Ever wished for comprehension lessons that get students where they need to be in reading? With Lessons and Units for Closer Reading: K-2 you get just that, 20 initial close reading, standards-based lessons and 80 follow-up comprehension skill lessons that expertly scaffold young readers. The lessons, arranged into 5 units of study, include 12 illustrated Active Reader Cards (printable in four-color!) Day–by-day how-to’s for initial and follow-up lessons 12 Formative Assessments with graphic support and options for oral and written tasks Performance criteria so you can adjust your instruction
The Common Core State Standards have put close reading in the spotlight as never before. While elementary school teachers are certainly willing to teach students to closely read both literary and informational text, many are wondering what, exactly, this involves. Is there a process to follow? How is close reading different from guided reading or other common literacy practices? How do you prepare students to have their ability to analyze complex texts measured by Common Core assessments? Is it even possible for students in grades K–5 to “read to learn” when they’re only just learning to read? Literacy experts Diane Lapp, Barbara Moss, Maria Grant, and Kelly Johnson answer these questions and more as they explain how to teach young learners to be close readers and how to make close reading a habit of practice in the elementary classroom. Informed by the authors’ extensive field experience and enriched by dozens of real-life scenarios and downloadable tools and templates, this book explores *Text complexity and how to determine if a particular text is a right for your learning purposes and your students. * The process and purpose of close reading in the elementary grades, with an emphasis on its role in developing the 21st century thinking, speaking, and writing skills essential for academic communication and required by the Common Core. * How to plan, teach, and manage close reading sessions across the academic disciplines, including the kinds of questions to ask and the kinds of support to provide. * How to assess close reading and help all students—regardless of linguistic, cultural, or academic background—connect deeply with what they read and derive meaning from a complex text. Equipping students with the tools and process of close reading sets them on the road to becoming analytical and critical thinkers—and empowered and independent learners. In this comprehensive resource, you’ll find everything you need to start their journey.
"Do monarch butterflies have a nose?" a kindergartener inquires. "Does it rain on the moon?" a first-grader wonders. "Does a white shark really produce 30 million teeth?"asks a second grader. These incisive, critical quests for additional knowledge about the world are precisely what children do when the Common Core State Standards for informational texts go right in K-2. And with The Everything Guide to Informational Texts, the Common Core will go right in K-2. Authors Kathy Barclay and Laura Stewart have written the book that teachers like you have been pleading for—a resource that delivers the "what I need to know Monday through Friday" to engage kids in a significant amount of informational text reading experiences. No filler, no lofty ideals about college and career readiness, but instead, the information on how to find lesson-worthy texts and create developmentally appropriate instructional plans that truly help young readers comprehend grade-level texts. What you’ll love most: The how-to’s on selecting stellar informational texts High-impact comprehension strategies for nonfiction Suggestions on providing sufficient challenge in guided reading, read alouds, and other practices Model text lessons and lesson plan templates across each grade An annotated list of 449 informational texts for read alouds, guided reading, and independent reading It’s time to bring in to our classrooms all the high-quality informational texts that are available. It’s time to demonstrate to students how to read them, and to allow the authors of these children’s texts to take readers into rich, complex ideas they can handle with our support. If ever there were a book to quell our concern about how Common Core expectations will play out in grades K-2, this is it.
Explore the what, why, and how of close reading to give students in grades K-2 the tools they need to be successful. In this must-have guide, teachers will learn the key elements of a close reading lesson as well as strategies for analyzing and selecting a text and how to support students based on their progress and performance. The included lesson template will allow teachers to not only use the provided lessons and texts but also create their own. Correlated to standards, this book includes grade-specific sample close reading lessons and digital copies of teacher and student resources.
This essential guide to the EL Education K-5 Language Arts Curriculum is one part roadmap to the curriculum, one part orientation to its instructional practices, and one part coach--to answer your questions, relieve your stress, and put you and your students on the path to success. Your Curriculum Companion explores the foundations of the curriculum, including the principles and research it was built on and the instructional practices that make it unique. The book is designed to help you "look under the hood" at practices embedded throughout the curriculum so that you can sharpen your instruction, support students to be leaders of their own learning, and make well-informed changes necessary to best meet your students' needs. Key features of Your Curriculum Companion include: Twenty-seven accompanying videos--see the curriculum in action Task cards for guidance on how to plan when the planning has been done for you The why, what, and how of the K-2 Reading Foundations Skills Block A deep dive into the purpose and structure of close reading and close read-alouds, including two sample annotated lessons. An exploration of the relationship between reading and writing and how the curriculum is designed to help students become strong communicators, including an annotated "read-think-talk-write" lesson. Detailed descriptions of the ways in which English language learners and other students who may need additional support are challenged, engaged, and empowered throughout the curriculum. Guidance for turning evidence of student progress into usable data that can inform your instruction. Support for school leaders
The Common Core State Standards have put close reading in the spotlight as never before. While middle and high school teachers want and need students to connect with, analyze, and learn from both literary and informational texts, many are unsure how to foster the skills students must have in order to develop deep and nuanced understanding of complicated content. Is there a process to follow? How is close reading different from shared reading and other common literacy practices? How do you prepare students to have their ability to analyze complex texts measured by high-stakes assessments? And how do you fit close reading instruction and experiences into an already crowded curriculum? * Text complexity and how to determine if a particular text is right for your learning purposes and your students. * The process and purpose of close reading, with an emphasis on its role in developing the 21st century thinking, speaking, and writing skills essential for academic communication and college and career readiness. * How to plan, teach, and manage close reading sessions across the academic disciplines, including the kinds of questions to ask, texts to use, and supports to provide. * How to assess close reading and help all students—regardless of linguistic, cultural, or academic background—connect deeply with what they read and derive meaning from complex texts. Equipping students with the tools and process of close reading sets them on the road to becoming analytical and critical thinkers—and empowered and independent learners. In this comprehensive resource, you’ll find everything you need to start their journey.
Teach with optimum impact to foster deeper expressions of literacy Whether through direct instruction, guided instruction, peer-led and independent learning—every student deserves a great teacher, not by chance, but by design. In this companion to Visible Learning for Literacy, Fisher, Frey, and Hattie show you how to use learning intentions, success criteria, formative assessment and feedback to achieve profound instructional clarity. Chapter by chapter, this acclaimed author team helps put a range of learning strategies into practice, depending upon whether your K–5 students are ready for surface, deep, or transfer levels of understanding.
Teachers can help children read deeply with this powerful new book by members of Ohio State University's Literacy Collaborative. The first part discusses the strategies and structures readers need to comprehend text-and the changes those readers experience as they move up the primary grades. The second part shows strategy instruction in action, in real classrooms, bymaster teachers. The third part focuses on how planning, organization, and management support instruction.
Young learners are full of questions and wonderings, so much so that sometimes they need a guide for their curiosity. Author Amy Stewart brings her manageable approach to close reading in Little Readers, Big Thinkers: Teaching Close Reading in the Primary Grades. With Stewart guiding, you'll be able to harness the big thinking we know is inside their inquisitive minds. She showcases ways that close reading can teach even the youngest students new ways to enjoy texts, think about them critically, and share that thinking with peers and adults. With its description of the pillars of close reading, multiple lesson sequences for grades K-2, and real-life classroom scenarios, Little Readers, Big Thinkers offers a trove of insights: What close reading is (and is not) How to encourage students to read like detectives Ways to weave close reading practices into your lessons How to cultivate real reading, organic thinking, and deep conversation Which books invite amazing learning and thinking experiences. By giving young minds a great foundation, close reading will become a stepping stone to a lifelong love of reading.
