Using picture books as models is a powerful way to teach key expository and narrative target skills. Step-by-step directions and charts, with quality children's literature used as models, help you set up and manage effective 45-minute long writing workshops. Also includes extensive lists of other children's literature with their recommended Target Skill application.Teach brainstorming, focus, organization, elaboration, and writing conventions using literature as models. Primary and intermediate-level lessons for each of 20 models allow you to customize your writing workshops to the needs and abilities of your K-5 students.
A boy is imprisoned by a witch and must tell her a new scary story each night to stay alive. This thrilling contemporary fantasy from J. A. White, the acclaimed author of the Thickety series, brings to life the magic and craft of storytelling. Alex’s original hair-raising tales are the only thing keeping the witch Natacha happy, but soon he’ll run out of pages to read from and be trapped forever. He’s loved scary stories his whole life, and he knows most don’t have a happily ever after. Now that Alex is trapped in a true terrifying tale, he’s desperate for a different ending—and a way out of this twisted place. This modern spin on the Scheherazade story is perfect for fans of Coraline and A Tale Dark and Grimm. With interwoven tips on writing with suspense, adding in plot twists, hooks, interior logic, and dealing with writer’s block, this is the ideal book for budding writers and all readers of delightfully just-dark-enough tales. * Summer 2018 Kids' Indie Next List * YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults Nomination * 2019-2020 Florida Sunshine State Young Readers Award * 2020 Rhode Island Children's Book Award Nominee * Bank Street Best Children's Book of the Year 2019 (9-12) * 2020-2021 Missouri Association of School Librarians Truman Readers Award Preliminary Nominee * Texas Bluebonnet Award List 2020-2021 * South Carolina Junior Book Award Nominee (2021-2022) * Plus return to the world of Nightbooks—if you dare—with J. A. White's follow-up, Gravebooks!
It's been a decade since Lynne Dorfman and Rose Cappelli wrote the first edition of Mentor Texts and helped teachers across the country make the most of high-quality children's literature in their writing instruction. In the second edition of this important book Lynne and Rose show teachers how to help students become confident, accomplished writers by using literature as their foundation. The second edition includes brand-new "Your Turn Lessons," built around the gradual release of responsibility model, offering suggestions for demonstrations and shared or guided writing. Reflection is emphasized as a necessary component to understanding why mentor authors chose certain strategies, literary devices, sentence structures, and words. Lynne and Rose offer new children's book titles in each chapter and in a carefully curated and annotated Treasure Chest. At the end of each chapter a "Think About It--Talk About It--Write About It" section invites reflection and conversation with colleagues. The book is organized around the characteristics of good writing--focus, content, organization, style, and conventions. Rose and Lynne write in a friendly and conversational style, employing numerous anecdotes to help teachers visualize the process, and offer strategies that can be immediately implemented in the classroom. This practical resource demonstrates the power of learning to read like writers.
Drawing on cutting-edge research, this inspiring book shows how to integrate movement with classroom instruction, providing hundreds of activities that improve attention spans and student learning.
Designed to take you from the moment you first put pen to paper to the point at which you are ready to start contacting publishers (or uploading an ebook file), this is the most important book on writing children's books you'll ever read. It introduces you to the craft of writing for children, the art of words - and pictures - and the way in which to use them. It gives you inspiration, ideas and practical advice. It gives you the background to each different area of children's writing, and the skills you'll need to succeed. Unlike any other book on the market, however, it also helps you begin to critique your own work, meaning that at every step of the writing process you'll be producing the best art you can. There are plenty of other essential writing tools in this book, as well, including techniques for overcoming writer's block; with nearly a quarter of the book focussing on how to get published, how to publish yourself, which courses you do - and don't - need, the nuts and bolts of competitions and festivals and the importance of social media, this really is the most comprehensive companion to the subject available.
"The Handbook of Reading Research is the research handbook for the field. Each volume has come to define the field for the period of time it covers ... When taken as a set, the four volumes provide a definitive history of reading research"--Back of cover, volume 4.
From the very first chapter of this informative and inspiring book, a clear picture emerges of how even three- and four-year-olds' capacities for serious authorship can and should be supported. - Lillian G. Katz Coauthor of Young Investigators: The Project Approach in the Early Years By the time they reach preschool or kindergarten, young children are already writers. They don't have much experience, but they're filled with stories to tell and ideas to express - they want to show the world what they know and see. All they need is a nurturing teacher like you to recognize the writer at work within them. All you need to help them is Already Ready. Taking an exciting, new approach to working with our youngest students, Already Ready shows you how, by respecting children as writers, engaged in bookmaking, you can gently nudge them toward a lifetime of joyful writing. Katie Wood Ray and Matt Glover guide you through fundamental concepts of early writing. Providing numerous, helpful examples of early writing - complete with transcriptions - they demonstrate how to: make sense of children's writing and interpret how they represent sounds, ideas, and images see important developmental signs in writers that you can use to help them grow further recognize the thinking young children engage in and discover that it's the same thinking more experienced writers use to craft purposeful, thoughtful pieces. Then Ray and Glover show you how little ones can develop powerful understandings about: texts and their characteristics the writing process what it means to be a writer. You'll learn how to support your writers' quest to make meaning, as they grow their abilities and refine their thinking about writing through teaching strategies such as: reading aloud working side by side with writers sharing children's writing. Writing is just one part of a busy early childhood classroom, but even in little doses, a nurturing approach can work wonders and help children connect the natural writer inside them to a life of expressing themselves on paper. Find that approach, share it with your students, and you'll discover that you don't have to get students ready to write - they're Already Ready.
Using favorite picturebooks for her mini-lessons models, teacher Susan Lunsford shares 15 easy-to-do writing lessons. Mini-lessons include: Where do story ideas come from? Great First Lines, Exploring Settings, Painting Pictures with Words, Writing a Complete Story, and Great Endings. Her teacher-student dialogues make it all easy to replicate in your own classroom. Each mini-lessons includes follow-up strategies and activities and picturebook suggestions. Writing conference and management tips too! For use with Grades 1-3.
A sweet twist on the age-old “yo mama” joke, celebrating fierce moms everywhere with playful lyricism and gorgeous illustrations, Your Mama is an essential Mother’s Day read. Yo’ mama so sweet, she could be a bakery. She dresses so fine, she could have a clothing line. And, even when you mess up, she’s so forgiving, she lets you keep on living. Heartwarming and richly imagined, Your Mama twists an old joke into a point of pride that honors the love, hard work, and dedication of mamas everywhere. A Kirkus Prize Finalist Kirkus Most Joyous Picture Book of 2021 School Library Journal Best Picture Books of 2021 2022 NCTE Notable Books in Poetry 2021 Nerdy Book Club Award Virginia Center for the Book Great Read 2021
