Teacher reference resource containing comprehension lessons for teachers of children in the early years of school.

Grades 3-6 "Active literacy is the means to deeper understanding and diverse, flexible thinking, and is the hallmark of our approach to teaching and learning. Reading, writing, talking, listening, and investigating are the cornerstones of active literacy. The Toolkit captures the language of thinking we use to explicitly teach kids to comprehend the wide variety of informational text they encounter. Through the Toolkit lessons, we demonstrate how the kids adopt and adapt our teaching language as their learning language." - Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis In The Comprehension Toolkit, Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis have created an intensive curricular resource designed to help students understand, respond to, and learn from nonfiction text. By actively engaging students in reading, talking, and writing about information and ideas, The Comprehension Toolkit provides a foundation for developing independent readers and learners across the curriculum and throughout the school year. Framed around the Gradual Release of Responsibility approach, The Comprehension Toolkit provides scaffolded comprehension strategy instruction. First through modeling and guided practice, then releasing responsibility to students through collaborative practice, independent practice, and application, the Toolkit's lessons teach students to use comprehension strategies flexibly in a variety of texts, topics, and subject areas. Professional Support A series of resources introduce, support, and extend the Toolkit's core lessons. The Teacher's Guide outlines the thinking behind the Toolkit and describes its components, instructional design, and assessment options. The Resources for The Comprehension Toolkit CD-ROM provides an array of print and video resources including a photographic overview of an Active Literacy Classroom, downloadable research articles, templates, assessment masters, and full-colour lesson text. Extend and Investigate helps you extend the Toolkit's comprehension strategies across the curriculum and throughout the year. It provides strategies for content area reading and research, textbook reading, test reading, and a variety of practical bibliographies. 6 Strategy Clusters The 26 strategy lessons in The Comprehension Toolkit are organized into six Strategy Cluster books. Informational Text A series of short, engaging, real-world informational texts provide an effective context for using and practising the Toolkit's comprehension strategies. The Source Book of Short Text provides two kinds of nonfiction text: Lesson Text, 24 articles from children's magazines; and Nonfiction Short Text, 43 short informational articles specially written for the Toolkit.

"We teach the reader, not just the reading. We want children to be lifelong learners who read actively and independently across the curriculum, who engage their minds and understand what they read. The Toolkit lessons and practices teach kids to use comprehension strategies to ''read to learn'' as they encounter information and ideas in a wide variety of nonfiction texts." -Stephanie Harvey & Anne Goudvis Learn how to teach nonfiction strategies to intermediate readers and how Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis help students listen to their inner conversation, keep track of their thinking, and monitor their understanding as they read. Through 2 foundational books-The Comprehension Toolkit Teacher''s Guide and Monitor Comprehension-and seven online video clips, Steph and Anne provide the lesson plans, teaching language, and tools you''ll need to teach students how to use nonfiction reading strategies flexibly across a variety of texts, topics, and subject areas. In the Teacher''s Guide, Steph and Anne explain the research and thinking behind The Comprehension Toolkit. They include an overview of the Toolkit''s instructional design as well as guidelines for integrating the Toolkit into your literacy curriculum. In addition to describing how to foster an active literacy classroom, the Teacher''s Guide shows how to choose texts and apply the strategies in science and social studies, and offers guidelines for assessing student work. When readers monitor their comprehension, they keep track of their thinking while reading. They listen to the voice in their head that speaks to them as the read. They notice when the text makes sense or when it doesn''t. Monitor Comprehension helps you teach readers how to "fix up" their comprehension by using a variety of strategies including stopping to refocus thinking, rereading, and reading on. Throughout readers learn to monitor and use strategies to maintain understanding and repair comprehension when it breaks down. The seven accompanying video clips include a video conversation with Dr. P. David Pearson and slideshows of an active literacy classroom, an assessment overview, and strategy instruction in science and social studies. (Video clips are free for 6 months upon registration. You must register within 6 months of purchase.) Learn more about these resources and the series at www.comprehensiontoolkit.com. This pack is part of firsthand''s Getting Started series. Bridging the gap between educational theory and practice, firsthand classroom materials model the carefully crafted techniques and language of master teachers in ways that help teachers refine their practice and reinvent their own teaching. The most comprehensive of these resources span more than a year of instruction. Firsthand''s Getting Started Packs were created for teachers in training and professional book study groups who want a compact, affordable way to study and tryout these transformative classroom materials. Each Getting Started Pack includes an overview book, a complete unit of study, online video clips provided free of charge for 6 months, and an accompanying study guide. Getting Started packs include: Launch a Primary Writing Workshop, Grades K-2; Launch an Intermediate Writing Workshop, Grades 3-5; Launch an Intermediate Reading Workshop, Grades 3-5; Introduce the Qualities of Writing, Grades 3-6; Monitor Comprehension with Primary Students, Grades K-2; Monitor Comprehension with Intermediate Students, Grades 3-6; Investigate the Number System, Grades K-3; Investigate Multiplication, Grades 3-5; Investigate Fractions, Grades 4-6.

Revised ed. of: Comprehension & collaboration.

The Teacher Pack for the Intermediate Comprehension Toolkit (second edition) provides all of the nonfiction reading strategies and resources you need for your upper elementary classroom -- at a great value. Includes: The Comprehension Toolkit - Second Edition The Comprehension Toolkit Trade Book Pack New: The Intermediate Trade Book Pack for Content Literacy Comprehension Intervention: Small Group Lessons for The Comprehension Toolkit Scaffolding The Comprehension Toolkit for English Language Learners Comprehension & Collaboration Revised Edition Connecting Comprehension & Technology Toolkit Texts: Grades 2¿3 Toolkit Texts: Grades 4¿5 Toolkit Texts: Grades 6¿7

"We have never seen teachers work harder than we do now. These tools inspire kids to work as hard as we are." -Kate Roberts and Maggie Beattie Roberts What's DIY Literacy? It's making your own visual teaching tools instead of buying them. It's using your teaching smarts to get the most from those tools. And it's helping kids think strategically so they can be DIY learners. "Teaching tools create an impact on students' learning," write Kate Roberts and Maggie Beattie Roberts. "They help students hold onto our teaching and become changed by the work in the classroom." Of course, you and your students need the right tools for the job, so first Kate and Maggie share four simple, visual tools that you can make. Then they show how to maximize your instructional know-how with suggestions for using the tools to: make your reading and writing strategies stick motivate students to reach for their next learning goal differentiate instruction simply and quickly. Kate and Maggie are like a friendly, handy neighbor. They offer experience-honed advice for using the four tools for assessment, small-group instruction, conferring, setting learning goals, and, most important, helping students learn to apply strategies and make progress without prompting from you. In other words, to do it themselves. "It is our greatest hope," write Kate and Maggie, "that the tools we offer here will help your students to work hard, to hold onto what they know, and to see themselves in the curriculum you teach." Try DIY Literacy and help your readers and writers take learning into their own hands.

Why has comprehension instruction become so complex? Sharon Taberski cuts through the pressurized, strategy-overloaded, fluency-crazed atmosphere surrounding reading instruction to lay out the reading and writing workshop practices that are most effective in developing readers in the primary grades. She shares the daily how-tos needed to sustain a literacy block that engages children in authentic reading and writing practices including dozens of effective practices that illustrate amazing ways to organize instructional and independent reading for kids including: letter and sound searches that improve students' word accuracy and fluency companion books bags that develop their confidence and comprehension strategy sheets that make children's thinking about text concrete a Putting Our Strategies to Work Board that enables students to reflect on and discuss the meta-cognitive strategies they're using Idea Books and Ta-da Publishing Books that help children get inside the reading and writing process and see how each feeds the other. Two Options for dynamic DVD-based staff development: for your workshop or PLC, the Lessons from the Ground Up DVD features 105-minutes of video clips of Sharon in the classroom, modeling effective ways to develop comprehension plus a 64-page facilitator's guide supports the DVD, lesson by lesson. It's All About Comprehension is a long-term staff development initiative with 3 DVDs (7 hours) of whole-class, small-group, and one-on-one instruction from Sharon.