"Shows how to breathe new life into use of the reader response notebook in elementary classrooms by using it for design work, expanding what counts as text, and making it an integral part of a community of practice"--

A fast, fun, friendship read from the Newbery-award winning author of , Maniac Magee. Fourth graders are tough. They aren't afraid of spiders. They say no to their moms. They push first graders off the swings. And they never, ever cry.Suds knows that now that he's in fourth grade, he's supposed to be a rat. But whenever he tries to act like one, something goes wrong. Can Suds's friend Joey teach him to toughen up...or will Suds remain a fourth grade wimp?

The question I grappled with was how to move students from "couch-potato" readers who can answer basic questions with one word-to readers who think while reading-to readers who think beyond their reading. -Aimee Buckner In Notebook Know-How, Aimee Buckner demonstrated the power of notebooks to spark and capture students' ideas in the writing workshop. In Notebook Connections, she turns her focus to the reading workshop, showing how to transform those "couch-potato" readers into deep thinkers. Buckner's fourth-grade students use reader's notebooks as a place to document their thinking and growth, to support their thinking for group discussions, and to explore their own ideas about a text without every entry being judged as evidence of their reading progress. Buckner describes her model as flexible enough for students to respond in a variety of ways yet structured enough to provide explicit instruction. Notebook Connections leads teachers through the process of launching, developing, and fine-tuning a reader's notebook program. Teacher-guided lessons in every chapter help students create anchor texts for their notebooks using various comprehension and writing strategies. As students become more proficient, they grow more independent in their thinking and responses and will begin to select the strategies that work best for them. In the process, the notebook becomes a bridge that helps students make connections between ideas, texts, strategies, and their work as readers and writers. Notebook Connections, filled with lesson ideas and assessment tips, provides a comprehensive model for making reader's notebooks the centerpiece of your reading workshop.

Janet Angelillo introduces us to an entirely new way of thinking about writing about reading. She shows us how to teach students to manage all the thinking and questioning that precedes their putting pen to paper. More than that, she offers us smarter ways to have students write about their reading that can last them a lifetime. She demonstrates how students' responses to reading can start in a notebook, in conversation, or in a read aloud lead to thinking guided by literary criticism reflect deeper text analysis and honest writing processes result in a variety of popular genres--book reviews, author profiles, commentaries, editorials, and the literary essay. She even includes tools for teaching-day-by-day units of study, teaching points, a sample minilesson, and lots of student examples-plus chapters on yearlong planning and assessment. Ensure that your students will be readers and writers long after they leave you. Get them enthused and empowered to use whatever they read-facts, statistics, the latest book--as fuel for writing in school and in their working lives. Read Angelillo.

When ten-year-old James' gang initiation endangers his six-year-old brother Isaac, they find the courage to say, "Thanks, but no thanks."

A free verse biography of Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein, featuring over 300 pages of black-and-white watercolor illustrations.

In Writers Are Readers, the mutually supportive roles of reading and writing are made visible through the idea of "flipsides;" how a reader's insights can be turned around to provide insights into his own writing, and vice versa. Lester and Reba's trademark engaging style is woven throughout chapters full of sample lessons, student writing samples, and recommended texts for maximizing the flipped concept across the year. "Leading the student to understand what he did as a reader can become a lens that brings into focus what the writer had to do before a reader ever saw the page," they write. Discover fresh new ways to turn reading strategies into writing opportunities that your students will be excited about and deeply understand.

View the Independent Writing Within, Beyond and About Texts Webinar Now there are three distinct Reader's Notebooks to help students grades K through 8 become better readers through writing. New! Reader's Notebook: Primary (recommended for Grades K-2) Reader's Notebook (recommended for Grades 2-4) Reader's Notebook: Advanced (recommended for Grades 4-8) Here's an engaging way to improve your students' reading comprehension and to encourage them to write their thoughts about what they've read. It is also an excellent assessment tool for documenting reading achievement over time in a reading workshop that includes independent reading, guided reading, and genre study. Fountas & Pinnell Reader's Notebooks are 8x10 spiral notebooks, similar to what students use every day, but specially designed to promote reflection and dialogue about reading. As described in the authors' best-selling Guiding Readers and Writers, Grades 3-6, the Reader's Notebook is practical and easy to use. In it, students transform traditional book reports into active dialogues. The notebook becomes a personal storehouse of students' thoughts and feelings and a place to access them for later review, reflection, and sharing. It is also a way for teachers to systematically assess students' responses to the texts they are reading independently. Used throughout the academic year, the notebook serves as a continual record of one reader's book list, interests and reading responses. Students may write in longhand, make charts or quick sketches, or glue in their writings produced on the computer. The Reader's Notebook also contains many different resources for writing about reading. It is organized into easy-to-use, color-coded tabbed sections. The Reader's Notebook is also available in 25 packs

Describes a program in which the study of the illustrations in children's books is used to help children in the primary grades develop writing skills.

With the generosity, thoughtfulness, and practicality we have come to appreciate from this extraordinary classroom teacher, Linda gives us the structures and models we need to invite every student we teach to think and act as a reader, writer, and artist. -Nancie Atwell Many teachers wonder how to juggle a writer's notebook and a reader's response log. Linda Rief ingeniously combines them both in the Writer's-Readers's Notebook. This veteran teacher truly walks the walk; she shows exactly how to make this powerful tool work in the classroom. -Ralph Fletcher The Readers-Writers Notebook is THE tool for all those concerned with adolescents and literacy. -Teri Lesesne Author of Naked Reading The Writer's-Reader's Notebook is the most essential learning and teaching tool in Linda Rief's classroom. More than an empty journal, it's a highly structured, specifically designed place where all students (English language learners, those with learning differences, girls and boys) connect reading, writing, and thinking. It's also where Linda can observe and encourage their learning. Now, in Inside the Writer's-Reader's Notebook, Linda shows you how this key resource in her English/language arts workshop has the power to help learners develop into articulate, literate citizens of the world. In Inside the Writer's-Reader's Notebook Linda guides you through the Writer's-Reader's Notebook: what's in it, why it's in there, and how to use it effectively with your students. She shows you how to use it to assess what students know, how they think, and how they can express themselves as writers and readers. Inside the Writer's-Reader's Notebook includes: descriptions of the reading and writing minilessons that Linda uses to get kids thinking in the notebook ideas for further invitations that engage adolescents in writing, reading, and drawing specific ways to use the lists and tools that are printed right in the Notebook dozens of reproducible examples of notebook pages by Linda's students that show the Notebook's multiple uses and that will help inspire your own students' writing and reading an annotated list of professional titles that will help further your knowledge of Notebooks and how to use them effectively in a variety of ways in your classroom. With a copy of the Writer's-Reader's Notebook and vital insights into its effectiveness, Inside the Writer's-Reader's Notebook includes everything you need to implement the Writer's-Reader's Notebook in any class and to help students begin the journey toward more thoughtful, purposeful literacy experiences. Read it and see why the Notebook should be at the center of your teaching. Purchase 5-packs of the Writer's-Reader's Notebook here.