Pizza. Pez dispensers. Nerf balls. When we give students “junk” to reward reading, we are focusing their intention away from the act of reading and from their own independence as readers. Instead, we can create classrooms where reading is seen as its own reward. In this book, esteemed researcher Linda Gambrell provides a research-based context for cultivating children’s intrinsic motivation to read and identifies three essential principles, the “ARC” of motivation:
access: giving kids a wealth of reading materials and opportunities to discuss texts
relevance: offering high interest, moderately challenging and authentic reading experiences
choice: allowing students to self-select texts and reading activities
What exactly do those principles look like in action? Reading specialist and researcher Barbara Marinak shares the strategies and techniques that make a difference for student readers’ motivation, turning disengaged readers into passionate ones. “Pizza and Pez dispensers are short lived,” Linda and Barbara write, “but confident and empowered readers are likely to remain motivated for life.”
“Letter-a-week” may be a ubiquitous approach to teaching alphabet knowledge, but that doesn’t mean it’s an effective one. In No More Teaching a Letter a Week, early literacy researcher Dr. William Teale helps us understand that alphabet knowledge is more than letter recognition, and identifies research-based principles of effective alphabet instruction, which constitutes the foundation for phonics teaching and learning. Literacy coach Rebecca McKay shows us how to bring those principles to life through purposeful practices that invite children to create an identity through print.
Children can and should do more than glue beans into the shape of a “B”; they need to learn how letters create words that carry meaning, so that they can, and do, use print to expand their understanding of the world and themselves.
Everyone loves summer—except reading teachers. Kids take a vacation from books and those with limited access to books lose ground to their peers. You may have thought there’s nothing you can do about it, but there is. No More Summer-Reading Loss shows how to ensure that readers continue to grow year round.
School-based practitioners Carrie Cahill and Kathy Horvath join with renowned researchers Anne McGill-Franzen and Dick Allington to help you make summer readers out of every student.
The truth is, when we rely on lecture in an effort to cover content, we’re doing students a disservice. Although lecture can be engaging and even useful, lecture alone cannot give kids real opportunities to learn, retain, and transfer the disciplinary ideas, skills, and practices we’re trying to teach.
Cris Tovani and Elizabeth Moje help us translate the time spent lecturing into powerful learning experiences where students interact and inquire into topics that matter. Their research-based alternatives help you create the conditions for engaging, relevant work that’s inherently interesting and sparks critical thinking.
Elizabeth Moje helps us understand the latest research on how people learn, and shows powerful evidence that teachers can increase student learning with more purposeful student participation. Veteran teacher and instructional coach Cris Tovani provides a practical model for instruction that’s backed by the current research and puts student engagement at the center of your teaching. Her examples of problem-based learning activities include connections to national standards and topics that matter outside the classroom walls. Together, Elizabeth and Cris make a convincing argument that when we minimize teaching-as-telling and transition to planning for kids to do the work, student engagement soars—and so does learning.
Educational software can do many things—assess a student’s reading skill, give instruction and practice at the student’s level, and assess again to determine progress. But software cannot build a relationship with a child and it cannot look at a child’s face and recognize understanding or confusion. It still comes down to teaching students, not technology. EdTech cannot replace a knowledgeable and skilled teacher, but it can support effective literacy learning and be your assistant in creating powerfully literate students and citizens.
With constant upgrades, innovations, and new capabilities, in some ways technology has never been more overwhelming. It’s easy to get lost in the abundance of options and steadily increasing administrative demands. Suzanne and Beth offer a path that puts teachers in charge, pairing research on literacy and technology with practical, actionable advice to help you bring quality instruction and technology together.
While there are books that show you how to include tech, Technology with Intention also addresses how to decide whether to use tech at all. Intentional is the key word for integrating technology into instruction, and you will find helpful guidelines and prompts to help you decide when, how, and why to use technology with your students.
Cut through the noise and focus on what matters most—teaching students, not technology. Learn to how to use technology to enhance, not replace, quality teaching and learning, and consider the best choices for the specific content and the students in front of you. How will you use tech with intention?
Meaningful teaching is something educators strive for each day. Educators also know that there is no such thing as a perfect classroom. Despite our best intentions, our classrooms sometimes feel like they’re stuck, or out of tune.
In Tuned-in Teaching, Antero Garcia and Ernest Morrell offer a road map for creating a classroom that is transformative for your students and revitalizing for you. They explain why students play an integral role in turning classrooms into spaces for greater engagement and innovation. By tuning in to youth culture and the lives of students, we become more connected to their needs and ways of learning.
The authors examine critical research and discuss the connection to specific aspects of teaching. They also offer six important considerations for teachers who want to build more active, just, and tuned-in learning environments:
This book is an invitation to learn and grow alongside the suggestions and research presented. It offers guidance for more meaningful teaching in the present, and critical pedagogy for transforming classrooms for the societies of the future.
Frustrated by ongoing difficult student behavior? You’re not alone: classroom management issues are a leading cause of teacher burnout. But there is a solution. No More Taking Away Recess and Other Problematic Discipline Practices shows how to promote good behavior, address interruptions, and keep everyone moving forward.
“Management and control are not the same,” write teacher and school leader Gianna Cassetta and noted researcher Brook Sawyer. If trying harder to exert control is sapping your energy, watch as they show how to transition away from the roles of disciplinarian or goody dispenser and toward an integrated, professionally satisfying model for classroom management.
Teachers know the importance of strong relationships with their students, but sometimes connecting with them feels challenging. No More Teaching Without Positive Relationships reviews the teacher-student relationship research and provides practices for building relationships that make a difference.
To learn, students need positive relationships with their teachers. So what gets in the way and how can we do better? Since there is no one way to make every relationship positive, authentic, sustainable, and trusting, the authors provide a range of strategies for building and maintaining connections with students. They also discuss critical considerations such as:
No More Math Fact Frenzy examines this research and concludes that our approaches to math fact instruction are often ineffective. We want our students to know their math facts. We know they’re better mathematicians when they’re comfortable with them. Yet the ways we ask students to learn them in many classrooms remain unproductive.
To address this, the authors outline three phases for helping students master their math facts.
Then they share recommendations for all three phrases: activities and games that build number sense, strategies that lead to flexible thinking, and ways to create and sustain a classroom culture of fluency. This kind of teaching helps students learn their math facts more successfully—and with less stress and anxiety.
It is common to engage students in the process of science, using mostly hands-on activities, and equally common to provide students with only science knowledge through mostly text-based experiences. Neither of these approaches is authentic to how scientists make sense of the world. Both fail to connect those experiences to the larger purpose of science. In this book Jacquey and Gina show you why, and how integrating science and literacy instruction supports students’ understanding of and engagement in both.
Using research as their guide, Jacquey and Gina show you how to integrate science and literacy learning in a way that reflects the authentic ways scientists work. The authors have identified three key principles supporting this integration:
Principle #1: Frame student investigations with a scientific purpose.
Principle #2: Integrate “hands-on” science with literacy to support science learning.
Principle #3: Help students engage with text in science.
Throughout the book, they describe research that supports each principle and share examples of effective integration in the classroom that enhance students’ science learning, reading and writing growth, and motivation. To avoid the trap of textbook-only science or inquiry-only science, we need to aim for synergy – engaging students in using firsthand experiences and text-based experiences as connected parts of investigating questions about the natural world.
Every child is a cultural being with a unique history and rich cultural practices; a member of communities in and outside of school. Yet too many children spend their days inside classrooms where they rarely find their voices, values, and cultural practices reflected in curriculum materials, much less embraced and celebrated through instructional practices.
Culturally relevant teaching is essential, now more than ever. If we want children to develop as successful learners, we must communicate that they belong in our classrooms. They need to see themselves, their cultures, their families, and their communities reflected in the materials and resources they find there.
Culturally relevant teachers honor students’ identities by positioning them at the center of teaching and learning. Each and every day, they make sure children and their families feel that they belong in school. They include multiple perspectives and points of view in the curriculum.
Teacher-coach collaboration is critical to teacher effectiveness and student learning, but sometimes the in-the-moment response rate required when supporting several teacher requests at once can make literacy coaching appear to be, well, rather random.
No More Random Acts of Literacy Coaching looks at the common obstacles and misconceptions that can prevent effective coaching, and offers strategies that literacy coaches, teachers, and principals can employ to make wise use of their time together. The authors offer practical steps to create a climate of positive professional learning that include:
When literacy coaching is intentional, carefully planned, and a collaborative team effort with teachers and principals, the results are dramatic. Student literacy growth increases, and the number of students needing intervention decreases. Learn how your team can work together to accelerate student success.