Student's writing skills are improving tremendously... Last year's fourth-graders started using the sandwich method mid-year and almost all of them scored in the highest possible category when they took the state's standardized English-language arts test just a few months later. Wells Central Schools, Wells Central is just one of numerous schools that attribute their success to Ardith Davis Cole's Better Answers process. Since 2002, her book Better Answers has offered teachers and school districts a powerful alternative to test-prep workbooks. It presents a dramatically different instructional model that helps students construct thoughtful test responses, but it also prepares them for any task requiring thorough, cogent answers to questions and prompts -- both in and out of school. Now, with students tested more frequently than ever, and with teachers increasingly concerned about incorporating substantive test-taking skills into children's learning, Ardith Cole responds with a new updated and expanded edition of Better Answers. Informed by Ardith's ongoing work in classrooms where students struggle over constructed-response tasks, the new edition makes the Better Answers sandwich even easier to implement. The book has also been significantly reorganized, as well as expanded to include two new chapters, Understanding the Prompt and What to do When. Also included is a resource-packed CD-ROM that contains everything teachers need to support their lessons and is a great tool for staff development: lesson plans for text-based and self-based responses; power point slides, charts, and other visual supports; sets of sample texts with prompts; sample student responses; assessment forms; extensive bibliography of print and online resources. The Better Answers process is easy to grasp and uses a gradual-release instructional process that begins with teacher modeling, invites increasing amounts of student participation, and eventually moves students into independent response writing. The book clearly explains each element of the process and provides helpful activities, authentic classroom vignettes, and tips on how to handle typical stumbling blocks along the way.

Ask the Right Questions in the Right Ways...And Get the Answers You Need to Succeed! Discover the core questions that every manager needs to master...how to avoid the mistakes business questioners make most often...ten simple rules for asking every question more effectively. Learn how to ask tough questions and take control of tough situations...use questions to promote innovation, drive change, identify hidden problems, and get failing projects back on track. Ask better questions, get better answers, achieve better results! “Required reading for every leader who wishes to see his or herorganization flourish and career progress.” Garry A. Neil, MD, Corporate Vice President, Johnson & Johnson “Asking, listening, understanding the real meaning of the answers, and taking actions based on facts are really the essence of managing. This book has helped me in connecting the dots in my understanding (and lack thereof) of why things really did not work the way I expected them to.” Pradip Banerjee, PhD, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Xybion; retired partner, Accenture “The framework and techniques provide outstanding ideas for executives to both gain better information and develop the analytical skills of their teams.” Terry Hisey, Vice Chairman and US Life Sciences Leader, Deloitte We’ve all met the corporate inquisitor: the individual whose questions seem primarily intended to terrify the victim. The right goal is to solve the problem--and to build a more effective, collaborative organization where everyone learns from experience, and nobody’s too intimidated to tell the truth. That means asking the right questions in the right ways. This book will teach you how to do precisely that. Terry J. Fadem shows how to choose the right questions and avoid questions that guarantee obvious, useless answers...how to help people give you the information you need...how to use body language to ask questions more effectively...how to ask the innovative or neglected questions that uncover real issues and solutions. You’ll learn how to adopt the attributes of a good questioner...set a goal for every question...use your personal style more effectively...ask tough questions, elicit dissent, react to surprises, overcome evasions, and more. Becoming a better questioner may be the most powerful thing you can do right now to improve your managerial effectiveness--and this book gives you all the insights, tools, and techniques you’ll need to get there. Evaluate your current “questioning” skills... ...then systematically improve them Choose better questions... ...and ask them the right way Ask tough questions more effectively Get at the truth, uncover the real problem, and solve it Master the crucial nonverbal aspects of asking questions Finding your best style and the right body language

Discovering a magical pencil that imparts answers to her questions, Ava and her best friend, Sophie, learn the pencil's rules and become increasingly reliant on its replies until it reveals a scary truth about Ava's family. By the award-winning author of the Marty McGuire series.

The winners of the Nobel Prize show how economics, when done right, can help us solve the thorniest social and political problems of our day. Figuring out how to deal with today's critical economic problems is perhaps the great challenge of our time. Much greater than space travel or perhaps even the next revolutionary medical breakthrough, what is at stake is the whole idea of the good life as we have known it. Immigration and inequality, globalization and technological disruption, slowing growth and accelerating climate change--these are sources of great anxiety across the world, from New Delhi and Dakar to Paris and Washington, DC. The resources to address these challenges are there--what we lack are ideas that will help us jump the wall of disagreement and distrust that divides us. If we succeed, history will remember our era with gratitude; if we fail, the potential losses are incalculable. In this revolutionary book, renowned MIT economists Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo take on this challenge, building on cutting-edge research in economics explained with lucidity and grace. Original, provocative, and urgent, Good Economics for Hard Times makes a persuasive case for an intelligent interventionism and a society built on compassion and respect. It is an extraordinary achievement, one that shines a light to help us appreciate and understand our precariously balanced world.

A hilarious and utterly relatable collection of flowcharts, rants, and lists about adulting. A humorous guide to adulthood in a collection of 54 charmingly illustrated flowcharts and pros-and-cons lists that each address an all-too-real question, from the mundane to the life-changing. Will I survive this hangover? (Probably not.) Should I cancel my plans? (YES! Cancel immediately.) Am I having a quarter-life crisis? (Probably.) Do I even like this person? (Nope, nope, nope.) This inspired book of humor disguised as invaluable advice is a gift to make anyone feel better, proving that every question, thought, and decision, no matter how ridiculous or irresponsible, is completely valid.

“The perfect guide to interviewing . . . anyone who speaks with fellow humans to acquire information will find Nelson’s guidance priceless.” —Tom Foster, New York Times–bestselling author of How to Read Literature Like a Professor Interviewing is the single most important way journalists (and doctors, lawyers, social workers, teachers, human resources staff, and, really, all of us) get information. Yet to many, the perfect interview feels more like luck than skill—a rare confluence of rapport, topic, and timing. But the thing is, great interviews aren’t the result of serendipity and intuition, but rather the result of careful planning and good journalistic habits. And Dean Nelson is here to show you how to nail the perfect interview every time. Drawing on forty-years of award-winning journalism and his experience as the founder and host of the Writer’s Symposium by the Sea, Nelson walks you through each step of the journey from deciding whom to interview and structuring questions, to the nitty gritty of how to use a recording device and effective note-taking strategies, to the ethical dilemmas of interviewing people you love (and loathe). He also includes case studies of famous interviews to show how these principles play out in real time. Chock full of comprehensive, time-tested, gold-standard advice, Talk to Me is a book that demystifies the art and science of interviewing. “One of the best interviewers around.” —Anne Lamott, New York Times–bestselling author of Help, Thanks, Wow