ABCs of Reading
Professional Book Recommendations
Choice Words (Audiobook)
by Peter Johnston
In productive classrooms, teachers don't just teach children skills: they build emotionally and relationally healthy learning communities. Teachers create intellectual environments that produce not only technically competent students, but also caring, secure, actively literate human beings.
Choice Words shows how teachers accomplish this using their most powerful teaching tool: language. Throughout, Peter Johnston provides examples of apparently ordinary words, phrases, and uses of language that are pivotal in the orchestration of the classroom. Grounded in a study by accomplished literacy teachers, the book demonstrates how the things we say (and don't say) have surprising consequences for what children learn and for who they become as literate people. Through language, children learn how to become strategic thinkers, not merely learning the literacy strategies. In addition, Johnston examines the complex learning that teachers produce in classrooms that is hard to name and thus is not recognized by tests, by policy-makers, by the general public, and often by teachers themselves, yet is vitally important.
This book will be enlightening for any teacher who wishes to be more conscious of the many ways their language helps children acquire literacy skills and view the world, their peers, and themselves in new ways.
Action Research in Education
by Ernie Stringer
Action research, applied systematically to the issue of poor academic performance, provides a high likelihood of improving student outcomes. The action research processes described in this book are honed by many years of successful application, and provide teachers, educational leaders, families and community members with a set of tools for engaging with significant problems in classrooms and schools. This book is designed to provide the reader with an understanding of the nature of action research and the procedures and applications of action research. In addition, it provides practical resources that add to the fundamentals of knowledge available to action researchers. The text is detailed, providing specific guidance for many of the skills that may be required for the different contexts and problems to which action research can be applied. Conceptual frameworks provide a "compass" or "roadmap" that will enable practitioners to keep track of action research processes applied to their work.
Inspiring Reading Success:
Interest and Motivation in an Age of High-Stakes Testing
edited by Rosalie Fink and S. Jay Samuels
Although recent U.S. legislation has had a profound impact on reading instruction and student achievement, some students continue to fall behind. This provocative text addresses this gap with a new perspective on reading instruction that goes beyond the realms of teacher content knowledge and methodology. You’ll learn how motivation and interest can enhance reading instruction for all students—and you’ll get strategies to increase reading success.
Professional Book Resources
Looking for professional books for your own interests or professional development? Check out these sites for information on the latest in research and implemenation in the realm of literacy and content area instruction.
Corwin Press
http://www.corwinpress.com/
Heinemann
http://www.heinemann.com/
International Reading Association Publications
http://www.reading.org/publications/index.html
Scholastic Professional
http://teacher.scholastic.com/products/
Stenhouse Books and Videos
http://www.stenhouse.com/
Table of Contents
About the Literacy Newsletter
FOR-PD's Literacy newsletter deals specifically with literacy and learning for K-12 teachers of Florida's public schools. As you read and review our newsletter you will find information on local, state, and federal literacy news, upcoming conferences, celebrations, sources of funding, resources on the World Wide Web, and resources you can use with your students. The participant section answers pertinent questions participants have about the course and provides helpful tips for successful completion. We hope that this newsletter will provide educators with useful information to support their literacy development and the work they do with Florida students.
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Last Updated:
January 28, 2008
