Teacher Professional Books & Resources
- Visible Learning for Literacy: Implementing the Practices that Work Best to Accelerate Student Learning (Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey, and John Hattie, 2016). ISBN: 9781506332352 Renowned literacy experts Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey work with John Hattie to apply his 15 years of research, identifying instructional routines that have the biggest impact on student learning, to literacy practices. These practices are "visible" because their purpose is clear, they are implemented at the right moment in a student's learning, and their effect is tangible. Through dozens of classroom scenarios, learn how to use the right approach at the right time for surface, deep, and transfer learning and which routines are most effective at each phase of learning.
- Disrupting Thinking: Why How We Read Matters (Kylene Beers and Robert E. Probst, 2017) ISBN: 9781338132908 In their hit books Notice and Note and Reading Nonfiction, Kylene Beers and Bob Probst showed teachers how to help students become close readers. Now, in Disrupting Thinking they take teachers a step further and discuss an on-going problem: lack of engagement with reading. They explain that all too often, no matter the strategy shared with students, too many students remain disengaged and reluctant readers. The problem, they suggest, is that we have misrepresented to students why we read and how we ought to approach any text - fiction or nonfiction. Hands-on-strategies make it applicable right away for the classroom teacher, and turn-and-talk discussion points make it a guidebook for school-wide conversations.
- The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child (Donalyn Miller, 2009) ISBN13: 9780470372272 Known for her popular blog, "The Book Whisperer," Donalyn Miller is a dedicated teacher who says she has yet to meet a child she couldn't turn into a reader. Her approach, however, is not conventional. Rich with classroom examples and practical advice and stitched together with the thread of Miller's passionate voice, this book will help teachers support students of all levels on their path to reading success and points a way out of the nation's literacy crisis. The book also includes an invaluable list of books that students most enjoy reading.
- Reading in the Wild (Donalyn Miller and Susan Kelley, 2013) ISBN13: 9780470900307 Teaching students to become lifelong readers A companion to the bestselling The Book Whisperer, Reading in the Wildexplores whether or not we are truly instilling lifelong reading habits in our students and provides practical strategies for teaching "wild" reading. Packed with ideas for helping students choose their own reading materials, respond to text, and build capacity for lifelong reading.
- Literacy Work Stations: Making Centers Work by Debbie Diller. (ISBN 1 57110 353 8). This book gives you detailed instructions on how to set up work stations that promote reading growth—not just busy work! This book provides excellent help to solve the problem of what to do with students when the teacher is working with a small group or trying to take a running record.
- Mosaic of Thought: Teaching Comprehension in a Reader’s Workshop by Ellin Keene and Susan Zimmerman. (ISBN 0 435 07237 4). This book is an excellent starting point for any teacher who wants to see his/her student’s comprehension skills become stronger. Connections are made to self, world, and other texts as a basis for the beginning reader to begin making meaningful connections to help understand what he is reading. Developing author schema charts and learning how to pick out what is important in a non-fiction article are also thoroughly covered. This book is a quick read with many helpful insights.
- Reading with Meaning: Teaching Comprehension in the Primary Grades by Debbie Miller. (ISBN 1 571 10307 4). This book takes you step by step through the year as you learn how to teach comprehension skills more effectively. This book begins in September showing how to set up a climate for thinking and trust between student and teacher. Topics covered are building schema, visualization, inferring, asking and answering questions, determining importance in nonfiction, and synthesizing information.
- Strategies That Work by Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis. (ISBN 1 57110 310 4). This book gives lessons and ideas which support the growth of comprehension while reading. This book is more for teachers of grades 3 – 8. This is an excellent resource.
