A cumulative tale about a small dog named Gracie whose quiet life is disrupted by some noisy painters.

Gracie Rose is out of her yard, and no one in town can catch her. How can a quiet little dog cause such a noisy uproar?

In their first edition of Mentor Texts, authors Lynne Dorfman and Rose Cappelli helped teachers across the country make the most of high-quality children's literature in their writing instruction. Mentor Texts: Teaching Writing Through Children's Literature, K-6, 2nd Edition the authors continue to show teachers how to help students become confident, accomplished writers by using literature as their foundation. The second edition includes brand-new Your Turn Lessons, built around the gradual release of responsibility model, offering suggestions for demonstrations and shared or guided writing. Reflection is emphasized as a necessary component to understanding why mentor authors chose certain strategies, literary devices, sentence structures, and words. Dorfman and Cappelli offer new children's book titles in each chapter and in a carefully curated and annotated Treasure Chest. At the end of each chapter a Think About It'sTalk About It'sWrite About It section invites reflection and conversation with colleagues.The book is organized around the characteristics of good writing'sfocus, content, organization, style, and conventions. The authors write in a friendly and conversational style, employing numerous anecdotes to help teachers visualize the process, and offer strategies that can be immediately implemented in the classroom. This practical resource demonstrates the power of learning to read like writers.

Littlest Learners connects the most recent research on emergent literacy, the skills necessary to become a reader and concrete activities that parents and caregivers can do to maximize their child’s reading readiness. The book is divided into 5 activities: 1) talking with young children 2) reading with young children 3) playing with young children 4) exploring the world with young children 5) technology tips for young children All while keeping the development of emergent literacy skills in mind. Parent, teachers, librarians and caregivers of young children, ages 0 to 5 will find something useful for engaging with their child. The book contains detailed lists of board books, nursery rhymes, finger plays, play activities, field trips, web-links and much more!

Is there too much emphasis on guided reading in primary classrooms? It's a question that many educators, like kindergarten teacher and literacy coach Cathy Mere, are starting to ask. Guided reading provides opportunities to teach students the strategies they need to learn how to read increasingly challenging texts, but Cathy found that she needed to find other ways to help students gain independence. While maintaining guided reading as an important piece of their reading program, teachers need to offer students opportunities during the day to develop as readers, to learn to choose books, to find favorite genres and authors, and to talk about their reading. In More Than Guided Reading, Cathy shares her journey as she moved from focusing on guided reading as the center of her reading program to placing children at the heart of literacy learning--not only providing more time for students to discover their reading lives, but also shaping instruction to meet the needs of the diverse learners in her classroom. By changing the structure of the day, Cathy found she was better able to adjust the support she was providing students, allowing time for whole-class focus lessons, conferences, and opportunities to share ideas, as well as reading from self-selected texts using the strategies, skills, and understandings acquired in reader's workshop. The focus lesson is the centerpiece of the workshop. It is often tied to a read-aloud and connected to learning from the previous day, helping to build skills, extend thinking, and develop independence over time. This thoroughly practical text offers numerous sample lessons, questions for conferences, and ideas for revamping guided reading groups. It will help teachers tweak the mix of instructional components in their reading workshops, and provoke school-wide conversations about the place of guided reading in a complete literacy curriculum.

Strategies and activities to develop an effective reading workshop program.

Empower your students to skillfully analyze and respond in writing to any comprehension question! Helping students comprehend what they read is a challenging goal, but even more daunting is teaching students to answer comprehension questions in writing. Based on the author′s interactions with her students, this innovative text presents a five-step method that has proven not only to help students improve their literacy skills for standardized tests but also, and more important, to help them respond to what they read in your classroom and beyond. This resource presents a process that requires only two 30-minute sessions per week and can be used across content areas and grade levels. Using the built-in scaffolding, students quickly learn how to dismantle even the most challenging comprehension questions and respond to them in clear, sophisticated paragraphs. Numerous rubrics are included, empowering students to: Analyze and respond effectively in writing to comprehension questions Develop and enhance critical vocabulary skills Learn to assess their own work Recognize what constitutes powerful writing Enhance your students′ ability and confidence to skillfully analyze and respond in writing to any comprehension question!