In Who Gets to Write Fiction? , English teacher Ariel Sacks shows how writing fiction not only bolsters critical academic skills but also engages students' attention and imagination; shifts power dynamics; creates empathy; and provides a creative outlet for students' personal identity development--or even a means to heal trauma. In a teacher-to-teacher narrative that folds in practical details about how to design lessons and meet standards, Sacks presents a powerful argument that the writing of fiction should be treated not as a luxury for some kids but as a center of the ELA curriculum for all kids.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The authors of No-Drama Discipline and The Yes Brain explain the new science of how a child’s brain is wired and how it matures in this pioneering, practical book.   “Simple, smart, and effective solutions to your child’s struggles.”—Harvey Karp, M.D.   In this pioneering, practical book, Daniel J. Siegel, neuropsychiatrist and author of the bestselling Mindsight, and parenting expert Tina Payne Bryson offer a revolutionary approach to child rearing with twelve key strategies that foster healthy brain development, leading to calmer, happier children. The authors explain—and make accessible—the new science of how a child’s brain is wired and how it matures. The “upstairs brain,” which makes decisions and balances emotions, is under construction until the mid-twenties. And especially in young children, the right brain and its emotions tend to rule over the logic of the left brain. No wonder kids throw tantrums, fight, or sulk in silence. By applying these discoveries to everyday parenting, you can turn any outburst, argument, or fear into a chance to integrate your child’s brain and foster vital growth.               Complete with age-appropriate strategies for dealing with day-to-day struggles and illustrations that will help you explain these concepts to your child, The Whole-Brain Child shows you how to cultivate healthy emotional and intellectual development so that your children can lead balanced, meaningful, and connected lives.   “[A] useful child-rearing resource for the entire family . . . The authors include a fair amount of brain science, but they present it for both adult and child audiences.”—Kirkus Reviews   “Strategies for getting a youngster to chill out [with] compassion.”—The Washington Post   “This erudite, tender, and funny book is filled with fresh ideas based on the latest neuroscience research. I urge all parents who want kind, happy, and emotionally healthy kids to read The Whole-Brain Child. This is my new baby gift.”—Mary Pipher, Ph.D., author of Reviving Ophelia and The Shelter of Each Other “Gives parents and teachers ideas to get all parts of a healthy child’s brain working together.”—Parent to Parent

The classic, bestselling book on the psychology of racism -- now fully revised and updated Walk into any racially mixed high school and you will see Black, White, and Latino youth clustered in their own groups. Is this self-segregation a problem to address or a coping strategy? Beverly Daniel Tatum, a renowned authority on the psychology of racism, argues that straight talk about our racial identities is essential if we are serious about enabling communication across racial and ethnic divides. These topics have only become more urgent as the national conversation about race is increasingly acrimonious. This fully revised edition is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the dynamics of race in America.

Wild Learning answers a call in the educational community for practical, easy-to-implement activities that bring core curriculum out of the classroom and into the outdoors. Outdoor learning has risen in popularity in recent years, and it has tremendous benefits. Being outside is healthier, helps children form a strong connection to the natural world, supports a variety of learning styles, increases engagement and motivation, and improves mental health. This book gives teachers practical activities that they can immediately implement, and helps educators overcome common barriers to outdoor instruction. These activities can be done in common outdoor spaces that are accessible to teachers in all school settings, and they are adaptable to their current curriculum—not an extra thing to try to fit into their day. Get ideas for fun outdoor activities that cover core subject matter already being taught Take learning outside, taking advantage of commonly accessible areas, no matter the educational setting Help students develop a healthy appreciation of the outdoors and support hands-on learning styles Support students' physical and mental health without sacrificing learning time This book is a much-needed resource for elementary and special education teachers, as well as those in alternative schools, forest schools, and homeschooling parents.

Completely updated, this popular guide provides teachers with a proven method for documenting (collecting, analyzing, and displaying) young children’s work at school. Written by teachers for teachers, this classic resource also shows principals, curriculum coordinators, and directors of Head Start and other early intervention programs how to develop children’s portfolios to share with parents or to use for assessment and other accountability purposes. Applicable to many different curriculum models, the updated Second Edition:Combines two books in one by integrating the teacher forms, materials, and planning sheets from the Teacher Materials companion resource into this single volume.Features a larger size to accommodate more examples and photographs of children’s and teachers’ work. Includes more information on incorporating standards in documentation.Discusses how to analyze and talk about documentation in professional learning communities.Provides additional information on preparing teacher portfolios.Documents the Movie Theater Project, a literacy-rich project from an inner-city pre-kindergarten classroom.

Make words the core of classroom instruction and engagement! Literacy guru Larry Swartz offers novel ways to expand students' interest in and facility with words and word power; day by day, word by word. This practical resource is designed to help students discover why word choice and language matter as they build vocabulary across subject areas, gain confidence in word usage, and increase their understanding of word patterns. This practical book shows you how to encourage and motivate students to become passionate about words and develop strategies to help them grow in all their language and learning skills. Ideal for new and experienced teachers, Word by Word is committed to helping students develop innovative ways to explore and make meaning with words.

If you want to learn how to shoot a basketball, you begin by carefully observing someone who knows how to shoot a basketball. If you want to be a writer, you begin by carefully observing the work of accomplished writers. Recognizing the importance that modeling plays in the learning process, high school English teacher Kelly Gallagher shares how he gets his students to stand next to and pay close attention to model writers, and how doing so elevates his students' writing abilities. Write Like This is built around a central premise: if students are to grow as writers, they need to read good writing, they need to study good writing, and, most important, they need to emulate good writers. In Write Like This, Kelly emphasizes real-world writing purposes, the kind of writing he wants his students to be doing twenty years from now. Each chapter focuses on a specific discourse: express and reflect, inform and explain, evaluate and judge, inquire and explore, analyze and interpret, and take a stand/propose a solution. In teaching these lessons, Kelly provides mentor texts (professional samples as well as models he has written in front of his students), student writing samples, and numerous assignments and strategies proven to elevate student writing. By helping teachers bring effective modeling practices into their classrooms, Write Like This enables students to become better adolescent writers. More important, the practices found in this book will help our students develop the writing skills they will need to become adult writers in the real world.

60 practical lessons that guide students to write in a variety of forms. Organized alphabetically, they give students opportunities to read books that can inspire their writing and to write for a variety of purposes.

A comprehensive approach to teaching writing that deals not only with style and inspiration, but with the tools and strategies that young writers need to write well. The book includes a series of rich, engaging prompts that teachers can use to help even the most mechanical writer begin to write with pizzazz and flair. The book illustrates effective ways students can experiment with their writers' voice, engage in dialogue about the writing of themselves and their peers, and set personal writing goals. It also addresses the importance of mentoring, setting success criteria, and consistent and ongoing peer and teacher feedback.

Have you ever wanted to captivate readers with a great opening, create spectacular and fantastical creatures, make up an entire country, realize a dastardly villain, write an epic love story, or make your characters leap off the page? If you answered yes to any of these questions, Gail Carson Levine can help you achieve your goals.

"A wide range of effective writing techniques are outlined and reinforced throughout the book, with suggested "anchor books" for each lesson. The fundamentals of the writing process and the "6 Traits" are integrated into this unique examination of how developing an awareness of the readers' thinking can influence and affect a student's ability to write."--Publisher.

This book is a call to action for English and English Language Arts teachers who understand that data are not numbers alone, that learning is impossible to quantify, and that students are our very best teachers. Writing teacher Angela Stockman shows us how pedagogical documentation--the practice of making learning visible, capturing what is seen and heard, and then, interpreting those findings in the company of our students and our colleagues--is a humbling and humane practice that grounds what we think we've come to know in the lived experiences of those we intend to serve. In this rich resource, she offers... processes and protocols for documenting learning and analyzing data; resources and planning tools to help you design and execute your own projects; and a digital documentation notebook that you can download for guidance, inspiration, and examples. With the powerful tools in this book, you'll be inspired to reach students whose needs have been ignored by big data and whose identities have been erased by oppressive forms of assessment and evaluation.

"I'm a bad writer" is a disclaimer every secondary teacher has heard many times. Overcoming that negative self-image, Plotinsky argues, is key to helping students build a positive academic identity--and because of the vulnerability associated with sharing what we write, the benefits of interrupting this particular form of deficit thinking extend far beyond English class. Drawing on her years of experience as an English teacher and literacy specialist, Miriam Plotinsky uses writing instruction as a powerful vehicle to examine how teachers can help students build a sense of themselves as legitimate, valuable contributors to the world around them. The chapters move fluidly through ways to build capacity such as celebrating student voice, separating grading from class participation, giving feedback that inspires trust, and avoiding the labeling of students. Along the way, teachers in other content areas contribute insights into how the identity-building strategies in the book can be applied to their own disciplines.