We know children learn to read by reading. Is independent reading valuable enough to use precious classroom minutes on? Yes, writes Debbie Miller and Barbara Moss, but only if that time is purposeful.DEAR and SSR aren't enough. Research shows that independent reading must be accompanied by intentional instruction and conferring. Debbie and Barbara clear a path for you to take informed action that makes a big difference, with: -a rationale for independent reading that's worth finding the time for -research evidence on its effectiveness and instructional best practices -a framework with 10 teaching tactics for starting and sustaining success."When we set children loose day after day with no focus or support, it can lead to fake reading and disengagement," write Debbie and Barbara. "It's our job to equip children with the tools they need when we're not there." Read No More Independent Reading Without Support and find out how.

"The research is compelling: when teachers differentiate reading instruction, students learn more. But teachers are too often given the expectation of differentiation without the details on how to make it work. In No More Reading Instruction Without Differentiation, Debra Peterson and Lynn Bigelman offer an instructional framework that adapts instruction based on individual students needs and interests. Peterson unpacks the research that supports differentiated instruction. Then veteran school principal Bigelman shows how to implement differentiation using: Learning targets and performance tasks; student self-assessment; project-based learning; individual learning goals. Differentiation doesn't mean creating separate lesson plans for each student every day. Differentiation is responsive teaching that identifies what each student knows and can do and what can happen next to move that student forward in her learning. In this book, you'll find the tools and strategies to better meet the needs of the children in your classroom right now."--Publisher's description.

"Everyone loves summer-except reading teachers. Kids take a vacation from books and those with limited access to books lose ground to their peers. You may have thought there's nothing you can do about it, but there is. No More Summer-Reading Loss shows how to ensure that readers continue to grow year round. Building independence. Keeping kids on grade-level. Closing the achievement gap. These are just a few of the valuable outcomes that No More Summer-Reading Loss can support. Most importantly, it will help you pass on a love of reading that knows no season and gives readers confidence when they return in the fall."--Publisher's description.

Do you feel prepared to initiate and facilitate meaningful, productive dialogues about race in your classroom? Are you looking for practical strategies to engage with your students? Inspired by Frederick Douglass's abolitionist call to action, "it is not light that is needed, but fire" Matthew Kay has spent his career learning how to lead students through the most difficult race conversations. Kay not only makes the case that high school classrooms are one of the best places to have those conversations, but he also offers a method for getting them right, providing candid guidance on: How to recognize the difference between meaningful and inconsequential race conversations. How to build conversational "safe spaces," not merely declare them. How to infuse race conversations with urgency and purpose. How to thrive in the face of unexpected challenges. How administrators might equip teachers to thoughtfully engage in these conversations. With the right blend of reflection and humility, Kay asserts, teachers can make school one of the best venues for young people to discuss race.

Frustrated by ongoing difficult student behavior? You're not alone: classroom management issues are a leading cause of teacher burnout. But there is a solution. No More Taking Away Recess and Other Problematic Discipline Practices shows how to promote good behavior, address interruptions, and keep everyone moving forward. "Management and control are not the same," write teacher and school leader Gianna Cassetta and noted researcher Brook Sawyer. If trying harder to exert control is sapping your energy, watch as they show how to transition away from the roles of disciplinarian or goody dispenser and toward an integrated, professionally satisfying model for classroom management. You'll find everything you need to get going, including: the rationale for abandoning rewards and consequence tactics research on more developmentally appropriate-and efficient-management a plan that integrates instruction and management to decrease interruptions specific strategies for addressing misbehavior and refocusing on learning goals ways to analyze problematic behaviors and help students connect and stay motivated. Ease your frustration with classroom management and return dozens of hours lost each year to addressing problematic behaviors. Take a page from No More Taking Away Recess and Other Problematic Discipline Practices and turn your classroom into a community that helps students become their best selves-and helps you rediscover the joy of teaching. About the Not This, But That Series No More Taking Away Recess and Other Problematic Discipline Practices is part of the Not This, But That series, edited by Nell K. Duke and Ellin Oliver Keene. It helps teachers examine common, ineffective classroom practices and replace them with practices supported by research and professional wisdom. In each book a practicing educator and an education researcher identify an ineffective practice; summarize what the research suggests about why; and detail research-based, proven practices to replace it and improve student learning. Read a sample chapter from No More Taking Away Recess and Other Problematic Discipline Practices.

"Letter-a-week" may be a ubiquitous approach to teaching alphabet knowledge, but that doesn't mean it's an effective one. In No More Teaching a Letter a Week, early literacy researcher Dr. William Teale helps us understand that alphabet knowledge is more than letter recognition, and identifies research-based principles of effective alphabet instruction, which constitutes the foundation for phonics teaching and learning. Literacy coach Rebecca McKay shows us how to bring those principles to life through purposeful practices that invite children to create an identity through print. Children can and should do more than glue beans into the shape of a "B"; they need to learn how letters create words that carry meaning, so that they can, and do, use print to expand their understanding of the world and themselves.

Books Are Not Life, But Then What Is? demonstrates how much Marvin Mudrick loved life and celebrated the dignity of life in literature. “It’s helpful to be reminded now and then,” he writes, that “while novelists persist in their noisy betrayals of human dignity, living has a longer history than reading, and truth than fiction.” Mudrick insists on seeing authors and their characters as people and he describes and judges them as frankly as if they were living among us. In this collection, we meet heroes, monsters, and every shade of character in between: Chaucer, Pepys, Rochester, Boswell, Jane Austen (and Anne Elliot), Dickens (and Pecksniff), Pushkin, Tolstoy, Kafka, Edmund Wilson, and many other novelists, scholars, and critics. We get to know each of them, so vivid are Mudrick’s quotations and commentary. Essay after essay demonstrates that good criticism can amplify both life and literature.