Teachers can improve students' reading comprehension, address writing weaknesses, and provide test-taking practice with multiple-choice assessments for grades 3-8. Fifteen skill sets cover focus and organization, style and composition, and conventions and mechanics.
Explores how purposeful writing instruction can be used in the high school classroom to help students build the writing skills needed to succeed in college and the business world.
How closely do your students read their writing? What are the implications for those who do and those who don't? During her work in classrooms, literacy coach Paula Bourque noticed that students who read their own writing closely are engaged in their work, write fluently, are able to produce lengthy drafts, and incorporate teaching points from mini-lessons into the day's writing. In this comprehensive book, Paula shows you that no matter what structures or lessons you use in your writing classroom, the strategies in Close Writing will help you make these better by creating student writers who are more aware of what effective writing looks like, who care about what they write, and who take ownership and responsibility for their growth as writers. Paula argues that a key element in close writing is learning to look and looking to learn by closely reading our own writing. Instead of focusing on the mechanics of their writing, she encourages students to read their words for understanding, clarity, and the effect they will have on an audience. She urges them to recognize their habits and their approaches to writing and to build upon them.Close Writing is based on research and methods that are reliable and valid best practices, but it will not prescribe lessons or structures. It gives you a peek inside classrooms where teachers just like you are working with budding authors just like yours. Paula also provides considerations for ELL writers, as well as a section of interviews with authors. She shares an extensive reference/resource guide, and a companion website with students' work samples, reproducibles and templates, and videos of classroom writing lessons round out this must-have resource.
The best-selling author’s practical guide to writing clearly and convincingly in every professional setting. How would you create a winning pitch for your latest investment idea? Or persuasively argue for a major policy change? Or successfully ask your boss for a raise? The answer: clear and effective communication, whether in writing or through a presentation. Best-selling author Charles Wheelan has spent decades mastering effective communication skills in his work as a writer, college professor, journalist, speechwriter, political candidate, and public speaker. In Write for Your Life, he shares his best tips. Taking readers through all the steps required to arrive at a coherent first draft, he then explains the best ways to improve and fine-tune your writing. He covers how to organize and present information, why it’s necessary to adapt your tone to different audiences, and when to use summaries, sidebars, bullet points, and other tools for making information more digestible. He explores the truth behind popular clichés like "Show, don’t tell" and "Kill your darlings," and discusses the proper use and attribution of quotations from secondary sources. And he goes on to cover how to speak effectively, providing helpful advice for preparing a winning presentation or delivering a speech. Writing with his signature wit and humor, Wheelan illustrates his points with entertaining examples from his own life, as well as memorable anecdotes from leading magazine and newspaper writers, political figures from Winston Churchill to Barack Obama and Elena Kagan, and a diverse array of the best communicators from the worlds of culture, sports, and politics. Write for Your Life is an essential guide for anyone needing to get their ideas across whether in an email, memo, report, presentation, fund-raising letter, or speech.
Play is serious business. Whether it's reenacting a favorite book (comprehension and close reading), negotiating the rules for a game (speaking and listening), or collaborating over building blocks (college and career readiness and STEM), Kristi Mraz, Alison Porcelli, and Cheryl Tyler see every day how play helps students reach standards and goals in ways that in-their-seat instruction alone can't do. And not just during playtimes. "We believe there is play in work and work in play," they write. "It helps to have practical ways to carry that mindset into all aspects of the curriculum." In Purposeful Play, they share ways to: optimize and balance different types of play to deepen regular classroom learning teach into play to foster social-emotional skills and a growth mindset bring the impact of play into all your lessons across the day. "We believe that play is one type of environment where children can be rigorous in their learning," Kristi, Alison, and Cheryl write. So they provide a host of lessons, suggestions for classroom setups, helpful tools and charts, curriculum connections, teaching points, and teaching language to help you foster mature play that makes every moment in your classroom instructional. Play doesn't only happen when work is over. Children show us time and time again that play is the way they work. In Purposeful Play, you'll find research-driven methods for making play an engine for rigorous learning in your classroom.
Get the Knowledge Without the College! You are a writer. You dream of sharing your words with the world, and you're willing to put in the hard work to achieve success. You may have even considered earning your MFA, but for whatever reason--tuition costs, the time commitment, or other responsibilities--you've never been able to do it. Or maybe you've been looking for a self-guided approach so you don't have to go back to school. This book is for you. DIY MFA is the do-it-yourself alternative to a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing. By combining the three main components of a traditional MFA--writing, reading, and community--it teaches you how to craft compelling stories, engage your readers, and publish your work. Inside you'll learn how to: • Set customized goals for writing and learning. • Generate ideas on demand. • Outline your book from beginning to end. • Breathe life into your characters. • Master point of view, voice, dialogue, and more. • Read with a "writer's eye" to emulate the techniques of others. • Network like a pro, get the most out of writing workshops, and submit your work successfully. Writing belongs to everyone--not only those who earn a degree. With DIY MFA, you can take charge of your writing, produce high-quality work, get published, and build a writing career.
Drawing from theory and research that suggests students learn better and more deeply when learning is contextualized and genuinely motivated, the book presents five guiding principles for teaching genre. Emphasizing purposeful communication, it will guide you through teaching students to read, write, speak, and listen to different real-world genres that inspire and engage them."--Pub. desc.
This book explores what writing for pleasure means, and how it can be realised as a much-needed pedagogy whose aim is to develop children, young people, and their teachers as extraordinary and life-long writers. The approach described is grounded in what global research has long been telling us are the most effective ways of teaching writing and contains a description of the authors’ own research project into what exceptional teachers of writing do that makes the difference. The authors describe ways of building communities of committed and successful writers who write with purpose, power, and pleasure, and they underline the importance of the affective aspects of writing teaching, including promoting in apprentice writers a sense of self-efficacy, agency, self-regulation, volition, motivation, and writer-identity. They define and discuss 14 research-informed principles which constitute a Writing for Pleasure pedagogy and show how they are applied by teachers in classroom practice. Case studies of outstanding teachers across the globe further illustrate what world-class writing teaching is. This ground-breaking text is essential reading for anyone who is concerned about the current status and nature of writing teaching in schools. The rich Writing for Pleasure pedagogy presented here is a radical new conception of what it means to teach young writers effectively today.
Language Arts Workshop: Purposeful Reading and Writing Instruction presents a manageable way of organizing instruction, exploring a gradual release of responsibility through meaningful experiences in all areas of need for literacy development, including oral language, spelling, vocabulary, word study, fluency, and comprehension. Like an apprenticeship, novice readers and writers learn a craft under the guidance of a skilled and knowledgeable teacher. Through the language arts workshop, students read and write everyday, spending time working with their teacher, collaborating with peers, and working independently. Learn to model successful language arts teaching for your students Workshop format addresses the diverse learning needs of students, including English language learners, students with disabilities, and students who read at, above, or below grade level to support early interverntion or response to intervention programs. Predictable chapter organization clarifies the workshop approach and framework. Authentic examples from successful classrooms engage readers and model effective language arts instruction. A strong focus on assessment grounds the instruction, and a compendium of assessment tools prepares readers to drive their own classroom.
Your journey along the road to self-discovery does not have to be so long and torturous Cut decades off the process of finding your life purpose by following the six steps outlined in Life On Purpose. Infuse purpose, passion and play into every aspect of your life. This is a truly excellent book on how to discover your life purpose. I highly recommend it to anyone looking to gain clarity with respect to their core reason for being here. Steve Pavlina, personal development expert & author of Personal Development for Smart People. Decades ago, Dr. Brad Swift appeared successful from the outside, but inside, he was burned out, wracked with emotional pain, and ready to end it all--because he was living at odds with his true life purpose. But then he turned his life around to follow his true life calling--and in the process, invented this six-step method to determining one's life purpose. He has since made a difference in the lives of thousands through this proven, systematic, and practical process. “Brad has created a simple and easy way to become crystal clear about your reason for being on this planet. Life On Purpose is your road atlas to live a more purposeful, passionate and playful life.” -Mark Victor Hansen, Co-creator, #1 New York Times best-selling series Chicken Soup for the Soul® In Life On Purpose you will find a step-by-step process for clarifying your life purpose and then designing your life to be a true and authentic reflection of that purpose. A Proven Process that Works! Prepare for the Journey Along the Purposeful Path: As with any challenging journey, it’s best to thoroughly prepare yourself for your travels along the Purposeful Path. This includes accurately determining where you are starting from and where you intend to end up, as well as knowing some of the obstacles that could possibly get in the way of completing the journey. Start on the Purposeful Path with the Life on Purpose Perspective: It’s important to begin your journey on the path that will get you where you want to go most expediently starting with rethinking the whole notion of what a life purpose is that has kept most people looking for their purpose is all the wrong places. Uncover What Has Been Shaping Your Life: Another key passage is clearly identifying the powerful force based in fear, lack, and a need to struggle to survive that has been shaping your life and keeping you from living on purpose. Many who have already traveled along the Purposeful Path feel that this passage is one of the most powerful, transforming parts of the process. Clarify and Polish Your True, Divinely Inspired Purpose: After cleaning the slate by identifying and beginning to be responsible for your Inherited Purpose, the real fun begins as you go through a process called Priming Your Passion to clarify your true, Divinely Inspired life purpose. The process can be not only life affirming, but also life transforming. Learn the 16 Tools for Living on Purpose: Now it’s time to begin to live true to your life purpose with the 16 Power Tools for Living on Purpose. You will use these tools to begin to design your Life on Purpose. Master the Tools for Living on Purpose: In Passage 6 you will learn how to master the art and science of creating a life that is shaped by your true, Divinely Inspired Life Purpose.