The Power of Playful Learning
Part of the Maupin House series
Go green in your classroom! This collection of playful activities will support and complement your classroom curriculum, and the games and activities can be made almost entirely from common household recyclables. Each activity includes simple instructions for creating the game or toy and a list of educational and developmental benefits. Activities are organized into five chapters based on skills being applied, and skills in number sense, objects in motion, and speaking and language are developed along the way: Estimating, measurement, and graphing; Planning and development; Putting things together; Sequencing, making connections, and spatial relationships; and Developing a greater understanding of objects in motion.
Linking K-2 Literacy and the Common Core
Mini-Lessons that Work!
by Connie Campbell Dierking
Part of the Maupin House series
The skills and strategies students practice to become proficient writers also nudge them closer to becoming proficient readers, so how can K-2 teachers connect reading and writing instruction in meaningful ways that allow students to go deeper in their thinking? This revised second edition provides tips, tools, and mini-lessons for integrating reading, writing, and speaking and listening. Each operational, print awareness, craft, and foundational writing mini-lesson identifies the connecting point to reading and speaking and listening with Target Skills® that can and should be revisited and reinforced during your reading block-and any content area. By design, these books are not printable from a reading device. To request a PDF of the reproducible pages, please contact customer service at 1-888-262-6135.
Living Literacy at Home
A Parent's Guide
by Margaret Mary Policastro
Part of the Maupin House series
Reading to children at home is a joyful and celebratory time for parents and children alike. Both relish in the story and the time spent together. Early exposure to texts provides other benefits as well because it prepares children for school and builds a love of reading. Living Literacy at Home provides tips and strategies to help parents build those connections. Included is a snapshot of what literacy looks like in today's classroom and support on how to make that home-to-school connection, how to build a home library and develop a reading routine, and how to make every day a literacy-rich day. Easy-to-use forms and a glossary of literacy terms round out this resource. Although the book is intended for parents of children in kindergarten through grade 8, the routines and suggestions can be easily adapted for any grade level.
Take Five! for Science
150 Prompts that Build Writing and Critical-Thinking Skills
Part of the Maupin House series
Take Five! for Science transforms those first five minutes of class into engaging writing opportunities. Students will brainstorm their way through 75 topics within three main science divisions: earth, life, and physical science. All prompts are aligned with NGSS and ELA CCSS as students debate, compare, investigate, question, and design in response to 150 prompts. Each topic is divided into a Teacher Page and a Student Page and provides the following: • Brief background information on each topic • Quick activities to develop Science and Engineering Practices • NGSS and ELA CCSS correlations • Digital and print resources to supplement science instruction • A supply list for each prompt and practice • Learning Setting (Individual, Pair, Collaborative) • Two prompts: Explore (K-2) and Dig Deeper (3-5) • Rubrics to guide assessment. Whether your students are working to save endangered ecosystems, investigating distant constellations, creating unusual animals, or constructing a design solution, these diverse and creative prompts will have students looking forward to each day when they're asked to "Take Five!" for Science. Begin every day of the school year with a burst of writing in the science discipline with this comprehensive and fun resource. Ready? Set? Take Five!
The Practical Guide to RTI: Six Steps to School-Wide Success
Six Steps to School-wide Success
Part of the Maupin House series
The Practical Guide to RTI: Six Steps to School-wide Success shows K-6 school leaders how to start, customize, and sustain Response to Intervention (RTI) in a common sense and effective way. With a focus on Tier 2 and Tier 3, veteran educators Rebecca Johnson and Vicki Weatherman guide principals and teachers through a three-tiered RTI implementation process for K-6 schools. Johnson and Weatherman's voices are authentic. They demystify the RTI process by drawing from their own experience with establishing and maintaining a high-quality RTI program in Las Vegas, Nevada, one of the nation's largest school districts. The Practical Guide to RTI provides clear, step-by-step directions with case studies, a glossary, and valuable lists of additional resources. An exclusive link helps you download customizable charts, forms, and templates. Help your school embed RTI as a school-wide culture that supports each student's academic journey with The Practical Guide to RTI.
Formative Assessment in the New Balanced Literacy Classroom
by Margaret Mary Policastro
Part of the Maupin House series
Now there's a way to blend balanced literacy and formative assessment. This book infuses research-based best practices of formative assessment through the lens of Common Core, with assessment support in these areas: read-alouds, guiding language into reading, language and literacy centers, and independent reading and writing. It also includes the "how" for novice and veteran K-8 teachers, administrators, and school literacy teams. Resources are included to help educators collect information and provide feedback to students.
Write This Way
How Modeling Transforms the Writing Classroom
Part of the Maupin House series
Modeling is one of the most effective of all teaching strategies and yet many teachers overlook this powerful tool in writing instruction. When teachers think aloud and then craft a piece of writing in front of their students, they give student writers a peek into what is possible in their own writing. In this book, Kelly Boswell shows you how to transform student writers by infusing short bursts of purposeful teacher modeling. As students watch an adult writer think, talk, and write, they can develop the skills needed in order to create writing that is both polished and purposeful. Tony Stead, educator, internationally known literacy specialist and author, says, "Finally! Not just another book about how to teach writing, but one that targets the power of modeled writing. What a delight it is to read this professional resource that highlights the importance of this strategy as the cornerstone to successful teaching and learning of the writing process."
A Bookbag of the Bag Ladies' Best
Resources, Ideas, and Hands-on Activities for the K-5 Classroom
Part of the Maupin House series
Are you a creative teacher or notice that there's more to teaching than the rigor of skills and core instruction? Have you wondered what the missing piece is that would allow students to be a member of a team, apply standards in a creative way, and learn skills hands-on? Start here with A Bookbag of the Bag Ladies Best and add hands-on pizazz to your teaching. Encourage interactive learning and motivate your K-5 students with projects that use everyday recycled items like file folders, CDs, and hair ties. This revised edition of A Bookbag of the Bag Ladies Best gives you step-by-step directions, drawings, blackline masters, and photographs for numerous classroom projects. It has everything you need to build thematic units geared toward your own curriculum. Best of all, you can be sure that these activities work. The Bag Ladies have tested each and every one in their very own classrooms.
Engage Striving Students in the Common Core Classroom
Part of the Maupin House series
Make reading intervention engaging and effective for striving adolescent students. Thirty-five activities focus on phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension and are aligned with the College and Career Readiness Anchor Standards from the Common Core State Standards addressing literature and informational text, foundational reading skills, vocabulary, and speaking and listening. Step-by-step directions, materials lists, Common Core standards, variations for differentiated instruction, and reproducibles are included for each activity, and alternative assessment ideas, a reading interest survey, student reading suggestions by genre, and a cross-reference guide to the standards and activities complete this well-rounded resource.
Tiered Fluency Instruction
Supporting Diverse Learners in Grades 2-5
Part of the Maupin House series
Fluency is an important part of comprehension, but how can teachers make sure they're providing the support that all readers need? Tiered Fluency Instruction: Supporting Learners in Grades 2-5 will help teachers meet this challenge. This resource will provide fluency support for all students, including disfluent readers. Chapters are included on RTI Tiers, assessment and ways to integrate technology.
Differentiating for Success
How to Build Literacy Instruction for All Students
Part of the Maupin House series
Creating differentiated instruction is an essential yet time-consuming component of effective teaching. Since students learn at different paces and in different ways, some students may be able to apply a targeted comprehension skill in cognitively complex ways immediately after being taught the skill while other students may need additional scaffolding in order to grasp it. All students, regardless of their skill level, benefit from activities that are at their just right level. This means activities are not too difficult or too easy. In this book, Nancy Witherell and Mary McMackin share easy-to-follow lesson plans that address key reading skills for students in grades 3 to 5. A set of three, tiered, differentiated follow-up activities accompanies each lesson. Fiction and nonfiction mentor text suggestions are included.
Examining the Evidence
Seven Strategies for Teaching with Primary Sources
Part of the Maupin House series
Educators are being challenged as never before to invite reality into the classroom and allow students to explore it. This book will help you meet the challenge. Primary sources are the very documents that history is made of, the images that science is based on, the raw material of our lives. They are also excellent tools to teach the critical thinking skills required by the Common Core State Standards. This book reveals in detail the strategies you can use to make primary sources come alive for your students and to enhance visual literacy, using fascinating photographs and powerful primary source texts.
Writing Strategies for the Common Core
Integrating Reading Comprehension into the Writing Process, Grades 3-5
Part of the Maupin House series
Elementary-school students need to learn to write explanatory/informational, argument, and narrative text types and respond to literature, both for standardized tests and, more importantly, real-world writing. With a balanced literacy approach, Wolfe provides core instruction, teaching strategies, and mini-lessons on these text types, each of which can be delivered across content areas or as a complete unit of instruction. Mini-lessons are provided for grades 3-5 and include materials lists, overviews, planning tips, procedures (including modeling, guided practice, and independent practice opportunities), reading connections, formative assessments, and reproducible graphic organizers for scaffolding. Prerequisite skill overviews and rubrics-both analytic for formative assessments and holistic for summative assessments-are also provided for each unit to simplify your teaching and ensure student success.
Teaching Text Features to Support Comprehension
Part of the Maupin House series
When K-5 students understand how to read text features like diagrams, bullets, insets, and tables, they are reading the whole page-essential for deep comprehension of nonfiction and fiction text. In this revised edition of Reading the Whole Page: Teaching and Assessing Text Features to Meet K-5 Common Core Standards, seasoned educators Michelle Kelley and Nicki Clausen-Grace show you how to explicitly teach K-5 students to read text features, use them to navigate text, and include them in their own writing. The classroom-proven mini-lessons, activities, and assessment tools in Teaching Text Features to Support Comprehension help you: teach relevant Common Core State Standards and grade-level expectations; diagnose, monitor, and meet student needs with one of two level-appropriate assessments; evaluate knowledge with a unique picture book that can be downloaded that illustrates all the text features; and monitor and guide differentiated instruction with a convenient class profile. Sixty mini-lessons for teaching print, graphic, and organizational features provide ample choices for meeting the standards while adapting to students' needs. Flexible lessons, which follow the gradual release of responsibility model and increase in difficulty, can be used within the typical 90-minute reading block, during content-area instruction, in small groups, and as part of independent practice opportunities like literacy centers. Each lesson offers concept review, suggestions for differentiation, assessment options, and technology connections, requiring students to find, explore, manipulate, and create text features in their own writing. Even more activities-from text feature walks to scavenger hunts-help students integrate text feature knowledge as they read. The downloadable materials provided online include important resources and convenient lesson supports, such as interactive thinksheets that can be filled out directly on the computer, visual examples of each text feature, rubrics, the assessment picture book, and readers' theatre scripts.
The Guide to Grammar
A Student Handbook for Strong Writing
Part of the Maupin House series
Now there's a grammar handbook for students in grades 5 and up to easily unlock the grammar rules. It's written in friendly language and with humor, so students will be sure to visit this handbook over and over again to brush up on general grammar rules and tips. This grammar handbook takes you step-by-step through the writing conventions, including parts of speech, tenses, modifiers, punctuation, parallelism, and much more. The Guide to Grammar is perfect for students and teachers and aligns with the new Common Core State Standards. Twenty-seven practice worksheets are included. By design, these books are not printable from a reading device. To request a PDF of the reproducible pages, please contact customer service at 1-888-262-6135.
Two Books Are Better Than One!
Reading and Writing (and Talking and Drawing) Across Texts in K-2
Part of the Maupin House series
Today's early literacy programs are more demanding than ever. No longer is it sufficient to teach letters, letter sounds, sight words, and simple texts in kindergarten through second grade. Children are expected to read and comprehend texts in a variety of genres with increasing complexity. Then they must integrate the ideas and concepts from those texts into their own writing. Two Books are Better Than One: Reading and Writing (and Talking and Drawing) Across Texts in K-2 helps teachers meet those demands. Each chapter contains an anchor lesson focused on a different way of connecting texts, including: by theme, characters, perspective, structure, or genre. The lessons feature research-based and common core aligned strategies: interactive read-alouds; shared reading and writing; scaffolded small group reading; accountable talk; close reading; and opinion, narrative, and explanatory writing. Each anchor lesson features two high-quality children's books, and each chapter is rounded out with a list of other recommended book pairs to support you in creating your own lessons.
Write This Way from the Start
The First 15 Days of Writer's Workshop
Part of the Maupin House series
As teachers, the beginning of each school year presents us with fresh starts and opportunities. How will we build community and create a culture that values thinking, learning, and risk-taking? How can we create a safe environment where all learners feel welcome and valued? As writing teachers, it's of utmost importance that we launch our students into the world of writing in a way that engages them and helps to build their confidence. In this book, Kelly Boswell shares a variety of ways to kick-start the school year and invite students to engage in meaningful, purposeful and joyful writing experiences.
Interacting with Informational Text for Close and Critical Reading
Part of the Maupin House series
Comprehending complex informational text can be difficult for students. Use this book to help students simplify the process. Lessons will engage students and guide them to read a text critically in order to build comprehension. Lessons are also based on the Common Core State Standards and help move students purposefully through increasingly complex text. Strategies, including the Guided Highlighted Reading Framework, are provided for meaningful discussions on a variety of text structures.
This Is a Test
A Handbook for Writing Good Tests
Part of the Maupin House series
When you're writing a test, you really don't want to make any mistakes. And yet, teachers, educational test writers, and even those who specialize in assessment make them all the time. In this book, veteran testing professional Jan Gleiter breaks down the most common problems test-writers face-and tells you how to solve those problems as you craft tests. Walter MacGinitie, author of the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Tests, praises the book, saying that it "has the potential to bring about a genuine improvement in testing. It gives sound general advice and sensible specific guidance, using many clear examples to show how test questions and testing practices can be improved. The writing is fresh and direct, making the principles easy to understand and follow".
Inquire, Investigate, Integrate!
Making Connections to the K-2 Science Standards and the Common Core
Part of the Maupin House series
Inquire, investigate, integrate ... and inspire! In this book, Kaye Hagler presents thematic units that touch on core content in science with a common thread of literacy throughout. The integrated units not only engage students in content such as landforms, forces and motion, weather, life cycles, and food chains, but they also include reading and writing activities that engage students and connect content to literacy. Options for differentiation allow for all students to access important concepts across the content areas. Correlations to the NEXT Generation Science Standards and Common Core State Standards are also included for each activity. By design, these books are not printable from a reading device. To request a PDF of the reproducible pages, please contact customer service at 1-888-262-6135.
Intensifying Classroom Routines in Reading and Writing Programs
Part of the Maupin House series
Three common routines are seen in almost every primary language arts programs: morning messages, shared readings, and word walls. These routines should be integrated to support the total language arts program, but are teachers of grades K—2 getting the most bang for their buck out of these activities? Morning messages can become very routinized and repeat the same experiences over and over again. Shared readings are sometimes conducted with little variation in spite of changing demands from the texts being used and changing needs in the learners with whom they are being used. Word walls might be put up with some attention early in the year and remain virtually unchanged as the year moves forward. Intensifying Classroom Routines in Reading and Writing Programs focuses on how teachers can get more instructional mileage out of these three common classroom routines. Author Michael P. Ford lays out step-by-step, day-by-day plans to put those three key routines on a cycle that changes as students move through developmental phases. This resource helps teachers plan for emergent and early readers and writers. It also looks at how teachers can assist students as they move through critical areas, including concepts of print, alphabetic knowledge, phonological awareness, sound-symbol relationships, high-frequency words, structural analysis, context clues, comprehension strategies, and composition strategies. With these intensified routines in place, students will clearly see connections between reading and writing.
From the Classroom to the Test
How to Improve Student Achievement on the Summative ELA Assessments
Part of the Maupin House series
Today, it is more essential than ever that students develop the knowledge and skills necessary to become college and career ready. There is a nationwide focus on the skills and strategies students need in order to be successful. At the core are the assessments currently in circulation. From the Classroom to the Test: How to Improve Student Achievement on the Summative ELA Assessments is a comprehensive book to help educators of grades 3-8 support students in these efforts. It provides information for adjusting instruction to enhance reading comprehension, close reading, vocabulary development, writing and media skills, speaking and listening, and much more. Sample tests for each grade level rounds out this resource.
Take Five! for Language Arts
Writing that builds critical-thinking skills (K-2)
Part of the Maupin House series
Create a vibrant writing classroom! Take 5! for Language Arts: Writing that builds critical-thinking skills supports K-2 students who are just beginning to grasp the elements of writing. This resource will help you introduce students to the writing process through mini-lessons and daily writing prompts. Writing prompts support writing and drawing exercises in engaging ways that relate to content and are within the framework of college and career readiness standards. They also provide support on the different writing purposes: informative, opinion, narrative, and descriptive writing. This resource is filled with diverse prompts that will have students looking forward to the part of the day when they're asked to "Take 5!" for language arts. Each ready-to-use prompt includes corresponding standards, supply lists, language arts links, teacher tips, assessment options, rubrics, digital connections and resources, and opportunities for teacher-modeled writing and independent writing activities. Begin every day of the school year with a burst of critical thinking and fun with this comprehensive resource. Ready? Set? Take 5!
Nonfiction Writing Strategies Using Content-Area Mentor Texts
Part of the Maupin House series
How can you enhance the quality and effectiveness of instruction in both the content areas and in writing? By integrating content in both social studies and science with the strategies of writing that are so important for students to master as they craft nonfiction. This book shows teachers how to use mentor texts in an integrative approach for teaching both content and informational writing. As you explore the pages of this book, you'll find strategies for teaching writing craft fundamentals with step-by-step instructions that make writing instruction come alive in content-area classes. Models make the instructional strategies clear. The book also includes a variety of expository techniques and advice on preparing writers for success on performance-based tests.
Reading to the Core
Learning to Read Closely, Critically, and Generatively to Meet Performance Tasks
Part of the Maupin House series
Close, critical, and generative reading can be broken down into five key questions that a strategic reader must answer: What does the text say? How does the author say it? What does the text mean? What does it mean to me? What insights can I now gain? In this resource, the authors show that insight into these questions is the key to comprehending text. The authors provide tools such as mining charts, assessments, progress monitoring charts, and rubrics to strengthen the teaching and use of strategies including guided highlighted reading for craft, finding the element of argument in text, reading multiple texts for theme, and evaluating visual text. A culminating chapter provides a blueprint for creating a literacy action plan for classroom, school, and district that highlights students' growth and documents teacher effectiveness. By design, these books are not printable from a reading device.
Kindergarten and the Common Core
It's as Easy as ABC!
Part of the Maupin House series
How do we teach with rigor to our youngest learners? How do we implement standards that spell out quite clearly what students must know-but do not give us either the methods or materials that help our students achieve such skills? This professional resource provides practical routines and developmentally appropriate activities that foster an environment where our youngest learners can thrive in mastering core kindergarten content along with the Common Core standards. The routines and activities in this book have been thoroughly classroom-tested and aligned with best practices. The authors show you how to create a magical kindergarten environment that creates a community of confident learners full of excitement and enthusiasm! By design, these books are not printable from a reading device. To request a PDF of the reproducible pages, please contact customer service at 1-888-262-6135.
Finding Voice
Introductory Lessons to Teach Reading and Writing of Complex Text
Part of the Maupin House series
Finding Voice, written by Nancy Dean with Natalie Danaher, is a foundational book for elementary students and teachers that addresses close reading of complex text through understanding and practicing the elements of voice. The book is a collection of classroom lessons that cover the tools authors use to shape voice and meaning: diction, detail, imagery, figurative language, and tone. Every voice lesson includes a quotation selected from a wide range of engaging fiction and nonfiction text, two discussion questions, an exercise that encourages students to practice what they have learned, and discussion suggestions so that possible answers are at the teacher's fingertips. The lessons will help students understand the elements of voice in what they read and encourage them to try out the elements of voice in their own writing. The Finding Voice lessons are specifically designed for students in grades 3 to 6. These lessons provide focused examination and practice for a specific element of voice and take only 10 to 20 minutes of class time. The lessons of Finding Voice: Introductory Lessons to Teach Reading and Writing of Complex Text fit well with any literacy and language arts curriculum. As students work with each element of voice, they will improve their ability to critically analyze text. Students will also learn to apply the elements of voice to their own writing, creating a clear voice of their own.
Unlocking Close Reading
Part of the Maupin House series
Unlock complex informational text through close reading. Use this book as a guide to teach close reading in a way that delves deeply into the text and aligns with the Common Core State Standards. Each standards-based lesson includes: Complex informational text that is grade-level appropriate; text-dependent questions designed to facilitate discussion and provide differentiation for all students; Thought Capturers to help students organize their ideas for writing; and constructed response prompts, exemplars, and rubrics. By design, these books are not printable from a reading device. To request a PDF of the reproducible pages, please contact customer service at 1-888-262-6135.
Writing Strategies for the Common Core
Integrating Reading Comprehension into the Writing Process, Grades 6-8
Part of the Maupin House series
Middle-school students must be able to write explanatory/informational, argument, and narrative genre pieces and respond to literature, both for standardized tests and, more importantly, real-world writing. With a balanced literacy approach, Wolfe provides core instruction, teaching strategies, and mini-lessons on these text types, each of which can be delivered in a four- to six-week time period. Each mini-lesson includes applicable Common Core Standards, materials lists, overviews, planning tips, procedures (including modeling, guided practice, and independent practice opportunities), reading connections, formative assessments, and reproducible graphic organizers for scaffolding. Prerequisite skill overviews and rubrics-both analytic for formative assessments and holistic for summative assessments-are also provided for each genre unit to simplify your teaching and ensure student success. By design, these books are not printable from a reading device. To request a PDF of the reproducible pages, please contact customer service at 1-888-262-6135.
Discovering Voice
Lessons to Teach Reading and Writing of Complex Text
Part of the Maupin House series
Discovering Voice is a collection of classroom exercises that helps students deeply understand the reading and writing of complex text. The lessons, which cover diction, detail, figurative language, imagery, syntax, and tone, help students understand voice in what they read and encourage them to develop a strong, personal voice in their own writing. Every voice lesson includes a quotation selected from a wide range of fiction and nonfiction text, two discussion questions, and an exercise that encourages students to practice what they have learned about the elements of voice. These lessons are specifically designed for students in middle and high school. The lessons provide focused practice for a specific element of voice and take only 10 to 20 minutes of class time. Discovering Voice lessons fit well with any curriculum. As students work with the elements that comprise voice, they will improve their ability to critically analyze text. Students will also learn to apply the elements of voice to their own writing, creating a clear voice of their own.
Comprehensive Literacy Basics
An Anthology by Capstone Professional
by Timothy 'Tim' V. Rasinski
Part of the Maupin House series
Teaching English language arts at grades K-5 is both a science and an art. Educators must teach literacy skills and content with best practices, while also keeping focus on each student's individual needs. They are challenged to monitor students working independently while also conducting small group instruction. And they must focus on providing differentiated support with a rather complicated text. With increased attention to rigor, requirements, and personalized instruction, it can be a challenge to make sure all students are receiving instruction that is just right. Comprehensive Literacy Basics: An Anthology by Capstone Professional contains useful tips to support educators. Chapters focus on each part of the literacy and language arts block, including whole group, small group, writing, and differentiation. A collection of expert authors specializing in literacy and language arts instruction contributed chapters to the book. The quick tips and suggestions within will reinforce current practices while providing an invaluable go-to reference. FAMIS #902792539
The New Balanced Literacy School
Implementing Common Core
by Margaret Mary Policastro
Part of the Maupin House series
Create a new approach to balanced literacy grounded in research-based best practices. This book infuses best practices of the new balanced literacy model through the lens of Common Core, with support on read-alouds, guided reading, language and literacy centers, word walls to language walls, independent reading and writing, and classroom libraries. It also provides the "how" for novice and veteran K-8 teachers, administrators, school literacy teams. With the daily routine "110 Minutes of Literacy" the Common Core State Standards will be easy to implement in instruction. By design, these books are not printable from a reading device. To request a PDF of the reproducible pages, please contact customer service at 1-888-262-6135.
Write the SAT Essay Right! Ten Secrets to Add 100 Points to Your Score
Part of the Maupin House series
Write the SAT Essay Right! is not your average-ho-hum-SAT-prep book, full of fluff and boring, useless stuff.
Instead, Write the SAT Essay Right! gives college-bound students the down-low skinny on the ten best-kept secrets to raise SAT scores. In an easy step-by-step way, students learn proven secrets, then practice their newfound skills. Sample tests to study and evaluate, key strategies, and lots of score-raising tips make this a must-have resource for conquering the SAT essay.
The school/library edition* of Write the SAT Essay Right! contains no write-in-the-book worksheets, making it a perfect choice for acquisition by libraries and for high-school SAT preparation classes.