Maupin House Book Publishing - Books for Teachers

As our emergent readers develop into upper-emergent and early fluent readers, we need to constantly remind them to use their “Good Reader” strategies. They must consistently ask themselves these questions as they approach unfamiliar text: Does it look right? Does it sound right? Does it make sense?

As teachers, we can cue them as well as analyze their miscues. Are they using meaning or semantic cues? Are they using structure or syntactic cues? And are they using visual or graphophonic cues? Sometimes students only need to be reminded to “get their mouth ready” when they say when for then or what for that. This simple reminder helps our students to self-correct and rely upon the strategies taught to them.

Whether we model for our students Look at the pictures, Think about the story, or any of the other cues discussed in our book, Become a Good Reader! Six Simple Steps, we are encouraging them to use all cues EQUALLY and not rely on the use of only one cue.

We like to compare learning how to read to “doing a dance,” or employing all the strategies to bring meaning to the text. That’s what good readers do!

The Apron Ladies, Terri Heidger and Beth Stevens, have been sharing their strategies with teachers through their unique, smart smocks for the past five years. In response to their colleagues' requests for a how-to book that details the strategies on their apron and provides fun, classroom-tested activities, they wrote Become a Good Reader!

You will now have at your fingertips the perfect teaching tool--full of tried-and-true strategies and activities that the Apron Ladies have used with their own students--in a user-friendly, step-book format.

Reading and writing are opposite sides of the same coin. The instruction given in one process can directly influence a student’s progress in the other—but only if the instruction is explicit and thorough. Teaching writing and reading together is especially important as today’s educators strive to find the time in their day to meet the needs of their diverse learners.

Writing allows us to peek inside a student’s thinking about language. It is through writing that we can explore the shared processing connections (visual, meaning, and structure) that students need to both read and write. Student writing provides the window for determining what skills students are using and which they are confusing. Teaching students to become flexible with the knowledge that they already have is the essence of connecting reading and writing.

If we want students to map one side of literacy onto the other, we must explicitly teach students how the two are connected. As observable behaviors emerge in one process, students should be taught how it relates to the reciprocal process.

I recommend beginning with the common ground: oral language. Making meaning through oral storytelling allows students to hear their stories come alive through spoken word. Practice in sequencing, vocabulary, and determining importance through telling stories in the air are all important precursors to becoming a reader and writer.

As students begin to take their stories to print they begin to attend closely to letter features during writing workshop. By studying a child’s writing, the teacher can easily identify which features of print have been internalized. Knowledge of letters, spacing around text, and word and sentence construction can be taught in either reading or writing workshop. Because writing is the slowest of all language activities, it allows close attention to detail. Young writers are forced to use visual perception to distinguish letters, structures of words, and sentences.

It is through writing that we become conscious of our thinking. Reading builds up knowledge and writing extends it. We must always remember that teaching writing and reading together builds a complete literacy system. Take a look at your state standards for writing and you will realize that most of them can be used to support reading as well.

Background knowledge, conventions of print, cross-checking, re-reading for clarity, building and writing words are all important Target Skills^® for teaching reading and writing.

Flat. Stale. Formulaic. Too often, these were the words that came to mind as I read my students’ expository writing. Then I discovered the prescription for resuscitating lifeless writing.

Mini-lessons. My own daughter told me that she was annoyed when teachers talked and talked about writing without giving her any quiet time to write. I started finding ways to limit my own teacher talk and give my students ample time for practice. Mini-lessons targeting specific writing skills gave me the opportunity to provide explicit instruction in the essential components of writing craft. Ten to fifteen minutes each day was all the time I needed to present a skill, and then I let the students practice.

Modeling. We all know the power of visualizing concrete goals. When teaching writing, we need to help students visualize what their writing goals look like by providing models of specific Target Skills^® in high-quality children’s literature. To bridge the gap between the inexperienced and the accomplished writer, we can use teacher-models, class-constructed models and student models. This spectrum of modeling gives our students short-term, realistic goals as well as long-range, ultimate goals.

Meaningfulness. When I gave my students an interest inventory, one consistent and disheartening result was that writing was usually among their least favorite subjects in school. When I surveyed my students about the reason for this collective dislike, the consensus was: “We never get to write what we want. We’re always told what to write about.” Assessment-driven instruction has coaxed us into a habit of assigning writing prompts. Students must learn how to address prompts, but this should be a small part of their actual writing practice. Self-selected topics and content-area themes are authentic, meaningful vehicles for writing practice. This is an easy fix for the writing doldrums.

Motivation. We must always remember that writing should be 80-85% practice. We should only assess a small portion of our students’ writing. A ratio of practice to performance that is heavily weighted toward practice creates a non-threatening environment for developing skills. Assignments should be short and targeted. Brevity and precision maintain the pace of instruction and keep motivation high. Interaction and frequent, positive feedback keep students on the path toward writing success.

In Crafting Expository Papers, I have outlined five steps for effective writing instruction, each accompanied by detailed lesson plans. Mini-lessons are designed around Target Skills^® and are accompanied by literature models. Writing practice is achieved in a daily workshop environment that is always followed by response activities designed to give your students the opportunity for feedback and interaction.

Mini-lessons. Modeling. Meaningfulness. Motivation. These are the ingredients that brought expository writing to life in my classroom, and I am happy to share them with you.

Susan Koehler is a National Board Certified Teacher, reading coach, and writing consultant and is currently the literacy coach at Hawks Rise Elementary in Leon County, Florida. She has a master's degree in reading education and is certified in reading K-12. Susan has 22 years of experience teaching a variety of grade levels and also trains teachers with Marcia Freeman's CraftPlus^® School-Wide Writing Program and Staff Development Resource (available through Maupin House). She is the 2005 recipient of the Mary Brogan Award for Excellence in Literacy Education. Crafting Expository Papers is her first book.

One of a teacher’s most difficult tasks is to lead all students down the right path of instruction in order to master concepts and be able to apply them. Whether the student is a reluctant learner or an eager learner, learning must be made relevant and engaging. Since not all learners learn in the same way, teachers must provide multiple options for students to apply concepts and learn. When teachers are flexible in their approach to presenting the curriculum, all students are given the opportunity to achieve success. Since each classroom has a unique group of individuals, we must vary the approaches we take when introducing and reinforcing concepts. The activities in Creative Book Reports: Fun Projects with Rubrics for Fiction and Nonfiction do just that.

Students must also be aware of the expectations at the onset of an activity. When provided with a grading rubric at the onset of an activity, students are aware of these expectations. The rubrics on the CD that accompany this book allow the teacher freedom to customize each in order to add task-specific objectives.

Creative Book Reports offers a variety of activities to assist students when responding to fiction and nonfiction. The unique presentation formats allow teachers to appeal to students with all learning modalities yet still respond to teachers’ needs for meeting the standards. Learning comes alive with new approaches to traditional literature responses.

According to the National Reading Panel (2000), reading and language arts skills are best acquired when students are actively engaged in learning. And when learning is made fun, learning takes place (Burgess, 2000; Pert, 1997). The activities provided in Creative Book Reports allow teachers to make learning fun and students to have fun learning.

As a middle-school language arts teacher for more than 30 years, Jane Feber has an innovative approach to language-arts instruction that has earned her several awards, including the Gladys Prior Award for Teaching Excellence in 2002 and the 2003 Teacher of the Year for Florida Council of Teachers of English. Most recently, she received the 2006 NCTE Edwin A. Hoey Award. Jane is a National Board Certified Teacher in Early Adolescent English/Language Arts and travels across the U.S. doing workshops and presenting at conferences for middle-school and language arts teachers.

There are many objectives of reading instruction. Ultimately we want children to read fluently, with understanding, and to find reading a valuable lifelong tool for learning as well as enjoyment. To that end, a balanced approach to reading instruction must be provided. Such an approach should provide children with a variety of experiences. These experiences should include explicit instruction in comprehension, fluency, and word work skills, which consist of phonics, spelling, and vocabulary. Each component contributes to reading effectiveness and success for children.

Why is word work important? Words play an important role in reading and learning in general. They are the tools we use to communicate ideas and learn new concepts. The ability to read fluently and with comprehension is dependent on the reader’s ability to recognize words quickly and accurately and then connect the words with their meanings. Children must develop strong vocabularies as well as actively explore and examine the automatic recognition, spelling, and meaning of words. Therefore, word work instruction is vital in achieving this goal.

I have written Flip for Word Work: Phonics, Spelling, and Vocabulary as a tool for teachers who are seeking to expand their word work instruction. This book offers teachers a ready-to-use tool of fifty word work ideas in phonics, spelling, and vocabulary. The activities can be used with the whole class, in small groups or independent literacy centers, and as a homework extension. They are easy to incorporate into weekly lesson plans to enhance the experiences children have with the texts they are reading. Ideas are provided to facilitate, enhance, and extend student problem-solving strategies at the phonics level as well as understanding of new or unfamiliar vocabulary.

Just like Flip for Comprehension and Dar la Vuelta a la Comprensiόn, the free-standing tabletop design allows you to set it up quickly, turn to the page you want to work on, and get started. There are no worksheets to make as the children can copy the examples directly into their reading journals. Teachers can write any additional information onto the pages using sticky notes or attaching a clear transparency over the page. In that way, each activity is tailor-made for the needs of your students.

Whatever methods you choose, remember that finding ways to improve word work strategies for all readers is the ultimate goal.

Emily Cayuso is an Instructional Coordinator/Reading Specialist in San Antonio, TX. During the past twenty-seven years, she has taught a variety of primary grades and has worked as a Title I Reading Teacher Specialist. She holds a B.S. and an M.Ed. Emily is the author of Flip for Comprehension, Dar la Vuelta a la Comprensiόn, Designing Teacher Study Groups, and most recently, Flip for Word Work, all available from Maupin House.

These are two facts recited to teachers regularly, whether it is from their principals requiring them to make calls home, the federal government mandating parental involvement in legislation such as No Child Left Behind, or local and state grant opportunities that want to know how prospective grant projects will involve parents. Research overwhelmingly supports the ideas that when families are involved, kids do better.

Too often, though, the types of parental involvement to grow from all this demand from above are merely quick fixes or one-time events at school. While these attempts to involve families do give administrators numbers they can cite to show parents were involved, the data often has nothing to do with demonstrating how meaningful the encounter was for parents, children, or teachers or what lasting effects the time together will have on those involved. Classroom teachers’ growth as leaders and innovators is almost never taken into account with the demand to involve families, despite the obvious fact that working with families creates entirely new classroom dynamics and potentially changes the role for teachers.

I have written the book Writing with Families: Strengthening the Home/School Connection with Family Scribe Groups for teachers who love writing, love teaching, and want to try a new and rejuvenating experience in their careers. The book is a how-to guide that sets a philosophical groundwork for why writing with families is important and beneficial and then goes on to provide class-by-class lesson plans that will turn a group of families into a powerful community of engaged learners who use writing as the vehicle for examining and discussing their lives. Also in the book, you will find suggestions and hints for organizing a Family Scribe Group, as well as bilingual templates. Along with full sets of lessons is a chapter devoted to helping you create your own original project.

Please visit our website at www.familywritingprojects.com. Our teacher webpages will give you an idea of what goes on with Family Scribe Groups at various sites around the country and of what facilitating a Family Scribe Group can do for you, your students and their families, and your school.

Your middle-school students come to school with stories every day. At their lockers, in the lunchroom, or while they’re getting settled in homeroom you’ll hear, “Did you get an invitation to Michelle’s party? I didn’t.” Or, “You’re not going to believe this! Last night some guy broke into my dad’s dental office and burned it down!” Or, “My sister got stopped by the cops last night for speeding and she was driving without her license. Then they found out that she doesn’t have a green card and now she might have to go back to Guatemala!” Or, “I made the basketball team because I got a 'C' in science! I’m so psyched!”

Real-life dramas like these permeate your students’ lives and leave them feeling a host of emotions. Yet when it comes to writing fiction, they seldom choose to base their stories on the emotions they feel. Instead, they tend to dream up blonde-eyed super-athletes or picture-perfect cheerleaders who move woodenly through their storylines. Why do they choose to ignore the rich and raw stuff from their own lives?

Maybe it’s because teachers have not taught them how to tap into the powerful emotions of their own lives to help them create realistic fiction.

I’m not suggesting that your students take every soccer game loss, punishment, or small triumph and re-write it as fiction. That would truly hit too close to home, and your students would probably feel locked into telling the “real” story.

Rather, you can teach them how to extrapolate and use their personal feelings to make their own characters real. This technique is particularly helpful when writing genre short stories -- historical, science fiction, or mysteries. For example, a female character set in colonial America can express the same sense of exclusion from not being invited to a square dance as a middle-school girl feels from not receiving a sleepover party invitation. A basketball player who makes the team after hard work will feel the same pride as a soldier who gets promoted after winning a fight with an evil android.

Help your students mine their real-life emotions to craft realistic fiction. Watch their writing come alive and prepare to enjoy their stories!

Carol Baldwin is the author of Teaching the Story, developed from materials she taught in several different middle-school classrooms and available from Maupin House in January.

The importance of student writing has grown exponentially in recent years. Students are assessed on their writing portfolios. High school admission decisions hinge on written essays. Standardized tests use student writing as a yardstick for individual and school achievement. The stakes have never been higher.

If you are a middle-school content-area teacher, you may wonder why this affects you. Doesn't the language arts teacher teach writing? The answer is yes...and no. Yes, it's the language arts teacher's job, but it's yours as well. Writing in the content areas just makes sense. It fosters deeper thinking about all parts of the curriculum. It also provides authentic opportunities for your students to synthesize the material they have learned and present it in a meaningful way. It gives you a powerful assessment tool, too.

Even if you've never explicitly taught writing, you can start today. Remember, writing is a set of skills that can be taught. By teaching your students the skills they need to write a persuasive essay or a report in your content area, you're giving them the tools they need for academic growth. You're making them think, organize, compare, and evaluate. You're developing active learners. So become the writing teacher you know you need to be, and do it today. For you, the rewards will be immediate; for your students, the rewards will last a lifetime.

If this sounds like a sentiment you'd express, you're not alone. Voice in writing is difficult to understand, much less teach. Like a writer's fingerprint, voice emerges from the specific writing choices that each writer makes-- word selection, sentence structure, and carefully chosen imagery that communicates to engage a specific reader for a specific purpose. It's why Hemingway could never be Stephen King.

Single-craft skill instruction, called Target Skill™ teaching, is the best way to teach specific elements of writing craft. You show the students how a writer does it by modeling the technique with student examples, professional non-fiction and fiction literature, or pieces you write yourself. After you've isolated and talked about the skill, you allow the young writers to practice it in whatever genre you happen to be working. You assess the practice piece for evidence of that skill's use. That's it. The young writers add a new paragraph technique to their repertoire. It works for all developing writers, from kindergarten through high school.

Target Skill™ instruction for writing craft fits well into the writing workshop model. Here are three specific techniques you can begin to teach tomorrow as your students revise a piece. The result? True "voicing up." The voice of the writer emerges as she is given a tool to revise to the standard and the reader is engaged.

Hear more of author Melissa Hare Landa's thoughts on education and writing instruction:

» On Listening to Your Students' Experiences

» On Student Diversity and Language Acquisition

When children walk though the doors of our classrooms, they bring with them a vast range of life experiences. Before they are students, they are sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, world travelers, immigrants to the United States, speakers of a variety of languages, thinkers and dreamers. If we insist that these children sit silently in our classrooms, listening to us talk, completing worksheet after worksheet, and writing about things that WE view as important, we never get the opportunity to really know them. When, however, we take the time to LISTEN to their thoughts, their ideas, and their feelings, we gain the important knowledge about them that allows us to help them on their way to becoming writers. It is their ideas that lay the foundation for their writing development.

Listening to Young Writers shares the work that I have done with children from Head Start through second grade, discussing the joy of learning to honor the voices of children. I offer strategies for creating a classroom in which children feel safe to share their stories. I talk about how to create a classroom that provides resources and support for beginning writers, and tools for assessing the writing behavior of children as they sit in front of a piece of paper. Next, I offer rubrics and writing samples that explain how to assess the writing that children produce. I identify a system for analyzing the different aspects of writing craft, so that teachers can analyze the needs of each child. From there, I describe how to identify individual writing goals for each child, to move each one along the continuum of writing development. And finally, I offer a variety of teaching strategies, from class meetings, to creating class books, and a sequence of lessons that address writing goals. Throughout the book, I also talk about English Language Learners, and ways to adapt each strategy to meet their needs.

For sixteen years, I have experienced the delight of creating classroom communities, where all children feel honored, and where every child thrives as they enter the world of writing. Combining my work in classrooms with my own studies of early literacy, I wrote Listening to Young Writers so that I could share my ideas with teachers, teacher educators, administrators, and parents. Those with whom I have shared my ideas have responded with enthusiasm and have found my strategies to be highly successful. I invite you to join me in recognizing the remarkable potential in all children, and in guiding them to reach that potential as young writers.

Yesterday I watched a little miracle. A high school girl who is usually withdrawn and distracted was engaged in animated conversation with a kindergarten student about a book. They were laughing at the pictures and making connections to the world around them. This is the power of cross-age tutoring: transforming experience through books, the efficacy of one-on-one teaching, and the importance of using conversation as a tool for comprehension.

Every time I watch a group of tutors I witness more of these miracles. Candace and I wrote Succeeding in Reading to share these miracles and help others design cross-age tutoring programs.

I call Succeeding in Reading the "win-win-win-win program". Elementary teachers love the program because they get concrete support for their literacy efforts. Elementary students love it because they have big buddies who help them. Tutors love the program because they are successful, productive, and valued, and they improve their own reading skills. I, a high school teacher lucky enough to teach a Succeeding in Reading class, love the development and implementation of this program. Students are self-directed, behavior is never a problem, and everybody learns. What more could a teacher want?

To illustrate, several years ago I had to be away from school for a meeting. By some mishap, my substitute never showed up for the Succeeding in Reading class. Seasoned teachers know what that means: trouble. But not with the Succeeding in Reading program. My students knew what to do. They gathered their tutoring books and materials and went to get their little buddies. They tutored. They completed their records. They brought their little buddies back to their class and returned to our classroom. The next day they were merely curious: “Where were you, Ms. Dean? Did you know that no one was here to substitute? What happened?” These were normal high school students. Many college students – and most high school students – would have skipped class that day. My students did the right thing because they were needed and they knew it. Teaching reading is no task to be taken lightly.

Succeeding in Reading works for schools, reading intervention programs, inclusion programs, after-school programs, home schooling, and community-based programs. Empower students through tutoring and you'll find the rewards are abundant.

Too often narrative writing is sacrificed within a high-school curriculum because of the emphasis on literature analysis. Analyzing literature is certainly important, but narratives are, too. They help students discover their personal writing voices, voices they will use the rest of their academic and professional careers. And, by the way, it’s also important to write a good one to get into college.

Yes, it’s that time of year again when seniors get stressed out trying to decipher college application questions. Have you ever wondered how the essays are assessed, what topics to avoid, what advice admissions’ directors offer, or what criteria renders a successful essay?

I know I did. I got involved with the personal narratives for applications after retiring from teaching high school. I helped develop a writing center in the guidance department for college-bound seniors that I still work in. During these individual writing conferences, I prod, probe, and question—with no pen in hand. Students make the necessary decisions and revisions as their essays unfold.

I wrote Teaching Powerful Personal Narratives: Strategies for College Applications and High School Classrooms because I realized that no other resource addressed the needs of a teacher or counselor who was trying to guide students through the arduous college application process. After all, a well-written essay for class may not necessarily produce a stellar college application essay. Just like writing in any other genre, the task of writing strong personal narratives involves a mastery of specific writing-craft skills and techniques.

This gives you, the high school English teacher or guidance counselor, a systematic approach to supporting students who are struggling with their college application essays. It also provides a classroom unit framework for teaching personal narratives to freshmen, sophomores, and juniors.

Because as a teacher, I knew I would have wanted abundant student essay examples, I included many. These all demonstrate interesting topics with an angle; they tell a “story” with a commanding voice that engages the reader; they “grab n’ plop” the reader into that story at the onset, and they demonstrate every English teacher’s mantra: Show, don’t tell!

I offer time-saving tips for individual and group conferencing, a necessity when coaching writing. The book also includes guidelines for teachers and guidance counselors who write college recommendations.

Though there are many “how to” books available for students in writing the college essay, I know of none that directly addresses the English teacher. This book really is for you.