In this episode, you'll hear about a variety of books that may deepen our thinking about complex texts, including collections of poems and works of historical fiction, graphic novels and informational texts, and novels built on interwoven storylines. Together they offer reading options for teens with diverse interests, tastes, and sensibilities.
Talking about Text Complexity
A Conversation with Rita Williams-Garcia
It's rare to find historical fiction that weaves rich period detail into the lives of memorable and endearing characters, but Rita Williams-Garcia's middle-grade novels One Crazy Summer and P.S. Be Eleven do just that. Tune in to hear Rita explain how she drew on personal and historical contexts to develop her characters and tell their story. You'll also hear about her great love for her work and her commitment to spending as long as it takes to get the story right.
Exploring the Disability Experience
Books about teens who are living with disability highlight the courage and emotional strength that people with disabilities can summon. They also challenge us to reflect on how we treat disabled people in our own lives. Tune in to hear about young people who are living with birth defects, cerebral palsy, autism, schizophrenia, obsessive compulsive disorder, speech impediments, and traumatic war injuries.
A Conversation with Judy Blume
Tune in to hear Judy Blume talk about how she got her start and learned the craft of writing from her long-time editor, Dick Jackson; what it's like returning to her hometown of Elizabeth, New Jersey, which is the setting for her current novel; and how she's responded to the many parodies and tributes that seal her place in popular culture.
Making Connections
In this strategy guide, you'll learn to model how students can make three different kinds of connections (text-to-text, text-to-self, text-to-world). Students then use this knowledge to find their own personal connections to a text.
Brainstorming and Reviewing Using the Carousel Strategy
This strategy guide introduces Carousel Brainstorming, also known as Rotating Review, and offers suggestions to implement this technique in your classroom for brainstorming about new topics or reviewing learned information.
Using the Think-Pair-Share Technique
In this strategy guide, you will learn how to organize students and classroom topics to encourage a high degree of classroom participation and assist students in developing a conceptual understanding of a topic through the use of the Think-Pair-Share technique.
Using the RAFT Writing Strategy
This strategy guide introduces the RAFT technique and offers practical ideas for using this technique to teach students to experiment with various perspectives in their writing.
Socratic Seminars
This strategy guide explains Socratic seminars and offers practical methods for applying the approach in your classroom to help students investigate multiple perspectives in a text.
Using the Jigsaw Cooperative Learning Technique
In this strategy guide, you will learn how to organize students and texts to allow for learning that meets the diverse needs of students but keeps student groups flexible.
Supporting Student Comprehension in Content Area Reading
In this strategy guide, you'll learn a few simple, yet powerful, techniques to encourage students to use peer talk and writing to enhance their understanding of content area texts.
Preparing Students for Success with Reading in the Content Areas
In this strategy guide, you'll learn how to determine the level and type of support you need to provide students based on careful preparation as a content area expert.
Reading with Purpose in the Content Areas
In this strategy guide, you'll learn how to organize students and instruction to establish a sense of purpose for reading authentic texts in the content areas.
Developing Academic Vocabulary
In this Strategy Guide Series, you'll find creative and compatible ways to build, maintain, and extend students' vocabulary across academic disciplines.
Reading in the Content Areas
In this Strategy Guide Series, you'll get information and ideas about teaching reading in the different content areas.
Teaching Reading with YA Literature: Complex Texts, Complex Lives
This book is designed to help teachers develop their own version of YA pedagogy and a vision for teaching YA lit in the middle and secondary classroom.
Zora Neale Hurston in the Classroom: "With a Harp and a Sword in My Hands"
The book offers a practical approach to Hurston using a range of student-centered activities for teaching Hurston's nonfiction, short stories, and the print and film versions of Their Eyes Were Watching God.
Sherman Alexie in the Classroom: "This is not a silent movie. Our voices will save our lives."
Provides high school teachers with teaching strategies, classroom activities, and student samples for teaching the works of Sherman Alexie.
Sandra Cisneros in the Classroom: "Do not forget to reach"
The third volume in the NCTE High School Literature Series explores the joys of reading and teaching the stories and poems of noted Mexican American author Sandra Cisneros.
Langston Hughes in the Classroom: "Do Nothin' till You Hear from Me"
Carmaletta M. Williams provides high school teachers with background on Hughes and the Harlem Renaissance as well as help in teaching Hughes's poetry, short stories, novels, and autobiography.