Striking a Balance explores a comprehensive program of early literacy instruction through a balanced approach to reading and writing for both enjoyment and information. The fifth edition retains the special features that adopters have come to appreciate: classroom vignettes, discussion questions, field-based activities, a student website, and study guide. This latest edition offers expanded content on differentiating instruction for diverse learners, including working with English Language Learners and students with special needs. Also new to this edition is greater coverage on integrating state standards with early literacy instruction. The book’s practical approach fundamentally demonstrates how children develop authentic literacy skills through a combination of direct strategy instruction and motivating contexts.
All children are natural poets--even those who are academically at-risk. In For the Love of Language, the author illustrates how literacy scaffolds can release the poet within every child. Explore colour, nonsense, and shape poems; modelled poetry, free verse, alliteration, limericks; haiku, argument, alphabet poems; and many more. Each poetry activity provides a description, an easy-to-follow pattern, lead-in activities, and student-written samples. Winner of Learning Magazine Teachers' Choice Award.
Asking questions is one of the most essential functions of teaching. In this book, the authors Nancy Lee Cecil and Jeanne Pfeifer show teachers how to develop both their own questioning skills and those of their students. The authors explain how to model provocative, open-ended questions, and provides many useful teacher- and student-directed questioning strategies. From these strategies, children learn how to ask questions that enable them to construct their own meaning from what they read and experience. This revised edition includes several new questioning strategies. In addition, many of the strategies found in the original edition have been updated and/or expanded to reflect today's best practices in educaiton. The Art of Inquiry is divided into two sections. Part I identifies the many types of questions and the thinking skills they promote (such as knowledge, comprehesion, analysis, and evaluation), and discusses how to foster the free flow of questions and anwers. Part II provides practical questioning strategies and activities (for example, Polar Opposite, Think Aloud, and Self-Instruction) that stimulate the highest critical and creative thinking skills. The authors also show how asking the right questions can help children to understand content, learn to ask effective questions of themselves, and make clear connections between diverse thoughts.
All children are natural poets--even those who are academically at-risk. In For the Love of Language, the author illustrates how literacy scaffolds can release the poet within every child. Explore colour, nonsense, and shape poems; modelled poetry, free verse, alliteration, limericks; haiku, argument, alphabet poems; and many more. Each poetry activity provides a description, an easy-to-follow pattern, lead-in activities, and student-written samples. Winner of Learning Magazine Teachers' Choice Award.
Asking questions is one of the most essential functions of teaching. In this book, the authors Nancy Lee Cecil and Jeanne Pfeifer show teachers how to develop both their own questioning skills and those of their students. The authors explain how to model provocative, open-ended questions, and provides many useful teacher- and student-directed questioning strategies. From these strategies, children learn how to ask questions that enable them to construct their own meaning from what they read and experience. This revised edition includes several new questioning strategies. In addition, many of the strategies found in the original edition have been updated and/or expanded to reflect today's best practices in educaiton. The Art of Inquiry is divided into two sections. Part I identifies the many types of questions and the thinking skills they promote (such as knowledge, comprehesion, analysis, and evaluation), and discusses how to foster the free flow of questions and anwers. Part II provides practical questioning strategies and activities (for example, Polar Opposite, Think Aloud, and Self-Instruction) that stimulate the highest critical and creative thinking skills. The authors also show how asking the right questions can help children to understand content, learn to ask effective questions of themselves, and make clear connections between diverse thoughts.
Using quality children's literature that presents families positively and promotes appreciation of family diversity, this book offers you a unique way to help students understand the common complexities of today's families. Books are grouped into four major categories-diverse family groups, family heritage and tradition, relationships within families, and family conflicts. Within these areas books are chosen for specific topics, ranging from Death in the Family to Homelessness. For each title there are questions for reflection and discussion and a target activity that reinforces the concepts presented in the book.
LEVEL: Grades PreK–1A Feast of Rhyme, Rhythm, and Song presents an interactive and engaging approach to teaching phonemic awareness – an essential foundation for later reading success. Using sound, music, and rhythm activities, young children develop the ability to hear inside a word – to hear specific sounds, identify the sequence of sounds in words, and understand the role sounds, or phonemes, play in word recognition. Lessons are presented sequentially, through the developmental steps involved in acquiring phonemic awareness. The process begins with the rudimentary awareness that sounds exist, and progresses in complexity to the final insight that sounds within words can be manipulated, deleted, replaced, or added.In this resource, you will find:- easy-to-follow, step-by-step lesson plans - variations for or extensions of the activities - ongoing assessment for each lesson - notations and lyrics for all the songs - templates for a full set of picture cards on CD - a Phonemic Awareness Assessment Tool - an outline of music-content standards applicable to most provinces (and states) The authors of A Feast of Rhyme, Rhythm, and Song believe that children who have experienced the joyful phonemic awareness and music activities contained in this book will be primed and ready for this next step in the remarkable journey of learning to read.
Now in its sixth edition, Striking a Balance clearly illustrates how to create a comprehensive early literacy program that places direct skills instruction within the context of rich and varied reading and writing experiences. Text discussions, dynamic activities, and valuable appendices provide a variety of effective instructional resources, selected based on research and teacher testimonials. The sixth edition incorporates recent updates to national and state standards, as well as expanded sections on working with English language learners and students with special needs, while maintaining the book’s essential features: classroom vignettes, discussion questions, field-based activities, a student website, and study guide. An essential resource for early literacy instructors, this textbook’s practical approach fundamentally demonstrates how children develop authentic literacy skills through a combination of direct strategy instruction and motivating contexts.
Comprehensive yet succinct and readable, Literacy in Grades 4-8, Third Edition offers a wealth of practical ideas to help preservice and practicing teachers create a balanced and comprehensive literacy program while exploring the core topics and issues of literacy in grades 4 through 8. It addresses teaching to standards; differentiating instruction for readers and writers; motivating students; using assessment to inform instruction; integrating technology into the classroom; working with English learners and struggling readers; and connecting with caregivers. Selected classroom strategies, procedures, and activities represent the most effective practices according to research and the many outstanding classroom teachers who were observed and interviewed for the book. The Third Edition includes added material connecting the Common Core State Standards to the instruction and assessment of literacy skills; a combined word study and vocabulary chapter to help readers integrate these important topics in their teaching; more on technology, including comprehension of multimodal texts, enhancing writing instruction with technology tools, and teaching activities with an added technology component; added discussion of teacher techniques during text discussions, strategic moves that help students become more strategic readers. Key features: In the Classroom vignettes; more than 50 activities,some with a technology component; questions for journal writing and for projects and field-based activities; troubleshooting sections offering alternative suggestions and activities for those middle-grade students who may find a particular literacy focus challenging.
An action book for every parent and teacher who wants to end violence and create a safe, peaceful world for our children. Nancy Cecil offers creative and practical ways to foster peace in the family and in everyday life. Includes family activities, tips for television, and a recommended reading list of children's books that feature peaceful role models.
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