Featuring descriptions and activities for fifty exceptional titles, Mary Jo Fresch and Peggy Harkins offer a wealth of ideas for harnessing the power of picture books to improve reading and writing in the content areas.
Power of Picture Books, The: Using Content Area Literature in Middle School
I-Search in the Age of Information
Middle school teacher Huntington Lyman takes a fresh look at the I-Search research method and shows how it can be modified to provide an effective project for middle school students.
Reading & Writing & Teens: A Parent's Guide to Adolescent Literacy
Offering advice from a host of experts in adolescent literacy, this book helps answer real questions from parents across the country about how to best support their teens as readers and writers.
Technology That Powers Up Learning
By designing lessons to activate prior knowledge and linking these activities to reading and writing, teachers found that students were more engaged, that they learned more material more quickly, and that they more willingly incorporated reading into their lives.
Tim O'Brien in the Classroom: "This too is true: Stories can save us"
As part of the NCTE High School Literature Series, Tim O'Brien in the Classroom focuses on opportunities for classroom discussion and writing assignments, including lessons, open-ended prompts, and student writing samples.
Violent Red, Ogre Green, and Delicious White: Expanding Meaning Potential through Media
This article reports on the meaning potential of daily access to drawing/writing media for widening and deepening meaning construction.
A Failure of the Imagination
This article discusses the imaginative activities and assignments that teachers often assign that violate the text around which the lesson is focused and that mislead students about its meaning.
New Voices in Young Adult Literature
Tune in to this episode to hear about a range of titles by first-time YA authors, including mysteries, romances, humorous stories, and great contemporary realistic fiction.
A Conversation with Sara Zarr
Tune in to hear Sara Zarr discuss religious faith and some of the thinking behind her newest novel, Once Was Lost.
Exploring History
Hear about an amazing range of books that explore history, including works of fiction as well as non-fiction, biographies, graphic novels, verse novels, and investigative journalism.
Life's Journeys: Help Along the Way
Tap into teen and preteen readers' interest in adolescent-mentor relationships with these recommendations!
Group and Self-Evaluation
Students use this printout to evaluate both their own performance in a group as well as the actions of their group members.
K-W-L-S Chart
This printable extends the familiar K-W-L's means of organizing students' prior knowledge, formulating inquiry questions, and recording new learning by adding space for questions for further inquiry.
Venn Diagram, 3 Circles
Students use this graphic organizer to describe similarities and differences between three objects or ideas.
I-Search Chart
As part of an I-Search writing process, this handout facilitates the formation of meaningful questions and subquestions for student inquiry.
I-Search Process Reflection Chart
This chart asks students to consider their challenges and successes across the span of the research process, from question formulation to the final write-up.
I-Chart
This printout assists students with generating meaningful questions about a topic and organizing their writing by using a structured guide while researching.
Power Notes
This printout teaches students a method for organizing their thoughts that involves assigning "powers" to different ideas. This outlining technique helps students differentiate between main ideas and supporting details.