Debbie Diller has revolutionized literacy instruction in countless classrooms over the years, demonstrating how to effectively use literacy workstations to engage students in critical literacy learning. In Growing Independent Learners: From Literacy Standards to Stations, K-3, she provides a comprehensive guide to help you plan instruction focused on literacy standards, organize your classroom for maximum benefit, and lead your students to independence through whole-group lessons, small-group focus, and partner learning at literacy stations. The first four chapters lay the foundation with planning, organizing, and instruction that are essential for success with literacy workstations. From creating a model classroom and developing planning tools to using anchor charts, Diller gives you creative ideas for making the most of your classroom environment to support student independence. Later chapters focus on standards-based instruction built around key reading, writing, and foundational skills as well as speaking, listening, and language standards. Each of these chapters provides the following:Detailed explanations of each standard's importance and real-world application examples Planning tools including academic vocabulary, modifiable lesson plans for whole group instruction, and suggestions for literacy workstations Mentor texts to use during whole group, small group, or stations Over 400 full-color photos demonstrating workstations in action Ways to connect lessons into other areas of daily instruction, including independent reading time, small-group instruction, and workstations ' Growing Independent Learners will help you create a vibrant classroom filled with independent learners. This book will quickly become an essential resource for any teacher who believes that all children can learn to work independently in a classroom that's well organized and mindfully planned. '

Debbie Diller has revolutionized literacy instruction in countless classrooms over the years with her seminal books (Literacy Work Stations, Practice with Purpose, and Spaces & Places) on how to effectively use literacy work stations to engage students in critical literacy learning. In Growing Independent Learners, she provides a comprehensive guide--with more than 400 full-color photos--to help you plan instruction focused on literacy standards, organize your classroom for maximum benefit, and lead your students to independence through whole-group lessons, small-group focus, and partner learning at literacy stations. The first four chapters lay the foundation with planning, organizing, and instruction that are essential for success with literacy work stations. From creating a model classroom and developing planning tools to using anchor charts, Debbie gives you creative ideas for making the most of your classroom environment to support student independence. Later chapters focus on standards-based instruction built around key reading, writing, and foundational skills as well as speaking, listening, and language standards. Each of these chapters provides the following: - Detailed explanations of each focal standard's importance and real-world application - Planning tools that include academic vocabulary, plans for whole-group instruction, and suggestions for literacy work stations - Complete whole-group lesson plans that you can use and modify again and again - Connections to help you extend the lessons into other areas of daily instruction, including independent reading time, small-group instruction, and work stations - Mentor texts to use during whole group, small group, or stations - Teaching tips that can help build skills from grade to grade Growing IndependentLearners will help you create a vibrant classroom filled with independent learners. This book will quickly become an essential resource for any teacher who believes, as Debbie does, that all children can learn to work independently in a classroom that's well organized and mindfully planned.

Primary-grade teachers face an important challenge: teaching children how to read while enabling them to build good habits so they fall in love with reading. Many teachers find the independent reading workshop to be the component of reading instruction that meets this challenge because it makes it possible to teach the reading skills and strategies children need and guides them toward independence, intention, and joy as readers. In Growing Readers, Kathy Collins helps teachers plan for independent reading workshops in their own classrooms. She describes the structure of the independent reading workshop and other components of a balanced literacy program that work together to ensure young students grow into strong, well-rounded readers. Kathy outlines a sequence of possible units of study for a yearlong curriculum. Chapters are devoted to the individual units of study and include a sample curriculum as well as examples of mini-lessons and reading conferences. There are also four "Getting Ready" sections that suggest some behind-the-scenes work teachers can do to prepare for the units. Topics explored in these units include:print and comprehension strategies;reading in genres such as poetry and nonfiction;connecting in-school reading and out-of-school reading;developing the strategies and habits of lifelong readers. A series of planning sheets and management tips are presented throughout to help ensure smooth implementation. We want our students to learn to read, and we want them to love to read. To do this we need to lay a foundation on which children build rich and purposeful reading lives that extend beyond the school day. The ideas found in Growing Readers create the kind of primary classrooms where that happens.

Walt and his friends are growing up fast! Everyone is the something-est. But . . . what about Walt? He is not the tallest, or the curliest, or the silliest. He is not the anything-est! As a BIG surprise inches closer, Walt discovers something special of his own!

Louise Ho is a Chinese poet from Hong Kong who finds her feet in English. Since her first publications more than thirty years ago, her poetry collected here has been a reflection of the fortunes of the city and its people, their hopes and anxieties, their achievements, crises, dispersals and renewals.