsive, rigorous, independent readers we not only want students to be but know our democracy demands.

The CAFE Book: Engaging All Students in Daily Literary Assessment and Instruction

By Gail Boushey, Joan Moser

 

All readers of any age need instruction and support that helps them become more independent and self-reflective in their work.     – Gail Boushey and Joan Moser

 

In The CAFE Book, Gail Boushey and Joan Moser present a practical, simple way to integrate assessment into daily reading and classroom discussion. The CAFE system, based on research into the habits of proficient readers, is an acronym for Comprehension, Accuracy, Fluency, and Expanding vocabulary. The system includes goal-setting with students in individual conferences, posting of goals on a whole-class board, developing small-group instruction based on clusters of students with similar goals, and targeting whole-class instruction based on emerging student needs.

The Daily 5: Fostering Literacy in the Elementary Grades

By Gail Boushey, Joan Moser

 

The Daily 5, Second Edition retains the core literacy components that made the first edition one of the most widely read books in education and enhances these practices based on years of further experience in classrooms and compelling new brain research. The Daily 5 provides a way for any teacher to structure literacy (and now math) time to increase student independence and allow for individualized attention in small groups and one-on-one.Teachers and schools implementing the Daily 5 will do the following:

  • Spend less time on classroom management and more time teaching

  • Help students develop independence, stamina, and accountability

  • Provide students with abundant time for practicing reading, writing, and math

  • Increase the time teachers spend with students one-on-one and in small groups

  • Improve schoolwide achievement and success in literacy and math.

 

The Daily 5, Second Edition gives teachers everything they need to launch and sustain the Daily 5, including materials and setup, model behaviors, detailed lesson plans, specific tips for implementing each component, and solutions to common challenges. By following this simple and proven structure, teachers can move from a harried classroom toward one that hums with productive and engaged learners.

Pathways to the Common Core: Accelerating Achievement

By Lucy Calkins, Mary Ehrenworth, Christopher Lehman

 

The Common Core is written, but the plan for implementing the Common Core is not.  Lucy Calkins and her colleagues at the Reading and Writing Project have helped thousands of educators design their own pathways to the Common Core. Now, with Pathways to the Common Core, they are ready to help you find your way.  

 

Designed for teachers, school leaders, and professional learning communities looking to navigate the gap between their current literacy practices and the ideals of the Common Core, Pathways to the Common Core will help you:• understand what the standards say, suggest, and what they don't say;• recognize the guiding principles that underpin the reading and writing standards;• identify how the Common Core's infrastructure supports a spiraling K-12 literacy curriculum; and• scrutinize the context in which the CCSS were written and are being unrolled.In addition to offering an analytical study of the standards, this guide will also help you and your colleagues implement the standards in ways that lift the level of teaching and learning throughout your school. Specifically, it will help you:• become a more critical consumer of the "standards-based" mandates that are flooding your desk;• craft instruction that supports students in reading more complex texts, developing higher level comprehension skills, and writing at the ambitious levels of the CCSS;• develop performance assessments and other tools to propel Common Core reforms; and• create systems of continuous improvement that are transparent, collegial, and accountable.

 

Above all, this book will help you interpret the Common Core as a rallying cry that ignites deep, wide and lasting reforms and, most importantly, accelerates student achievement.

Falling in Love with Close Reading: Lessons for Analyzing Texts--and Life

By Christopher Lehman, Kate Roberts, Donalyn Miller (Foreword by)

 

You and your students will fall for close reading. In Falling in Love with Close Reading, Christopher Lehman and Kate Roberts show us that it can be rigorous, meaningful, and joyous. You'll empower students to not only analyze texts but to admire the craft of a beloved book, study favorite songs and videogames, and challenge peers in evidence-based discussions.

 

Chris and Kate start with a powerful three-step close-reading ritual that students can apply to any text. Then they lay out practical, engaging lessons that not only guide students to independence in reading texts closely but also help them transfer this critical, analytical skill to media and even the lives they lead.Responsive to students' needs and field-tested in classrooms, these lessons include:

  • strategies for close reading narratives, informational texts, and arguments

  • suggestions for differentiation

  • sample charts and student work from real classrooms

  • connections to the Common Core State Standards

  • a focus on viewing media and life in this same careful way.

 

"We see the ritual of close reading not just as a method of doing the academic work of looking closely at text-evidence, word choice, and structure," write Chris and Kate, "but as an opportunity to bring those practices together to empower our students to see the subtle messages in texts and in their lives." Read Falling in Love with Close Reading and discover that the benefits and joy of close reading don't have to stop at the edge of the page.

A Writer's Notebook: Unlocking the Writer Within You

By Ralph Fletcher

 

Writers are like other people, except for at least one important difference. Other people have daily thoughts and feelings, notice this sky or that smell, but they don't do much about it.

 

Not writers. Writers react. And writers need a place to record those reactions. That's what a writer's notebook is for. It gives you a place to write down what makes you angry or sad or amazed, to write down what you noticed and don't want to forget . . . .

 

Discusses the various kinds of things to keep in a writer's notebook--seed ideas, mind pictures, lists, memories, samples of other writers' work--and why.

 

Non-fiction Craft Lessons: Teaching Information Writing K-8

By Joann Portalupi Ralph Fletcher

 

Most young writers are not intimated by personal narrative, fiction, or even poetry, but when they try to put together a teaching book,” report, or persuasive essay, they often feel anxious or frustrated. JoAnn Portalupi and Ralph Fletcher believe that young nonfiction writers supply plenty of passion, keen interest and wonder. Teachers can provide concrete strategies to help students scaffold their ideas as they write in this challenging genre. Nonfiction Craft Lessons will help students breathe voice into lifeless nonfiction writing, make it clearer, more authoritative, and more organized. 

 

Rigorous Reading

by Nancy Frey and Douglas Fisher

 

Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey have provided literacy educators who are committed to successfully raising the bar with solutions that make sense.  The book is masterfully developed with an extensive reach across many grade levels in terms of defining what it means to provide intentional instruction and teaching text complexity.  The five access points are discussed pragmatically with evidence of a solid research base woven throughout the book.

 

Teach Like a Champion

by Doug Lemov

 

Teach Like a Champion offers effective teaching techniques to help teachers, especially those in their first few years, become champions in the classroom. These powerful techniques are concrete, specific, and are easy to put into action the very next day. Training activities at the end of every chapter help the reader further their understanding through reflection and application of the ideas to their own practice. The book also includes twenty-five video examples of real teachers modeling the techniques in the classroom.This book has forty- nine teachniques that use metacognition, discourse, and high cognitive demand. It includes a CD of teachers modeling the techniques.

 

Making Thinking Visible:: How to Promote Engagement, Understanding, and Independence for All Learners

by​ Ron Ritchhart, Mark Church, and Karin Morrison

 

A proven program for enhancing students' thinking and comprehension abilities

Visible Thinking is a research-based approach to teaching thinking, begun at Harvard's Project Zero, that develops students' thinking dispositions, while at the same time deepening their understanding of the topics they study.? Rather than a set of fixed lessons, Visible Thinking is a varied collection of practices, including thinking routines?small sets of questions or a short sequence of steps?as well as the documentation of student thinking.?Using this process thinking becomes visible as the students'?different viewpoints are expressed, documented, discussed and reflected upon.

  • Helps direct student thinking and structure classroom discussion

  • Can be applied with students at all grade levels and in all content areas

  • Includes easy-to-implement classroom strategies

The book also comes with a DVD of video clips featuring Visible Thinking in practice in different classrooms.

 

bottom of page