Imagine having a Newbery Medal-winning author in your classroom as an advisor and a friend, providing personal and practical advice on how to teach writing workshop in the modern-day classroom. With The Write Thing, you can do just that! Kwame Alexander is the New York Times-bestselling author of The Crossover. With more than 10 years of experience conducting writing workshops in schools, Alexander shows how to shake up the "traditional" writing workshop and make writing fun again! His magnetic personality, infectious enthusiasm, and love of teaching come through to inspire all students to write. The Write Thing teaches you how to move students step-by-step from ideas, to drafts, to finished works. Not only will you successfully motivate your students to write, you'll take that motivation one step further by providing guidance on how to create student-driven publications of their work. The confidence students will attain when they see their writing authentically published will be off the charts! The book has three parts: Writing, Publishing, and Presenting. The Writing section features Lessons in Action that teach students to produce writing that is worthy of being published. With a focus on poetry, Alexander's writing workshop uniquely meets the needs of reluctant writers. The Publishing section focuses on how to prepare and print digital and physical copies of students' work. The Presenting section provides suggestions to help students confidently present their poetry and other written pieces. Other exciting features include Kwame Time! videos for both teachers and students that bring Alexander into the classroom. Kwame's Quick Tips feature easy-to-implement ideas that have worked for Alexander. With an insightful foreword by author Kylene Beers, teacher success stories, and the most helpful appendix ever written, this essential resource will teach you how to tailor writing workshop to meet the particular needs of your students.

The "Do the Write Thing" program challenges students to reduce violence and its impact on their lives.All across America, students are rising to the challenge of doing something to end youth violence. The Do the Write Thing Challenge gives middle school students an opportunity to examine the impact of youth violence on their lives. Through classroom discussions and writings, students communicate what they think should be done to reduce youth violence. In addition, they make personal commitments to do something about this problem.

Meet Abriana Yeo, 13, awkward and friendless. Meet Octavia Wu, a graceful teenage alien with superpowers. Forced to flee her home planet Viridis after an invasion by "The Others", another alien species, Octavia and her parents crash-land in the Singapore heartland. Pretending to be a foreign student, Octavia enters secondary one and befriends Abriana, who then helps her in her quest to find the Anteris, a missing element the alien family needs if they want to return to Viridis to help in the war effort. All the while, the two girls also need to navigate the intricate web of teenage drama at Bukit Timah Secondary Girls’ School (BTSGS), where mean girls thwart their search efforts every step of the way. Behind the adventure, mystery and sci-fi, this middle-grade novel also explores the pertinent issues that teenagers typically deal with in a local school setting—friendship, loyalty, CCAs, homework and bullies. There is also no shortage of excitement and intrigue in this sci-fi and adventure. This is the first in a four-book series, for children aged 10 and above.

Little Mynah wishes she was not so ordinary. But when her friend, the magnificent Heron, gets into trouble she flies into action and discovers that even ordinary little birds can do extraordinary things. This is the first multilingual picture book in a series to be published by Epigram Books that introduces preschoolers and early primary kids to the diverse languages and cultures of Singapore. Underlying this first adventure with Little Mynah is the importance of environmental conservation. The book includes a link (via QR code) to an audio recording of everyday words and phrases used in the story in English, Mandarin, Malay and Tamil. A useful glossary is provided at the back of the book for easy reference. The QR code also links readers to free games and activities so the fun and learning keeps going.

Matthews dream is to be a writer. Too bad hes the only one who seems to see the potential in himself. During his senior year of high school, Matt is beginning to feel the pressures of his dreams closing in around him. Still, he has no idea how he should go about being a writer at all. That is, until his English teacherthe intolerable Ms. Castroinforms him that he will be tutoring a sophomore by the name of Lexi OReilly. Suddenly, Matthew finds something worth writing about. As his writing makes its way around the school, life begins throwing Matt for quite the loop. His new girlfriend has become distant, his friend Kat turns and runs at the very sight of him, and his bossworld-renowned author Sheldon Craigis still being a total douche bag. Just when everything was beginning to fall into place, its slipping back out again and falling to pieces. Meanwhile, Matthew is simply trying to do the right thing to fix it all. The trouble is, he hasnt quite figured out what that is yet.

The National Book Critics Circle Award–winning author delivers a collection of essays that serve as the perfect “antidote to mansplaining” (The Stranger). In her comic, scathing essay “Men Explain Things to Me,” Rebecca Solnit took on what often goes wrong in conversations between men and women. She wrote about men who wrongly assume they know things and wrongly assume women don’t, about why this arises, and how this aspect of the gender wars works, airing some of her own hilariously awful encounters. She ends on a serious note— because the ultimate problem is the silencing of women who have something to say, including those saying things like, “He’s trying to kill me!” This book features that now-classic essay with six perfect complements, including an examination of the great feminist writer Virginia Woolf’s embrace of mystery, of not knowing, of doubt and ambiguity, a highly original inquiry into marriage equality, and a terrifying survey of the scope of contemporary violence against women. “In this series of personal but unsentimental essays, Solnit gives succinct shorthand to a familiar female experience that before had gone unarticulated, perhaps even unrecognized.” —The New York Times “Essential feminist reading.” —The New Republic “This slim book hums with power and wit.” —Boston Globe “Solnit tackles big themes of gender and power in these accessible essays. Honest and full of wit, this is an integral read that furthers the conversation on feminism and contemporary society.” —San Francisco Chronicle “Essential.” —Marketplace “Feminist, frequently funny, unflinchingly honest and often scathing in its conclusions.” —Salon

Forget the 10,000 hour rule— what if it’s possible to learn the basics of any new skill in 20 hours or less? Take a moment to consider how many things you want to learn to do. What’s on your list? What’s holding you back from getting started? Are you worried about the time and effort it takes to acquire new skills—time you don’t have and effort you can’t spare? Research suggests it takes 10,000 hours to develop a new skill. In this nonstop world when will you ever find that much time and energy? To make matters worse, the early hours of prac­ticing something new are always the most frustrating. That’s why it’s difficult to learn how to speak a new language, play an instrument, hit a golf ball, or shoot great photos. It’s so much easier to watch TV or surf the web . . . In The First 20 Hours, Josh Kaufman offers a systematic approach to rapid skill acquisition— how to learn any new skill as quickly as possible. His method shows you how to deconstruct com­plex skills, maximize productive practice, and remove common learning barriers. By complet­ing just 20 hours of focused, deliberate practice you’ll go from knowing absolutely nothing to performing noticeably well. Kaufman personally field-tested the meth­ods in this book. You’ll have a front row seat as he develops a personal yoga practice, writes his own web-based computer programs, teaches himself to touch type on a nonstandard key­board, explores the oldest and most complex board game in history, picks up the ukulele, and learns how to windsurf. Here are a few of the sim­ple techniques he teaches: Define your target performance level: Fig­ure out what your desired level of skill looks like, what you’re trying to achieve, and what you’ll be able to do when you’re done. The more specific, the better. Deconstruct the skill: Most of the things we think of as skills are actually bundles of smaller subskills. If you break down the subcompo­nents, it’s easier to figure out which ones are most important and practice those first. Eliminate barriers to practice: Removing common distractions and unnecessary effort makes it much easier to sit down and focus on deliberate practice. Create fast feedback loops: Getting accu­rate, real-time information about how well you’re performing during practice makes it much easier to improve. Whether you want to paint a portrait, launch a start-up, fly an airplane, or juggle flaming chain­saws, The First 20 Hours will help you pick up the basics of any skill in record time . . . and have more fun along the way.