All the tips and tools you need to realize the goal of balanced literacy learning. Students learn to read and write best when their teachers balance literacy instruction. Best-selling authors Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey, and Nancy Akhavan help you strike the right balance of skills and knowledge, reading and writing, small and whole group instruction, and direct and dialogic instruction, so that all students can learn to their maximum potential. Using this essential guide, tap your intuition, collaborate with your peers, and put the research-based strategies embedded within to work in your classroom for a strong and successful balanced literacy program.
In this much anticipated follow-up to their groundbreaking book, Shifting the Balance: 6 Ways to Bring the Science of Reading into the Balanced Literacy Classroom, authors Jan Burkins and Kari Yates, together with co-author Katie Cunningham, extend the conversation in Shifting the Balance 3-5: 6 Ways to Bring the Science of Reading into the Upper Elementary Classroom. This new text is built in mind specifically for grades 3-5 teachers around best practices for the intermediate classroom. Shifting the Balance 3-5 introduces six more shifts across individual chapters that: Zoom in on a common (but not-as helpful-as-we-had-hoped) practice to reconsider Untangle a number of "misunderstandings" that have likely contributed to the use of the common practice Propose a more science-aligned shift to the current practice Provide solid scientific research to support the revised practice Offer a collection of high-leverage, easy-to-implement instructional routines to support the shift to more brain-friendly instruction The authors offer a refreshing approach that is respectful, accessible, and practical - grounded in an earnest commitment to building a bridge between research and classroom practice. As with the first Shifting the Balance, they aim to keep students at the forefront of reading instruction.
Linda Chen and Eugenia Mora-Flores examine how to lead ELLs toward independence through basic frameworks and techniques you know and may already teach with. Their integrated, comprehensive approach focuses on seven specific aspects of balanced instruction that help students learn, expand, and extend their literacy skills, including: interactive read-aloud, emergent story book read-aloud, shared reading, reading workshop, writing workshop, guided reading, and word work. --From publisher's description.
This is Balanced Literacy: Grades K-6 Students learn to read and write best when their teachers balance literacy instruction. But how do you strike the right balance of skills and knowledge, reading and writing, small and whole group instruction, and direct and dialogic instruction, so that all students can learn to their maximum potential? The answer lies in the intentional design of learning activities, purposeful selection of instructional materials, evidence-based teaching methods, and in strategic groupings of students based on assessment data. Together, these create the perfect balance of high impact learning experiences that engage and excite learners. In this hands-on essential guide, best-selling authors Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey, and Nancy Akhavan help you define that balance for your students, lighting the path to implementing balanced literacy in your classroom. Their plan empowers you to integrate evidence-based approaches that include: • Instructional materials comprised of both informational and narrative texts. • The best uses of instructional delivery modes, including direct and dialogic instruction. • Grouping patterns that work best to accomplish learning aims for different learners at different stages. • Instruction in foundational skills and meaning making, including oral language, phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, and writing. • Technology used as a tool for increasing learning of a specific literary process. All the tips and tools you need to realize the goal of balanced literacy learning are included, with classroom videos that show strategies in action. Tap your intuition, collaborate with your peers, and put the research-based strategies embedded in this roadmap to work in your classroom to implement or deepen a strong, successful balanced literacy program. Grow as a reading and writing teacher while leading your students to grow as readers and writers.
Literacy stations should be more than just busy work. Simply Stations: Partner Reading shows how to ensure that kids are purposefully and effectively practicing comprehension, deeper thinking, vocabulary, and communication skills every day. Here’s everything you need to plan, teach, and refresh the Partner Reading station year-round, including… Step-by-step instructions for launching and maintaining the station; Whole-group lesson plans, based on key literacy standards, to introduce and support partner work; Printable teacher and student tools; On-the-spot assessment ideas and troubleshooting tips; Lists of grade-level specific materials; and Countless real-classroom photos so you see the possibilities first-hand.
Beat burnout with time-saving best practices for feedback For ELA teachers, the danger of burnout is all too real. Inundated with seemingly insurmountable piles of papers to read, respond to, and grade, many teachers often find themselves struggling to balance differentiated, individualized feedback with the one resource they are already overextended on—time. Matthew Johnson offers classroom-tested solutions that not only alleviate the feedback-burnout cycle, but also lead to significant growth for students. These time-saving strategies built on best practices for feedback help to improve relationships, ignite motivation, and increase student ownership of learning. Flash Feedback also takes teachers to the next level of strategic feedback by sharing: How to craft effective, efficient, and more memorable feedback Strategies for scaffolding students through the meta-cognitive work necessary for real revision A plan for how to create a culture of feedback, including lessons for how to train students in meaningful peer response Downloadable online tools for teacher and student use Moving beyond the theory of working smarter, not harder, Flash Feedback works deeper by developing practices for teacher efficiency that also boost effectiveness by increasing students’ self-efficacy, improving the clarity of our messages, and ultimately creating a classroom centered around meaningful feedback.
Conferring with students about reading allows for clearer access to one-on-one, in-the-moment teaching and learning, yet it can feel intimidating or overwhelming. Kari Yates and Christina Nosek want to help. Here they have provided practical, reflective, student-centered teaching moves that you can use to develop an intentional, joy-filled conferring practice.To Know and Nurture a Reader: Conferring with Confidence and Joy is a get-going guide to conferring. The book includes step-by-step guidance that is also considerate of time and other classroom challenges, as well as: Numerous tools such as guiding questions, reproducible planning and note-taking documents; Classroom vignettes that pull you close to a reader and teacher in a conference setting; Video clips of classroom conferences to show what conferring looks like in action. The book breaks conferring into manageable chunks with specific goals for knowing and nurturing young readers, then puts all the pieces together with various classroom scenarios and examples. The tools, examples, and ideas in this book make conferring something every teacher can do right away and master with continued effort and practice.
The current emphasis on the body of research known as the "Science of Reading" has renewed the reading wars and raised challenging questions for balanced literacy teachers about the best way to teach reading. Instead of fueling the debate, Dr. Jan Burkins and Kari Yates immersed themselves in the research and produced Shifting the Balance, Grades K-2: 6 Ways to Bring the Science of Reading into the Balanced Literacy Classroom. This best-selling guide is concise and practical, integrating effective reading strategies from each perspective. Every chapter of Shifting the Balance, Grades K-2 focuses on one of the six simple and scientifically sound shifts reading teachers can make to strengthen their approach to early reading instruction in these areas: Reading Comprehension Phonemic Awareness Phonics High-Frequency Words Cueing Systems Text Selection Practical Instruction for Primary Grades: Whether your students are just learning to read or building more advanced reading comprehensive skills, Shifting the Balance, K-2 is designed to help teachers meet the instructional needs of K-2 students. Six Manageable Shifts: Each chapter focuses on a key shift that helps educators understand common misconceptions and adjust their thinking around some common instructional practices that teachers have been using for decades. Evidence-Based Instruction: Burkins and Yates offer busy educators a blueprint for integrating finding from brain research, cognitive science, and child development into their daily instruction, while keeping meaningful experiences with books a priority. Classroom Applications: Shifting the Balance, K-2 is full of sample activities and classroom vignettes that paint a picture of what these shifts look like in action with roomful of learners. The book has already helped countless educators by taking the guesswork out of how to blend best practices with the latest research while keeping students at the forefront of reading instruction. We've written this book to support you in making sound decisions anchored in the best of science, the truth of responsiveness, and a relentless focus on providing all children learning experiences saturated with meaning, the authors write.
From social media to school success—take student writing to the next level! Your students may not realize it, but they’re already writers. All those informal text messages, Instagram captions, and Facebook posts have given them skills they can use as a springboard to the formal, content-specific writing they’ll need for success in school, college, and careers. The key, of course, is practice—plus a little guidance from you. And you’ll be ready, no matter what subject you teach, because this essential reference is packed with relevant, contemporary teaching strategies that are easily customizable to work across content areas. Inside, you’ll find: Engaging exercises based in the kinds of writing students already do Versatile "parachute writings"—quick bursts of practice to drop into a day’s lesson Strategies for introducing academic vocabulary and making it stick Skill-boosting strategies for successful summarizing and using textual evidence Variations specific to all disciplines and content areas Students should be writing daily, in all their classes, and they should be writing a lot, both inside and outside school. With this practical guide, you’ll be ready to help them up their writing game—and make literacy relevant, valuable, and authentic.
