This book capitalizes on the authors' longitudinal perspective in program development in approaching a K-12 reading strategy, The school administrator and classroom teacher will find the book's guidelines right to the point. They hit the key issues involved in selecting a reading program: from forming workable and effective professional committees, to conducting the essential evaluations. Anyone who has been through this process will recognize the wealth of expertise required to condense what could be a ponderous and arcane task, into the coherent set of steps and procedures presented in this book. The graphs and tables are invaluable. They will prove enormously helpful in performing each of the tasks in program selections. The authors have set form a process that should enable a school district to optimize the selection and applications of resources in order to maximize pupil learning opportunity. Practitioners will not be disappointed.

You're required to use your school's core (or basal) reading program - but you don't love it. Here's 'Super Core ' to the rescue. Mark Weakland does not ask you to abandon your core reading program. Instead, he shows you how to make changes in your instruction, narrow the scope of what you teach, decrease the time your students spend in workbooks, and increase time they spend reading and writing for real purposes - to turbocharge your teaching and your students' learning.

Try counting how many different types of texts you read each day. Now count how few your students read in class. Michael Opitz, Michael Ford, and Matthew Zbaracki argue that if we want children to meet our literacy expectations, we must do more than supplement basal reading or anthologies with a few books here and there. What kids need to grow into lifelong readers is true variety in a print-rich classroom, teaching that values their out-of-school literacy as well as their in-school literacy, and an emphasis on what works, instead of what's mandated. Books and Beyond is a book of big ideas and smart, useful strategies. Opitz, Ford, and Zbaracki suggest ways to model literate behaviors so that students come to understand that reading is not reserved for the classroom but permeates everything adults do. They describe step by step how to use ten distinct types of outside-world text in your reading program, including a wide range of genres and media. They offer specific advice and instructional alternatives for each kind of text and answer key instructional questions about it such as: Why use it? How can it be used in the classroom? How does it work with different age groups? What are examples that are appropriate for students? What websites are good for researching it? Books and Beyond has everything you need to create a reading program that truly offers students choice alongside a strong sense of how and why we use reading in our everyday lives. And with tips for working around the obstacles of basals, suggestions for reforming the attitudes that have left many real-world texts undervalued, ignored, or even banned from classroom use, as well as methods for using alternative texts to increase student interest and motivation, it's got enough savvy to help you make the transition to a balanced reading program without making waves. If you or your students struggle with banal basal programs, or if you'd simply like to open children's eyes to a wider world of genres, texts, and literature, read Books and Beyond. You'll find a whole new world of reading instruction at your fingertips.

Volume 1 includes activities and lessons to accompany children's books by Michael Bond, Margaret Musgrove, Seymour Chwast, Doug Cushman, Gene Baer, Pam Conrad, Monica Wellington and Andrew Kupfer, Sara Fanelli, Sandra Markle, David Wisniewski, Alexandra Day, Martha Hamilton and Mitch Weiss, Miela Ford, Joanna Cole and Stephanie Calmenson, Wendy Pfeffer, Kay Dokken, Mordicai Gerstein, Ted Lewin, David A. Adler, Shirley Climo, Michael O. Tunnell, D. Anne Love, Ron Roy, Mary Pope Osborne, Fred Gwynne, Raffi, Alma Flor Ada, Ann Jonas, Stuart J. Murphy, Alan Baron, Amy Ehrlich, Syd Hoff, Sarah Weeks, James Stevenson, Carol Ann Timmel, Carolyn Jackson, Linda Martin, Janet Perlman, Robert Kraus, George Shannon, Laura Joffe Numeroff, Amy Schwartz, Bruce Lansky, David Kirk, Chris Van Allsburg, Deborah Blumenthal, Nina Laden, Jon Scieszka, Judy Blume, Elaine Greenstein, Colin Thompson, June Crebbin, Vivian French, Charlotte Dematons, Timothy Bush, Miriam Moss, Emily Arnold McCully, Phillis Gershator, Jan Romero Stevens, Rachel Isadora, Carmen Agra Deedy, Peter Mandel, Anita Jeram, Nancy Van Laan, Jack Prelutsky, Sue Tarsky, Gail Gibbons, Paul Giganti, Byron Barton, Scott Gustafson, Teri Sloat, Eve Merriam, Tana Hoban, Zita Newcome, Sarah Perry, Pat Hutchins, Margaret Read MacDonald, Shirley Neitzel, Ann Morris, Margaret Wise Brown, Rick Brown, Andrew Clements, Sylvia Andrews, Larry LaPrise, Charlotte Zolotow, Luis Garay, Ann Whitford Paul, Betsy Byars, Harriet Lerner, Marjorie Priceman, Rod Clement, Diana Appelbaum, Melvin Berger, Katherine K. Winkleman, Amy Axelrod, Eve Bunting, Henry Cole, B.G. Hennessy, Arthur Dorros, Bernard Most, Colin West, Franklyn M. Branley, Susi Greg Fowler, Deborah Heiligman, Patricia Lauber, Pamela Duncan Edwards, Jama Kim Rattigan, Allan Fowler, Carole Lexa Schaefer, Max Grover, Louis Phillips, Betsy and Giulio Maestro, Richard Egielski, Kevin Henkes, Nurit Karlin, Leo Lionni, Aliki, Joy N. Hulme, Eloise Greenfield, Liz Rosenberg, Jill Murphy, Karla Kuskin, Jack Gantos, Jean Marzollo, Katrin Hyman Tchana, Eric Carle, Eugene Trivizas, John Updike, Chris Raschka, Judith Gorog, Jonathan London, Jane Manning, Joan L. Nodset, Rose Robart, Laura Rader, Bob Barner, Marcia Vaughan, Margot Zemach, David Martin, and Ellen Stoll Walsh. Volume 2 includes activities and lessons to accompany children's books by Jane Bayer, Gayle Corbett Shirley, Kevin Henkes, Scott Gustafson, Jeff Moss, Jack Prelutsky, Aliki, Seymour Simon, Lynn Reiser, Sid Fleischman, Kathleen Karr, Sharon Creech, Delia Ray, Margaret Read MacDonald, Bo Flood, Betty Fraser, Charles Keller, Pam Conrad, Elizabeth Levy, Avi, Roger Ressmeyer, John Christopher Fine, Robert D. Ballard, George Shannon, Judy Sierra, Andrew Santella, Jean Fritz, Martin Hallet, Jane Yolen, Brian Selznick, Elizabeth Winthrop, Gloria Whelan, Arlene Erlbach, Sylvia Whitman, Gary Bowen, Zlata Filipovic, Chris Van Allsburg, E.L. Konigsburg, Charlotte F. Otten, A. Mifflin Lowe, Susi Gregg Fowler, Bruce Coville, Karen Hesse, Audrey Wood, Mary Pope Osborne, Marvin Terban, Darleen Bailey Beard, Janet and Allan Ahlberg, Barbara Ware Holmes, Demi, Vicki Cobb, Alan Arkin, Eth Clifford, Marvin Miller, Sylvia Cassedy, Tara and Kathy Darling, James Gurney, Barbara Cohen, Anne Mazer, Gerald Hausman, Laura Numeroff, Bruce Lansky, Paul Fleischman, Margaret Mahy, Tor Seidler, Jessie Haas, Gail Carson Levine, Johanna Hurwitz, Toby Forward, Sylvia Waugh, Arnold Lobel, Jon Scieszka, Michael J. Rosen, Barbara Robinson, Betty Levin, Joy Cowley, Thomas J. Dygard, Barbara Park, Norton Juster, Ashley Bryan, Donald M. Silver, Ruth Heller, Naomi Shihab Nye, Virginia Grossman, Karla Kuskin, Barbara Juster Esbensen, Taro Gomi, Patricia Mullins, Jerry Spinelli, Natalie Babbitt, John Walker, Loretta Krupinski, Lois Lowry, Kathleen Leverich, Ilene Cooper, Janice Lee Smith, Martin W. Sandler, Veronica Lawlor, Lucille Recht Penner, Mary D. Lankford, Steve Tomecek, Jamie Gilson, Jacqueline Morley, James Klein, Tana Hoban, Beverly K. Duncan, Monalisa DeGross, Lawrence Yep, Carlos Cumpian, Russell Freedman, Jeanne Steig, Fred Gwynne, Linda Bourke, Artie Bennett, J. Patrick Lewis, Bobbye S. Goldstein, Eve Merriam, Phillis Gershator, Layne Longfellow, Mary Beth Miller, George Ancona, David F. Birchman, Judith Viorst, and Tiphaine Samoyault.

This book presents a practical model and specific unit- and lesson-planning ideas for enhancing students' reading comprehension in any 2-8 classroom. The authors provide innovative suggestions that help teachers construct a comprehension curriculum organized around literature, informational texts, or a basal reading program. Vivid case examples and vignettes bring to life ways to build the knowledge, strategies, and motivation that children need to engage with different types of texts and become proficient, enthusiastic readers. Graphic elements throughout the volume link instructional and assessment practices directly to the Common Core standards.

Using examples from both adults and children, the authors explain and describe the complex integrated network of strategies that takes place in the minds of proficient readers, strategies that struggling readers have to learn in order to construct their own reading processes. The examples and scenarios of teacher/ student interactions in this book provide a sense of how it looks and what is sounds like to teach strategic actions to struggling readers.--[book cover].

Steve Layne shows teachers practical ways to engage and inspire readers from kindergarten through high school, to develop readers who are not only motivated to read great books, but also love reading in its own right. --from publisher description.