Offers teaching strategies and resources to instruct sixth- through twelfth-graders on how to prepare and write strong arguments and evaluate the arguments of others, providing step-by-step guidance on arguments of fact, judgment, and policy, and including advice to help students understand how judgments get made in the real world, how to develop and support criteria for an argument, and related topics.

Although the Common Core and C3 Framework highlight literacy and inquiry as central goals for social studies, they do not offer guidelines, assessments, or curriculum resources. This practical guide presents six research-tested historical investigations along with all corresponding teaching materials and tools that have improved the historical thinking and argumentative writing of academically diverse students. Each investigation integrates reading, analysis, planning, composing, and reflection into a writing process that results in an argumentative history essay. Primary sources have been modified to allow struggling readers access to the material. Web links to original unmodified primary sources are also provided, along with other sources to extend investigations. The authors include sample student essays from each investigation to illustrate the progress of two different learners and explain how to support students’ development. Each chapter includes these helpful sections: Historical Background, Literacy Practices Students Will Learn, How to Teach This Investigation, How Might Students Respond?, Student Writing and Teacher Feedback, Lesson Plans and Materials. Book Features: Integrates literacy and inquiry with core U.S. history topics. Emphasizes argumentative writing, a key requirement of the Common Core. Offers explicit guidance for instruction with classroom-ready materials. Provides primary sources for differentiated instruction. Explains a curriculum appropriate for students who struggle with reading, as well as more advanced readers. Models how to transition over time from more explicit instruction to teacher coaching and greater student independence. “The tools this book provides—from graphic organizers, to lesson plans, to the accompanying documents—demystify the writing process and offer a sequenced path toward attaining proficiency.” —From the Foreword by Sam Wineburg, co-author of Reading Like a Historian “Assuming literate practice to be at the core of history learning and historical practice, the authors provide actual units of history instruction that can be immediately applied to classroom teaching. These units make visible how a cognitive apprenticeship approach enhances history and historical literacy learning and ensure a supported transition to teaching history in accordance with Common Core State Standards.” —Elizabeth Moje, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor, School of Education, University of Michigan “The C3 Framework for Social Studies State Standards and the Common Core State Standards challenge students to investigate complex ideas, think critically, and apply knowledge in real world settings. This extraordinary book provides tried-and-true practical tools and step-by-step directions for social studies to meet these goals and prepare students for college, career, and civic life in the 21st century.” —Michelle M. Herczog, president, National Council for the Social Studies

Are you ready to plan your best lessons ever? With so many demands and so much content available for teachers, we need to put a higher value on an often-overlooked skill: planning learning experiences that will both engage and inspire our students, by design, over time. Planning Powerful Instruction is your go-to guide for transforming student outcomes through stellar instructional planning. Its seven-step framework—the EMPOWER model—gives you techniques proven to help students develop true insight and understanding. You’ll have at your fingertips: the real reasons why students engage—and what you must do to ensure they do a framework to help you create, plan, and teach the most effective units and lessons in any subject area more than 50 actionable strategies to incorporate right away suggestions for tailoring units for a wide range of learners downloadable, ready-to-go tools for planning and teaching Whether you are a classroom teacher, an instructional leader, or a pre-service teacher, Planning Powerful Instruction will forever change the way you think about how you teach and the unique value you bring to your learners.

Forming effective arguments is essential to students′ success in academics and in life. This book′s engaging lessons offer an innovative approach to teaching this critical and transferable skill.

Author Thomas McCann invites readers to rethink their approach to teaching writing by capitalizing on students’ instinctive desire to talk. Drawing on extensive classroom research, he shows teachers how to craft class discussions that build students’ skills of analysis, problem-solving, and argumentation as a means of improving student writing. McCann demonstrates how authentic discussions immerse learners in practices that become important when they write. Chapters feature portraits of teachers at work, including transcripts that reveal patterns of talk across a set of lessons. Interviews with the teachers and samples of student writing afford readers a deeper understanding of process. Students also report on how classroom discussions supported their effort to produce persuasive, argument-driven essays. Book Features: A focus on “the thinking behind the practice,” as opposed to a collection of lesson ideas. Connections to important elements from the Common Core State Standards, especially arguments writing. Examples of students at work with examples of the writing that emerges from their discussions. Portraits of skilled teachers as they promote inquiry and sequence and facilitate discussions. Appendices with problem-based scenarios, interview questions for students and teachers, samples of debatable cases in the news, and more. “In this important book, Tom McCann has given us not only the admonition to change, but the details about what effective change must be and what it looks like, evidence that it works effectively, and details about how to bring it to pass.” —From the Foreword by George Hillocks, Jr., Professor Emeritus, Department of English, University of Chicago. “For a professional book to have an impact on the field, it needs to address a perceived need. Writing arguments for Common Core performance assessments is a HUGE need right now that this book helps address.” —Carol Jago, associate director, California Reading and Literature Project, UCLA.

Narrative Writing is winner of the Richard Meade Award, given by the National Council of Teacher's of English George Hillocks, Jr. is a master teacher who has had great success working with kids in the Chicago Public Schools for over thirty years. This book will show you why. -Michael W. Smith, author of "Reading Don't Fix No Chevys" Using instructional methods grounded in concrete, practical activity, Hillocks clearly outlines how to help students take the raw material of their experiences and transform it into engaging, well-wrought prose. A masterful work by a master teacher. -Peter Smagorinsky George Hillocks, Jr. is one of the most respected names in English education, and his graduate students have become some of the most important names in the field. In Learning to Teach Narrative Writing to Adolescents, you'll discover the power of his methods as Hillocks takes you inside real classrooms to see how his groundbreaking theories of teaching and learning help adolescents improve as writers. Narrative Writing shows you how focusing your classroom activities on producing content, rather than form, boosts students' engagement, making them active learners-not passive recipients of knowledge. Hillocks demonstrates that breaking any learning task into small, doable pieces allows students to master these tasks and prepares them for more complex learning. In Learning to Teach Narrative Writing to Adolescents he shares the results of many years of teaching narrative writing in culturally and economically diverse Chicago schools. You'll see how "at-risk" kids' competencies increase significantly as they are taught, step-by-step, how to complete important writing tasks, such as: incorporating detail and figurative language creating dialogue expressing inner thoughts portraying people and action writing about scenes and settings combining it all and revising. Hillocks focuses on presenting students with clear instruction and clear objectives, focusing strongly on the procedural knowledge that accompanies academic success-the how to of completing school-based tasks. With his help you'll learn to provide all students with the scaffolding they need to be confident, successful, and fully engaged in their learning. The techniques demonstrated in Narrative Writing have been tested in diverse urban schools. Hillocks provides the data to demonstrate that his methods can give teachers of low-performing and impoverished students new hope for helping adolescentscultivate a meaningful and lasting improvement in their writing abilities. Get Narrative Writing to understand the wisdom of a master educator. Read it to discover an important approach to teaching writing that really works. Implement it for a satisfying way to teach that can make a difference with every student.