Skill-building through potent instruction, day by day In these much-anticipated sequels to The Common Core Companion, Janiel Wagstaff and Leslie Blauman provide a collection of connected lessons and formative writing assessments that bring Monday-to-Friday clarity to the task of integrating reading and writing with ELA standards. In each volume, the 50+ lessons are divided into fi ve, week-long learning sequences addressing key literacygoals. A best-practice glossary, If/Then charts, unit-planning calendars, and other tools round out these essential references, both in book and online. Follow each sequence and week by week, you’ll build the instructional potency to help students achieve a year’s worth of growth as you integrate: Writing Narratives with Identifying Sensory Words in Text Research with Identifying Topic and Details Opinion Writing with Close Reading for Text Evidence Comparing and Contrasting with Publishing Using Digital Tools Informative Writing with Use of Text Features

Skill-building through potent instruction, day by day In these much-anticipated sequels to The Common Core Companion, Janiel Wagstaff and Leslie Blauman provide a collection of connected lessons and formative writing assessments that bring Monday-to-Friday clarity to the task of integrating reading and writing with ELA standards. In each volume, the 50+ lessons are divided into fi ve, week-long learning sequences addressing key literacygoals. A best-practice glossary, If/Then charts, unit-planning calendars, and other tools round out these essential references, both in book and online. Follow each sequence and week by week, you’ll build the instructional potency to help students achieve a year’s worth of growth as you integrate: Writing Narratives with Identifying Sensory Words in Text Research with Identifying Topic and Details Opinion Writing with Close Reading for Text Evidence Comparing and Contrasting with Publishing Using Digital Tools Informative Writing with Use of Text Features

30 Big Idea Lessons for Small Groups provides an amazing framework, with a bank of engagement tools, that gets students interacting with texts. Follow this unique 4-part process to develop students’ literal, inferential, evaluative, and analytical skills: Engage: Before Reading Students use a tactile tool like a topic card or a pyramid Discuss: During Reading Students read and mark up a short text Deep-See Think: After Reading Students re-read and revise their interpretations together Connect: After Reading Students begin to transfer their understandings to other texts

Ready-to-go units to ramp up close reading Want a yearlong close reading curriculum to insert in your literacy block? You’ve got it. Nancy Boyles’ Lessons & Units for Closer Reading features 32 lessons, based on readily available complex picture books and organized by eight learning pathways for approaching literature and information. Get started right away, with the help of: Short nonfiction articles to kick off each unit Assessment tasks, rubrics, planning templates, and more Links to 20+ instructional video segments Page-by-page text-dependent questions for every book With Closer Reading, Nancy expertly delivered answers to the why and how of close reading. Now, with this phenomenal sequel, you’re treated to her playbook.

Step back so readers can step forward When it comes to teaching reading, Gravity Goldberg declares there is a structure, one that works with your current curriculum, to help readers take charge. The way forward Gravity says lies in admiring, studying, and really getting to know your students. Easily replicable in any setting, any time, her 4 Ms framework ultimately lightens your load because it allows students to monitor and direct their reading lives. Miner: Uncovering Students’ Reading Processes (Focus: Assessment) Mirror: Giving Feedback That Reinforces a Growth Mindset (Focus: Feedback) Model: Showing Readers What We Do (Focus: Demonstration) Mentor: Guiding Students to Try New Ways of Reading (Focus: Guided Practice and Coaching)

One in a million. Yes, that’s how rare it is to have so many write-about-reading strategies so beautifully put to use. Each year Leslie Blauman guides her students to become highly skilled at supporting their thinking about texts, and in Evidence-Based Writing: Fiction, she shares her win-win process. Leslie combed the ELA standards and all her favorite books and built a lesson structure you can use in two ways: with an entire text or with just the excerpts she’s included in the book. Addressing Evidence, Character, Theme, Point of View, Visuals, Words and Structure, each section includes: Lessons you can use as teacher demonstrations or for guided practice, with Best the Test tips on how to authentically teach the skills that show up on exams with the texts you teach. Prompt Pages serve as handy references, giving students the key questions to ask themselves as they read any text and consider how an author’s meaning and structure combine. Excerpts-to-Write About Pages feature carefully selected passages from novels, short stories, and picture books you already know and love and questions that require students to discover a text’s literal and deeper meanings. Write-About-Reading Templates scaffold students to think about a text efficiently by focusing on its critical literary elements or text structure demands and help them rehearse for more extensive responses. Writing Tasks invite students to transform their notes into a more developed paragraph or essay with sufficiently challenging tasks geared for grades 6-8. And best of all, your students gain a confidence in responding to complex texts and ideas that will serve them well in school, on tests, and in any situation when they are asked: What are you basing that on? Show me how you know.