The purpose of this "teaching tips" article is to describe practical classroom instruction that helps elementary students write expository responses to narrative texts. It focuses on the importance of scaffolded, interactive discussions comprised of a combination of teacher think alouds and similar student responses before, during, and…

Fourth grade is an important year for literacy learning. Having left the primary grades behind, students must grapple with more demanding texts and content material. Effective, motivating instruction can help them succeed. This book helps teachers create an energized and organized learning environment in which all students can improve their…

This article describes how computer center sign-up sheets encouraged preschool children with a variety of disabilities to make visible advances in their emergent writing skills over the years. The children progressed from making scribbles to making recognizable letter-symbols on the sign-up sheets. Tips for creating sign-up sheets are provided.…

Designed to help teachers develop instructional practices that enable students to become more active learners of content, this handbook provides elementary, middle school, and secondary teachers with strategies for integrating reading and writing as tools for learning in the content areas. The handbook describes literacy strategies that have the…

Reading and writing across content areas is emphasized in the standards and on high-stakes tests at the state and national level. As educators seek to incorporate content-area literacy into their teaching, they confront a maze of theories, instructional strategies, and acronyms like REAP and RAFT. Teachers who do work their way through the myriad…

This book is a story for and by real teachers. In the book, two seasoned veterans recount their 23-year collaboration to find ways to help students improve learning in their content area subjects. Over the years, the book explains, the two educators have developed a host of practical activities and strategies to infuse the processes of learning…

For most students, the intermediate years offer the last opportunity to prevent continued failure in reading and writing. These years are a critical bridge to the middle grades where the tendency is to be less personalized and focused on individual needs. This book provides teachers, administrators, and staff developers with the best…

This book offers teachers a handbook for teaching literacy to diverse students in grades 3-8. The balanced literacy method combines the best practices of phonics and other skill-based language instruction with the holistic, literature-based approach in order to help teach reading, writing, and speaking in a clear and approachable format. This…

Intended as a resource for elementary and middle school teachers for use in literature focus units, reading and writing workshop, or thematic units, this book contains new instructional strategies such as interactive writing, story retelling, and word sorts. The book offers a grid recommending the most appropriate usage for each strategy,…

This book sets out to adapt and use some of the practical approaches of genre theory to the teaching of writing to English as a Second or Other Language (ESOL) and Basic Skills students in Britain. The book has 9 units exploring different types of text or genres, descriptions of people, descriptions of places, personal narratives, folk stories,…