Talk about Writing: The Tutoring Strategies of Experienced Writing Center Tutors offers a book-length empirical study of the discourse between experienced tutors and student writers in satisfactory conferences. The study uses a research-driven, iteratively tested framework to help writing center directors, tutors, writing program administrators, rhetoric and composition researchers, first-year composition instructors, and others interested in talk about writing to systematically analyze tutors’ talk and to use that analysis to train new tutors. The book strives toward two main goals: to provide an analytical research and assessment tool—the coding scheme—that other researchers can use to understand writing center tutor talk and to provide a close, empirical analysis of experienced tutor talk that can facilitate tutor training. The study details tutors’ use of three categories of tutoring strategies—instruction, cognitive scaffolding, and motivational scaffolding—at macro- and microlevels and results in practical recommendations for improving tutor training.

This book introduces a variety of inclusive strategies for teaching language and literacy in kindergarten through 2nd grade. Readers are invited into classrooms where racially, culturally, and linguistically diverse children’s experiences, unique strengths, and expertise are supported and valued. Chapters focus on oral language, reading, and writing development and include diverse possibilities for culturally relevant and inclusive teaching. Featured teaching strategies foster academic success, cultural competence, and critical consciousness—leading students to read their worlds and question educational and societal inequities. Early childhood teachers will find this book invaluable as they consider effective ways to teach diverse children. The hands-on examples and strategies portrayed will help educators expand their thinking and repertoires regarding what is possible—and needed—in the language and literacy education curriculum. Unique in its focus on equitable, fully inclusive, and culturally relevant language and literacy teaching, this important book will help K–2 teachers (re)think and (re)conceptualize their own practices. “Offers us a great opportunity to explore pedagogical strategies that are diverse and inclusive.” —From the Foreword by Gloria Ladson-Billings, University of Wisconsin–Madison “Readers will discover a treasure of teacher and student collaborative experiences to engage diverse learners.” —Yetta and Ken Goodman, University of Arizona “The authors offer rich vignettes and pragmatic guidance for learning about, responding to, and respectfully building community among children. We readers are in their debt.” —Anne Haas Dyson, University of Illinois “A beautifully written book filled with powerful examples. . . . I heartily recommend it for all teachers lucky enough to work on a daily basis with our brilliant early elementary students.” —Ernest Morrell, Teachers College, Columbia University

He's a rescue, a mutt. Maybe there's a little golden retriever in him, although he's not exactly pretty. He's had a run-in with coyotes and he's missing an eye. But Mike is eleven-year-old Cara Donovan's dog, and they love each other absolutely. Usually her pet follows Cara everywhere, but on the day the family first smells smoke in the air, Mike becomes anxious. Pine Grove is in the path of a wildfire, and the family is ordered to evacuate. In the ensuing chaos, Mike runs off. And then the unthinkable happens; there is no time to search for Mike. They are forced to leave him behind. Shocked and devastated, Cara watches helplessly as the family drives through a nightmare, with burning debris falling from the sky and wild animals fleeing for their lives. Once in the city far from the burn zone, the Donovans are housed with a volunteer host family. Jewel, the hosts' daughter, is nice, but Cara can only think about what she may have lost. What will happen if nothing is left? But as she reflects on what "home" means to her, Cara knows only one thing. She is not going to lose Mike. She will do what it takes to find him, even if it means going back to Pine Grove on her own. With her signature style combining simplicity and lyricism, the author of Root Beer Candy and Other Miracles and Macy McMillan and the Rainbow Goddess tells an uplifting story of love and loss. And she shows how one girl’s stressful journey eventually leads her to an unexpected place, and a new definition of home.

This is a bank of ideas designed to help teachers to develop the writing of primary-school pupils. It is concerned mainly with the compositional aspects of writing, rather than spelling, handwriting and punctuation, and consists of five main sections, dealing with writing stories and poems, writing for information, writing from reading, writing from personal experience, and redrafting and proof-reading.

"The book's lessons are organized by topic and include oral storytelling, drawing, writing words, assessment, introducing booklets, and moving writers forward. Based on the authors' work in urban kindergarten and first-grade classes, the essence and structure of many of the lessons lend themselves to adaptation through fifth grade."--Jacket.

Janet Angelillo introduces us to an entirely new way of thinking about writing about reading. She shows us how to teach students to manage all the thinking and questioning that precedes their putting pen to paper. More than that, she offers us smarter ways to have students write about their reading that can last them a lifetime. She demonstrates how students' responses to reading can start in a notebook, in conversation, or in a read aloud lead to thinking guided by literary criticism reflect deeper text analysis and honest writing processes result in a variety of popular genres--book reviews, author profiles, commentaries, editorials, and the literary essay. She even includes tools for teaching-day-by-day units of study, teaching points, a sample minilesson, and lots of student examples-plus chapters on yearlong planning and assessment. Ensure that your students will be readers and writers long after they leave you. Get them enthused and empowered to use whatever they read-facts, statistics, the latest book--as fuel for writing in school and in their working lives. Read Angelillo.

Using Talk to Support Writing presents a new and innovative approach to the teaching of early writing. The authors discuss both theoretical and practical issues around using talk in the classroom to support children as they learn to write. Set within the context of national concern for achievement in the development of writing ability, it addresses the gap in understanding early teaching and focuses on the exploration of talk and writing interface.