Perhaps no factor has a greater influence on children's literacy learning than exposure to engaging, authentic, culturally relevant texts. This concise practitioner resource and course text helps K--8 teachers make informed choices about using children's literature in their classrooms, from selecting high-quality texts to planning instruction and…

"A Reason to Read" is the culminating work of the ArtsLiteracy Project, an ambitious and wide-ranging collaborative that aims to promote literacy through rich and sustained instruction in the arts. At the heart of the book is the "Performance Cycle," a flexible framework for curriculum and lesson planning that can be adapted to…

Teachers recognize that frequent independent reading increases student knowledge on a wide range of topics, enhances vocabulary, and improves comprehension. "Ban the Book Report" inspires teachers to go beyond narrow and analytical book reports by exploring the potential of book talks, alternate book covers, identifying features of informational…

The best way for students to learn to read and to come to love reading is--surprise, surprise--by reading in quantity. Unfortunately, many of today's students read far too little. This lack of time spent reading is particularly unfortunate, as reading constitutes a bedrock skill, essential in all subject areas. Thus, we teachers need to devote…

This volume, a companion to "Talk That Book: Booktalks To Promote Reading," presents 263 new booktalks on classics and best sellers that serve a wide range of interests for all ages and reading interests. Usually, booktalking is an oral presentation of 10 or 20 booktalks lasting about 30 minutes; however, this book can also act as a…

This teaching resource goes beyond songs, games, and finger plays to function as a one-of-a-kind interactive book. Teachers are given basic instructions on how to create a variety of different interactive books for their students to enjoy. Lists of materials needed to create each book are also included with the instructions. The resource book…

This book presents ideas for more than 350 booktalks to use with children in grades 1-8. It is written in a conversational style and is divided thematically into the following seven high-interest chapters: (1) "Great Disasters," including shipwrecks and disasters at sea, fires, floods, diseases and other natural disasters; (2) "Fun…

This book provides educators, parents and caretakers with a variety of instructional strategies for engaging K-8 students. These approaches are designed to enable all students to read easily and enjoyably by utilizing different styles and approaches. The techniques are not generally found in conventional classrooms, but are specifically targeted…

This book features bulletin boards and showcases, designed to motivate readers to use the library, that have been the favorites of students in grades 7-12. Chapter 1 covers getting started, including principles of design, tools of design, background, borders, letters, leaves and flowers, opaque projector/overhead projector/document projector,…

This guide features booktalks for elementary grades of recently published (1998-2001) fiction and nonfiction titles that are either award winners, written by award-winning authors, positively reviewed in national reading advocacy journals, or representative of an emerging trend in children's literature. Each booktalk entry consists of…

Getting teens to read, much less enjoy classic literary fiction is an on-going challenge for educators and librarians. However, Holly Koelling--author, YA librarian, and "booktalker extraordinaire"--offers a variety of techniques for rising to that challenge and successfully selecting, presenting, and connecting teens with great literature in the…

Offering over 200 ready-to-use, successful "booktalks" for librarians, teachers, and parents, this book shows how to "hook" reluctant readers onto books. The field-tested booktalks are brief "commercials" for books that give just enough information to promote reading the book, and that help match the right reader with…

This book arranges more than 900 children's books, both fiction and nonfiction, by school grade (one through six) and by difficulty level (easy, average, challenging), enabling teachers, librarians, and parents to have an extensive bibliography of interesting and worthwhile books for every child's interests and reading abilities. The book lists…

The Newbery and Caldecott awards were established to encourage authors, illustrators, editors, and publishers to produce the most remarkable works to stimulate the mind, satisfy the curiosity, broaden horizons, and raise the hope of all children. With its vivid annotations for all winning titles and honor books since the awards' inception (Newbery…

Each year the Newbery and Caldecott Medals are awarded by the American Library Association for the most distinguished American children's books published the previous year. With its annotations for all winning titles and honor books since the inception of the awards (Newbery in 1922 to be awarded annually to the author of the most distinguished…