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Top 10 Picture Books for the Secondary Classroom

Top 10 Picture Books for the Secondary Classroom
As a teacher of future English teachers, I am always trying to open my students’ eyes to the wonder and power of the picture book, both as an art form and as a terrific instructional tool for the secondary classroom. Being students of capital-L literature, my teacher-babies sometimes forget to consider these compact and powerful texts. It’s the best way I know to get numerous, diverse and COMPLETE texts into students’ minds. It’s hard enough to squeeze out the time in the overcrowded middle and high school English curriculum to read young adult and classic novels, but with picture books, you can read the entire work aloud, model the focus you want students to concentrate on, let them explore the craft, have the discussion, and even try it out in their own writing–all in one period! So here, in no particular order: my top ten. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. Nerdy friends, you are never too old for picture books–I feel like you know that!

Gatsby and Show Me App Introducing Markup a paperless grading app Login · Signup 'The Great Gatsby' 7: Gatsby & Daisy meet again by SCC English, The English Department of St... Share Like Topics Literature English The Great Gatsby 83 people liked this ShowMe Posted 2 years ago Viewed after searching for: © 2013 ShowMe. Five close reading strategies to support the Common Core I walked in to my first college class, Political Science 101, eager to learn. For my inaugural college assignment, my professor asked the class to read the first three chapters of the textbook for the next class period. That night, I returned to my dorm room, determined to learn everything I could in those three chapters. I pulled out my textbook and highlighter. Growing up, that is what I always saw the “older kids” using when they read a textbook. In my naïve 18-year-old mind, I believed that highlighters must have some magical power that transports the words on the page directly to your brain. However, when I opened my textbook it was unlike anything I had read in high school. I shrugged, pulled out my highlighter and started highlighting. I quickly realized that I had no real game plan for reading this complicated textbook. Flash forward to my first few years of teaching. Last fall, I attended an AVID workshop about critical reading strategies. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. · Ask questions.

Emerging America · The Common Core Can Boost History Education Last summer, a distressed teacher friend shared an all too common story. Throughout the school year, she had sparked students’ skills and passions with a cross-curricular exploration of slavery. It was heady, demanding, and bang-on target for both state content standards and her 4th graders’ interests in fairness, difference, and understanding where we come from. At year’s end, her principal congratulated her overall success in boosting academic skills. Yet he added, “I’m concerned about the time you spent on social studies. It distracts from the focus on literacy.” No longer. The release of the Common Core State Standards in 2010 requires that states and school districts reverse the slide. What are the Common Core State Standards? What these standards are not, is the project of any one person or agency. Nor is the Common Core a national curriculum. What the Common Core standards DO require is that ALL teachers take literacy seriously. Supporting Implementation of the Common Core

CliffsNotes Study Guides: The Hunger Games, Of Mice and Men, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Divine Comedy Inferno, Night, Gulliver's Travels, The Prince and the Pauper, Heart of Darkness, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, A Separate Peace, and more 1. Writers use narrative, informative, and opinion modes of writing across genres. « TWO WRITING TEACHERS A slide from my key note, “Mandates, Standards, and Evaluations: Can Teachers Still Change the World? (All Write Summer Institute, Warsaw, IN June 2012) Along with this slide, I said these words in the section of my key note called, “Using narrative, informative, and persuasion to tell your Story.” One of the things unsettling to me is the segregation of the text types. This weekend Sam and I had a conversation that reminded me of this. He thought and said, “Probably that they are a good animal and interesting.” “What makes you say that?” A little more thinking, and then, “Well, all the pictures show cool stuff about them. “He’s right, Mom. We pulled in the garage and the day went on. Stephanie brought SHARK-A-PHOBIA by Grace Norwich (Scholastic, 2011) to the couch. We all paused and looked at the cover. All three modes of writing — narrative, opinion, and informative — influence everything we write. This is a truth about writing. How about you? Like this: Like Loading...

Best Books for Tweens Best Practices For Writing For Online Readers I have less than 30 seconds to capture your attention with this post, so here goes: if you read some, most or all of the next 750 words or so, you will know how to write Web copy that is more useful to readers of your blog or Web site. As we reported yesterday visual content is continuing its steady rise in dominance over written content. But that doesn't mean we should give up on good writing: if anything, it means we need to think harder about how we write for online readers. Online Readers Are Different Seems pretty obvious, right? But the fact is, many of us still write the same way online as we do for books, magazine articles and other long-form and traditional print mediums. With offline readers, we can take our time and develop points with long blocks of text and narrative, and with fewer visual elements. In Plain English, Please Your writing - offline or online - is effective when readers take away your message. Best Practices Write compelling but clear headlines: Don't get cute.

Literature Circle Models After experimenting for many years, I discovered an approach that's easy, fun, and effective. I refer to it as Classroom Book Clubs because it's a more relaxed method of doing Literature Circles that doesn't involve roles. You can view a narrated slidecast to this model by scrolling down to the Classroom Book Clubs section. On this page you can also learn about different types of Literature Circles. I've had some success with all the models below, but all models haven't been successful with all groups of students. Read through the various descriptions and find something that feels right to you. Ways to Structure Literature Circles Classroom Book Clubs - My favorite method at the moment is a flexible approach to Literature Circles that does not require the use of extensive handouts and assignment booklets. Classroom Book Clubs I love this model because it's a very flexible and fun approach. Mini Literature Circles (Using Leveled Readers) Literature Circles with Roles

Argument, Persasive writing ReadWriteThink couldn't publish all of this great content without literacy experts to write and review for us. If you've got lessons plans, videos, activities, or other ideas you'd like to contribute, we'd love to hear from you. More Find the latest in professional publications, learn new techniques and strategies, and find out how you can connect with other literacy professionals. More Teacher Resources by Grade Your students can save their work with Student Interactives. More Home › Classroom Resources › Lesson Plans Lesson Plan Overview Featured Resources From Theory to Practice In this lesson plan, students analyze World War II posters, chosen from online collections, to explore how argument, persuasion and propaganda differ. back to top Argument, Persuasion, or Propaganda? Visual texts are the focus of this lesson, which combines more traditional document analysis questions with an exploration of World War II posters. Further Reading National Council of Teachers of English. 1975.

Reader's Workshop This website is designed and maintained by Karen A. McDavid © 2004. Ideas, content, activities, and documents for this website are copyrighted by Karen A. McDavid and should not be copied or downloaded without permission. All graphics seen throughout this website should not be removed, copied, or downloaded. You may download the banner below with a link back to this site. Graphics by 1. Nonfiction Narrative and the Yellow Test Draft is a series about the art and craft of writing. I went to see Carrie a week after her accident. Her shoulder had been broken, the bone shattered, and 24 stitches were needed to sew the cuts on her face. The accident occurred on a weeklong 325-mile bike ride. Suddenly her wheels lost traction on the wet, slippery surface, and she felt the bike slip out from under her as she flew off the seat. Milan Bozic They left their bikes in the rain and trudged a mile to the Paw Paw Tunnel, a more than 3,000-foot-long passageway built to bypass several horseshoe bends in the Potomac River. “That’s the plot of scene 2,” I told her. Carrie is a professor at a university. There’s been a lot of research published about the effectiveness of stories. I told Carrie about the exercise I assign my students: “The Yellow Test.” There are different approaches to writing in scenes. The trees were tall, but I was taller, standing above them on a steep mountain slope in northern California.

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