eBook downloads, eBook resources & eBook authors
Shows how to improve reading skills with customized reading groups. Avid and reluctant readers alike will respond to groups that are formed according to skills and special teaching strategies for grades 2-8.
An in-depth look at ability grouping in elementary school reading and language arts programs. Offering a variety of models, strategies, and classroom experiences, it provides practical suggestions and resources for educators interested in moving to or enhancing their use of flexible grouping for reading instruction. The authors describe programs that have proved successful in preventing reading problems, outline models that have been successfully implemented, and provide guidelines for linking assessment to instruction. Throughout, they report on the experiences of teachers and children involved in these programs. Elementary Teachers, Supervisors, and Administrators. A Longwood Professional Book.
Master flexible grouping and differentiation strategies to challenge every learner, every day. Grouping learners purposefully throughout the school day based on their needs and the curriculum remains the single best way to differentiate instruction. This award-winning guide will help teachers expertly use flexible grouping and differentiation strategies to respond to students’ diverse learning needs, abilities, and interests. Included are methods for creating groups based on assessment data, planning group lessons and tiered assignments, engaging learners at all levels, supporting personalized learning, grading collaborative work, and communicating with parents about the benefits of groupwork and productive struggle. Digital content contains all forms from the book and a PDF presentation. A free online PLC/Book Study Guide is available at freespirit.com/PLC.
Find out how to differentiate your middle school ELA instruction so that all students can become better readers, writers, and critical thinkers. Author Amber Chandler invites you into her classroom and shows how you can adjust your lessons to suit different learning needs while still meeting state standards and keeping your students accountable. She provides a wide variety of helpful tools and strategies, ranging from easy options that you can try out immediately to deeper-integration ideas that will reshape your classroom as a flexible, personalized learning environment. Topics include: Using choice boards and menus to teach vocabulary, reading, and presentation skills in fun and interactive ways; Grouping students strategically to maximize learning outcomes and encourage collaboration; Making vocabulary learning interesting and memorable with visual aids, tiered lists, and personalized word studies; Designing your own Project Based Learning lessons to unleash your students’ creativity; Assessing students’ progress without the use of one-size-fits-all testing; And more! Bonus: downloadable versions of some of the rubrics and handouts in this book are available on the Routledge website at http://www.routledge.com/9781138681040. Also, check out the book’s website, doyoudifferentiate.com, for additional articles and strategies.
Want to make your instruction more equitable and effective, more interesting, and more fun? It's time to try flexible grouping. Unlike traditional grouping, which typically puts like with like or combines students without regard to the best way to promote their individual growth, flexible grouping is both purposeful and fluid, regularly combining and recombining different students in different ways to pursue a wide range of academic and affective goals. In this comprehensive guide to flexible grouping, author Kristina J. Doubet shares a staged implementation approach that takes students from simple partner set-ups designed to build cooperative skills to complex structures ideal for interest and readiness-informed academic exploration. She covers the key factors to consider when forming groups and highlights how this approach to organizing learning can help you disrupt rigid tracking, deliver targeted instruction, connect to student interests, boost collaboration, and build community. Focused, practical, and written for teachers of all subjects and grade levels, The Flexibly Grouped Classroom provides * Dozens of strategies to expand your instructional repertoire, along with links to additional models and resources; * Guidance on setting the tone and expectations for group tasks, ideas for student role distribution, and tips for monitoring progress, noise, and time; * A planning template and sample grouping plans for an elementary and secondary classroom; and * Specific troubleshooting advice to help you navigate common complications. Choosing to make your classroom a flexibly grouped one means positioning every student to learn better—without feeling superior or inferior, without being overburdened or underchallenged—and to discover for themselves how much farther they can go together than they ever could alone.
We constantly hear cries from politicians for teachers to have high expectations. But what this means in practical terms is never spelled out. Simply deciding that as a teacher you will expect all your students to achieve more than other classes you have taught in the same school, is not going to translate automatically into enhanced achievement for students. Becoming a High Expectation Teacher is a book that every education student, training or practising teacher, should read. It details the beliefs and practices of high expectation teachers – teachers who have high expectations for all their students – and provides practical examples for teachers of how to change classrooms into ones in which all students are expected to learn at much higher levels than teachers may previously have thought possible. It shows how student achievement can be raised by providing both research evidence and practical examples. This book is based on the first ever intervention study in the teacher expectation area, designed to change teachers’ expectations through introducing them to the beliefs and practices of high expectation teachers. A holistic view of the classroom is emphasised whereby both the instructional and socio-emotional aspects of the classroom are considered if teachers are to increase student achievement. There is a focus on high expectation teachers, those who have high expectations for all students, and a close examination of what it is that these teachers do in their classrooms that mean that their students make very large learning gains each year. Becoming a High Expectation Teacher explores three key areas in which what high expectation teachers do differs substantially from what other teachers do: the way they group students for learning, the way they create a caring classroom community, and the way in which they use goalsetting to motivate students, to promote student autonomy and to promote mastery learning. Areas covered include:- Formation of teacher expectations Teacher personality and expectation Ability grouping and goal setting Enhancing class climate Sustaining high expectations for students Becoming a High Expectation Teacher is an essential read for any researcher, student, trainee or practicing teacher who cares passionately about the teacher-student relationship and about raising expectations and student achievement.
Intermediate grade readers don’t need to be guided as much as they need to be engaged—and authors Julie Wright and Barry Hoonan have solutions for doing just that using small groups. You’ll get practical tools, classroom examples, and actionable steps essential for starting, sustaining, and mastering the management of small groups. This book explains the five teacher moves that work together to support students’ reading independence through small group learning—kidwatching, pivoting, assessing, curating, and planning—and provides examples to guide you and your students toward success. This resource will empower you with tools to ensure that readers are doing the reading, thinking, and doing—not you.
All teachers know helping students become fluent in reading and writing involves more than measuring reading rates. Max and Gayle Brand have worked together with students and colleagues over many years to discover the most effective whole-class, small-group, and individual strategies and activities for building both reading and writing fluency. They link all this work to the most current research on fluency, taking readers into the daily routines of their classrooms. Readers will be reassured by the many suggestions for integrating fluency into existing reading and writing workshop routines.
An in-depth look at ability grouping in elementary school reading and language arts programs. Offering a variety of models, strategies, and classroom experiences, it provides practical suggestions and resources for educators interested in moving to or enhancing their use of flexible grouping for reading instruction. The authors describe programs that have proved successful in preventing reading problems, outline models that have been successfully implemented, and provide guidelines for linking assessment to instruction. Throughout, they report on the experiences of teachers and children involved in these programs. Elementary Teachers, Supervisors, and Administrators. A Longwood Professional Book.
