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Teachers can improve students' reading comprehension, address writing weaknesses, and provide test-taking practice with multiple-choice assessments for grades 3-8. Fifteen skill sets cover focus and organization, style and composition, and conventions and mechanics.
Play is serious business. Whether it's reenacting a favorite book (comprehension and close reading), negotiating the rules for a game (speaking and listening), or collaborating over building blocks (college and career readiness and STEM), Kristi Mraz, Alison Porcelli, and Cheryl Tyler see every day how play helps students reach standards and goals in ways that in-their-seat instruction alone can't do. And not just during playtimes. "We believe there is play in work and work in play," they write. "It helps to have practical ways to carry that mindset into all aspects of the curriculum." In Purposeful Play, they share ways to: optimize and balance different types of play to deepen regular classroom learning teach into play to foster social-emotional skills and a growth mindset bring the impact of play into all your lessons across the day. "We believe that play is one type of environment where children can be rigorous in their learning," Kristi, Alison, and Cheryl write. So they provide a host of lessons, suggestions for classroom setups, helpful tools and charts, curriculum connections, teaching points, and teaching language to help you foster mature play that makes every moment in your classroom instructional. Play doesn't only happen when work is over. Children show us time and time again that play is the way they work. In Purposeful Play, you'll find research-driven methods for making play an engine for rigorous learning in your classroom.
Explores how purposeful writing instruction can be used in the high school classroom to help students build the writing skills needed to succeed in college and the business world.
In this practical guide, authors Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey offer a variety of strategies that KOCo12 teachers can use to craft effective, standards-based purpose statements, assignments, and tests across grade levels and content areas.
Do statewide assessments really do what they are supposed to do? Through interviews with over three hundred teachers and administrators, Hillocks examines whether state writing tests in Illinois, Kentucky, Oregon, New York, and Texas actually improve students' ability to express their thinking in writing. Ultimately, Hillocks argues that the majority of existing tests actually have a harmful effect on the way students are taught to write. In addition to providing analyses of assessments that do not encourage good writing, The Testing Trap contrasts them to those that do. Concluding with practical procedures for examining and evaluating writing assessments, this book is a provocative and essential read for administrators, teachers, policymakers, parents, and all who care about the education of our children.
Language Arts Workshop: Purposeful Reading and Writing Instruction presents a manageable way of organizing instruction, exploring a gradual release of responsibility through meaningful experiences in all areas of need for literacy development, including oral language, spelling, vocabulary, word study, fluency, and comprehension. Like an apprenticeship, novice readers and writers learn a craft under the guidance of a skilled and knowledgeable teacher. Through the language arts workshop, students read and write everyday, spending time working with their teacher, collaborating with peers, and working independently. Learn to model successful language arts teaching for your students Workshop format addresses the diverse learning needs of students, including English language learners, students with disabilities, and students who read at, above, or below grade level to support early interverntion or response to intervention programs. Predictable chapter organization clarifies the workshop approach and framework. Authentic examples from successful classrooms engage readers and model effective language arts instruction. A strong focus on assessment grounds the instruction, and a compendium of assessment tools prepares readers to drive their own classroom.
Adler-Kassner and O'Neill show writing faculty and administrators how to frame discussions of writing assessment so that they accurately represent research-based practices, and promote assessments that are valid, reliable, and discipline-appropriate. Public discourse about writing instruction is currently driven by ideas of what instructors and programs “need to do,” “should do,” or “are not doing,” and is based on poorly informed concepts of correctness and unfounded claims about a broad decline in educational quality. This discussion needs to be reframed, say Adler-Kassner and O'Neill, to help policymakers understand that the purpose of writing instruction is to help students develop critical thinking, reading, and writing strategies that will form the foundation for their future educations, professional careers, and civic engagement. Reframing Writing Assessment to Improve Teaching and Learning is grounded in the best of writing assessment research, and focuses on how to communicate it effectively to publics beyond academe.
This book offers demonstrable proof that when teachers engage in sustained inquiry, reflection, and communication about assessment, they can discover and define their own professionalism and refine their art of teaching.
When severe reading and spelling problems are not detected at an early stage in the school context, students may not be able to overcome them even in adulthood. Such problems in the worst cases may lead to developmental dyslexia or developmental dysorthographia, which are severe learning disabilities. Early intervention, though, can prevent these problems. Consequently, involving students in an active writing programme and providing them with ample opportunities to use spelling words in frequent writing can be the answer to such an inquiry. Meaningful writing can further facilitate spelling acquisition since in this manner, they can gain control over their work and learn to focus on the writing process and not exclusively on the final product. The book addresses these issues in order to help educators and clinicians identify such problems early, while it also acts as a practical guide to instruction and assessment.
