"The clear explanations and examples make the book easy to read and understand so strategies can be immediately implemented in the classroom. This text will be an excellent addition to any teacher′s professional library." —Carol Gallegos, Literacy Coach Hanford Elementary School District, CA Give your elementary school students the tools to become thoughtful, high-achieving readers! Strong reading skills are critical for students as they progress through the grade levels and face the reading challenges of the 21st century. Using research-based, differentiated strategies, Richard W. Strong, Harvey F. Silver, and Matthew J. Perini show how you can teach average or low-performing readers to become A+ readers who can comprehend, analyze, and summarize different kinds of texts. Starting with a concise overview of recent research on successful readers, the authors explore seven key areas and corresponding strategies to help all readers achieve at high levels: identifying the main idea, reading fluency, vocabulary, inferential reading, questioning techniques, informal writing, and reading styles. Complementing the best-selling Reading for Academic Success for grades 7–12, this hands-on guide features: Practical applications that can be used across content areas and to support individual learning styles The five common characteristics of A+ readers and special tips for nurturing those abilities in all students Recommendations and tools for helping English Language Learners and students with special needs Examples of student work and reproducible graphic organizers Expressly designed for elementary school teachers, Reading for Academic Success, Grades 2–6, offers proven methods that can produce significant gains for all students and far-reaching results for your school!

Through specific examples, real-life scenarios, and diagrams, this book vividly conveys the most fundamental and effective tactics for boosting reading proficiency while enhancing student and teacher performance.

This is Balanced Literacy: Grades K-6 Students learn to read and write best when their teachers balance literacy instruction. But how do you strike the right balance of skills and knowledge, reading and writing, small and whole group instruction, and direct and dialogic instruction, so that all students can learn to their maximum potential? The answer lies in the intentional design of learning activities, purposeful selection of instructional materials, evidence-based teaching methods, and in strategic groupings of students based on assessment data. Together, these create the perfect balance of high impact learning experiences that engage and excite learners. In this hands-on essential guide, best-selling authors Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey, and Nancy Akhavan help you define that balance for your students, lighting the path to implementing balanced literacy in your classroom. Their plan empowers you to integrate evidence-based approaches that include: • Instructional materials comprised of both informational and narrative texts. • The best uses of instructional delivery modes, including direct and dialogic instruction. • Grouping patterns that work best to accomplish learning aims for different learners at different stages. • Instruction in foundational skills and meaning making, including oral language, phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, and writing. • Technology used as a tool for increasing learning of a specific literary process. All the tips and tools you need to realize the goal of balanced literacy learning are included, with classroom videos that show strategies in action. Tap your intuition, collaborate with your peers, and put the research-based strategies embedded in this roadmap to work in your classroom to implement or deepen a strong, successful balanced literacy program. Grow as a reading and writing teacher while leading your students to grow as readers and writers.

From social media to school success—take student writing to the next level! Your students may not realize it, but they’re already writers. All those informal text messages, Instagram captions, and Facebook posts have given them skills they can use as a springboard to the formal, content-specific writing they’ll need for success in school, college, and careers. The key, of course, is practice—plus a little guidance from you. And you’ll be ready, no matter what subject you teach, because this essential reference is packed with relevant, contemporary teaching strategies that are easily customizable to work across content areas. Inside, you’ll find: Engaging exercises based in the kinds of writing students already do Versatile "parachute writings"—quick bursts of practice to drop into a day’s lesson Strategies for introducing academic vocabulary and making it stick Skill-boosting strategies for successful summarizing and using textual evidence Variations specific to all disciplines and content areas Students should be writing daily, in all their classes, and they should be writing a lot, both inside and outside school. With this practical guide, you’ll be ready to help them up their writing game—and make literacy relevant, valuable, and authentic.

Presents initial and final vowel and consonant combinations and word roots for beginning spellers and those with learning difficulties such as dyslexia.

Mastering second grade reading and writing is fun and exciting with this book that combines language arts activities with puzzles and humor to lower the barriers to learning and build essential skills. Reading and writing are two of the most important building blocks for future learning, and Highlights(TM) brings Fun with a Purpose® into these essential activities for second graders. Our award-winning content blends reading and writing skills with puzzles, humor, and playful art, which makes learning exciting and fun. Second grade reading and writing skills such as phonics, word recognition, and key ideas will help students improve and will build confidence in the classroom.

Analyze, argue, compare/contrast, describe, determine, develop, evaluate, explain, imagine, integrate, interpret, organize, summarize, support, and transform . . . Can a mere fifteen words turn today’s youth into the innovative, ambitious thinkers we need? Yes, contend Jim Burke and Barry Gilmore, coauthors of Academic Moves for College and Career Readiness, because these are the moves that make the mind work and students must learn if they’re to achieve academically. It’s that simple. Or is it? To arrive at these fifteen critical reading, writing, and thinking processes, Jim and Barry combed through the standards, research, and secondary curriculum—and that’s for starters. Then, for each of these powerhouse processes, they developed a lesson structure, assignments, and activities so you can teach with potency, right away, and immediately cultivate in students discipline-specific habits of mind. Here’s the best part yet: Jim and Barry distill each intellectual process into a potent concision that nevertheless spans subject areas: Before, during, and after sections offer essential questions, lesson ideas, and activities to assist you in instruction. Two sample student pieces illustrate not only what to look for but the process for getting there. Culminating tasks include producing an analytic essay, visual text, argument, narrative and informational writing, poetry, descriptive science writing, and explanatory writing in math. Every chapter has a correlation chart to Webb’s Depth of Knowledge to deepen understanding and a reproducible rubric to aid in assessment. At the end of the day, what we want is for our students to know how to think at high levels in any discipline in school or any arena in life. In Academic Moves for College and Career Readiness, Jim and Barry translate these processes into remarkable instructional protocols. Use the book and you’ll know for yourself what a revolution they’ve created.