Ideal for both whole-school and independent learning, this comprehensive and high-quality series builds on pupils' phonic knowledge while also helping them to understand how word structure and meaning can help them to spell words. Providing excellent preparation for the national tests, the Schofield & Sims Spelling activities systematically introduce and revise spelling conventions, explore word structure and the relationship between words of shared origin, suggest strategies for remembering common 'exception words' (or 'tricky words'), teach pupils how to monitor their own spelling, and encourage them to write sentences from memory or dictation. As pupils work through each book, the intensive practice provided will enable them continually to develop, consolidate and improve their skills, encouraging them towards effective spelling for life. Spelling 1 covers: segmenting words into phonemes and selecting from alternative spellings of phonemes; using spelling rules for adding s and es; adding suffixes ing, ed and er where no change is needed to the root word; dividing words into syllables; applying spelling guidelines (for example, ck, tch, ve, dge at the end of words).

The Castle in the Classroom describes a year in a kindergarten classroom as the children embark on literary exploration. Each child approaches the journey from a different perspective - some are self-sufficient, others more hesitant; some are literary adventurers, others shyly reluctant. The detailed focus lessons throughout the book use the power of stories - personal narratives, folktales, and fairy tales - to deepen the literary experience so that reading and writing become as much a part of kindergarten as playing and pretending are. As the book progresses through the year, teachers will find a wealth of resources, including practical models to teach strategies and skills; effective teaching schedules; ways to address, challenge, expand, and celebrate student learning; examples of student work; parent education materials; and ideas on how to manage assessment. By the end of the year, your students - like those in Ranu's class - will have built on their love of storytelling to establish a strong literacy foundation.

In A Place for Wonder, Georgia Heard and Jennifer McDonough discuss how to create "a landscape of wonder," a primary classroom where curiosity, creativity, and exploration are encouraged. For it is these characteristics, the authors write, that develop intelligent, inquiring, life-long learners. The authors' research shows that many primary grade state standards encourage teaching for understanding, critical thinking, creativity, and question asking, and promote the development of children who have the attributes of inventiveness, curiosity, engagement, imagination, and creativity. With these goals in mind, Georgia and Jennifer provide teachers with numerous, practical ways-setting up "wonder centers," gathering data though senses, teaching nonfiction craft-they can create a classroom environment where students' questions and observations are part of daily work. They also present a step-by-step guide to planning a nonfiction reading and writing unit of study-creating a nonfiction book, which includes creating a table of contents, writing focused chapters, using "wow" words, and developing point of view. A Place for Wonder will help teachers reclaim their classrooms as a place where true learning is the norm.

These engaging Storybooks provide structured practice for children learning to read the Read Write Inc. Set 1 and 2 sounds. Each set of books is carefully levelled to match childrens growing phonic knowledge so children can read them with accuracy, fluency and comprehension. The Storybooks include a range of engaging stories such as fairy tales, myths and legends, rhyming stories and familiar settings. Activities at the start of the books help children to practise the sounds and words they will encounter in the story. Questions to talk about at the end of the story provide an extra opportunity for developing childrens comprehension. The books are part of the Read Write Inc. Phonics programme, developed by Ruth Miskin. The programme is designed to create fluent readers, confident speakers and willing writers. It includes Handbooks, Sounds Cards, Word Cards, Storybooks, Non-fiction, Writing books and an Online resource. Read Write Inc. is fully supported by comprehensive professional development from Ruth Miskin Training.

This volume showcases the efforts of real teachers using the teaching events from real middle school classrooms. Included is the work of eight hard-working middle school teachers who are convinced that the form and function of genre is a way to teach writing across the middle school curriculum. Each chapter contains sample lessons, protocols, classroom instructional materials, and assessment tools to provide middle school teachers with an approach to explore rigorous expository writing instruction in their own classrooms.

Ideal for both whole-school and independent learning, this comprehensive and high-quality series builds on pupils' phonic knowledge while also helping them to understand how word structure and meaning can help them to spell words. Providing excellent preparation for the national tests, the Schofield & Sims Spelling activities systematically introduce and revise spelling conventions, explore word structure and the relationship between words of shared origin, suggest strategies for remembering common 'exception words' (or 'tricky words'), teach pupils how to monitor their own spelling, and encourage them to write sentences from memory or dictation. As pupils work through each book, the intensive practice provided will enable them continually to develop, consolidate and improve their skills, encouraging them towards effective spelling for life. Spelling 2 covers: segmenting words into phonemes and selecting the correct spelling from alternatives; learning new ways to spell phonemes; distinguishing between homophones; adding prefixes and suffixes to spell longer words; applying rules for adding suffixes; learning spelling guidelines.

Make sure your students develop the rich vocabulary that's essential to successful reading comprehension and academic achievement with A Word a Day. Each book in this newly revised series covers 144 words in 36 engaging weekly units.

Don't have students just memorize vocabulary words ... give them the tools they need to understand and apply the words!

Help your students learn 144 new words with the focused daily practice in A Word a Day, Grade 4. Activities such as identifying attributes, making personal connections, and completing graphic organizers give students multiple exposures to the words, helping them to develop the vocabulary they need to be successful on assessments and in the classroom.

Examples of vocabulary words presented in Grade 4:

* obligation, command, compete

* dilemma, resource, random

* spontaneous, lackadaisical, treacherous

* drenched, massive, predicament

While the population of Hispanic/Latino and African American students in the United States continues to grow, the rate at which they attend college remains alarmingly small. These students, who are often defined as "educationally underrepresented," are a bellwether of a shortcoming in our nation's educational system that has serious implications for the future. In "Greater Expectations," Robin Turner, a high school English teacher from Anaheim, California, offers pragmatic, proven methods for better preparing underrepresented students for higher education.

The book is grounded in Robin's experience as a leader in the Puente Project, a college preparation program started in California high schools over twenty years ago. Since 1981, Puente has proven highly effective in producing positive change by improving academic performance, standardized test scores, and college admission rates for underrepresented students.

Forming the book's foundations are the ideas of "familia" and "carino," or family and caring. The first, "familia," asserts the importance of establishing a sense of community among adolescents and tapping into student culture--ethnicity, music, sports, neighborhood and so on in the language arts classroom. The second concept, a pedagogy of "carino," contends that too often, underrepresented students possess attributes that are overlooked and are viewed with a deficit-model paradigm. Building on this foundation, "Greater Expectations" shows how to effectively teach different modes of academic discourse--literary analysis, autobiographical/biographical, persuasive research, and community-based writing. Offering a combination of personal narrative, how-to lesson plans, and student samples, Robin Turner challenges readers to approach their underrepresented students with greater expectations and be equipped with specific lesson plans to enable their classes to meet them.

These engaging Storybooks provide structured practice for children learning to read the Read Write Inc. Set 1 sounds. Each set of books is carefully levelled to match childrens growing phonic knowledge so children can read them with accuracy, fluency and comprehension. The Storybooks include a range of engaging stories such as fairy tales, myths and legends, rhyming stories and familiar settings. Activities at the start of the books help children to practise the sounds and words they will encounter in the story. Questions to talk about at the end of the story provide an extra opportunity for developing childrens comprehension. The books are part of the Read Write Inc. Phonics programme, developed by Ruth Miskin. The programme is designed to create fluent readers, confident speakers and willing writers. It includes Handbooks, Sounds Cards, Word Cards, Storybooks, Non-fiction, Writing books and an Online resource. Read Write Inc. is fully supported by comprehensive professional development from Ruth Miskin Training.

These engaging Storybooks provide structured practice for children learning to read the Read Write Inc. Set 1 and 2 sounds. Each set of books is carefully levelled to match childrens growing phonic knowledge so children can read them with accuracy, fluency and comprehension. The Storybooks include a range of engaging stories such as fairy tales, myths and legends, rhyming stories and familiar settings. Activities at the start of the books help children to practise the sounds and words they will encounter in the story. Questions to talk about at the end of the story provide an extra opportunity for developing childrens comprehension. The books are part of the Read Write Inc. Phonics programme, developed by Ruth Miskin. The programme is designed to create fluent readers, confident speakers and willing writers. It includes Handbooks, Sounds Cards, Word Cards, Storybooks, Non-fiction, Writing books and an Online resource. Read Write Inc. is fully supported by comprehensive professional development from Ruth Miskin Training.

Comic books and graphic novels, known collectively as "graphica," have long been popular with teenagers and adults. Recently graphica has grown in popularity with younger readers as well, motivating and engaging some of our most reluctant readers who often shun traditional texts. While some teachers have become curious about graphica's potential, many are confused by the overwhelming number of new titles and series, in both fiction and nonfiction, and are unsure of its suitability and function in their classrooms.

Drawing on his own success using graphica with elementary students, literacy coach Terry Thompson introduces reading teachers to this popular medium and suggests sources of appropriate graphica for the classroom and for particular students. Taking cues from research that supports the use of graphica with students, Terry shows how this exciting medium fits into the literacy framework and correlates with best practices in comprehension, vocabulary, and fluency instruction. "Adventures in Graphica" contains numerous, easy-to-replicate, instructional strategies, including examples of how graphic texts can be used to create a bridge as students transfer abstract comprehension strategies learned through comics and graphic novels to traditional texts.

" Adventures in Graphica" provides a roadmap for teachers to the medium that the "New York Times" recently hailed as possibly "the next new literary form."

These engaging Storybooks provide structured practice for children learning to read the Read Write Inc. Set 1 sounds. Each set of books is carefully levelled to match childrens growing phonic knowledge so children can read them with accuracy, fluency and comprehension. The Storybooks include a range of engaging stories such as fairy tales, myths and legends, rhyming stories and familiar settings. Activities at the start of the books help children to practise the sounds and words they will encounter in the story. Questions to talk about at the end of the story provide an extra opportunity for developing childrens comprehension. The books are part of the Read Write Inc. Phonics programme, developed by Ruth Miskin. The programme is designed to create fluent readers, confident speakers and willing writers. It includes Handbooks, Sounds Cards, Word Cards, Storybooks, Non-fiction, Writing books and an Online resource. Read Write Inc. is fully supported by comprehensive professional development from Ruth Miskin Training.

Students climb to new heights in reading and writing with these fun, engaging, reproducible word-building games! Students read clues on each rung, then change and rearrange letters to create words until they reach the top. All the while, they're analyzing sound-symbol relationships, broadening their vocabulary, and building spelling skills to become better readers. For use with Grades 1-2.

Key Stage 2 Comprehension provides a unique collection of stimulating texts that appeal strongly to both boys and girls, together with questions that both build and stretch comprehension skills and widen vocabulary. Comprising four one-per-child activity books and providing more than 72 texts in total, the series encourages children to pay close attention to literal meaning, make inferences and deductions, observe how writing is structured and identify literary devices. A separate Teacher's Guide is also available. Book 3 encourages children to move beyond simple understanding and recall to look for more complex meanings. It includes: adventure stories from Roald Dahl, Mark Twain, Anthony Buckeridge and Kenneth Grahame, an inspiring biography of Falklands soldier Simon Weston, further non-fiction from Jacqueline Wilson and Emmeline Pankhurst, evocative poems from some of the best British poets (such as Lewis Carroll, Robert Browning and R.L. Stevenson), an appealing letter written by Stevenson as a teenager and an introduction to the writing of J.R.R. Tolkien and William Shakespeare.

Part of the Usborne Key Skills series that supports the English lessons children learn at school, this handy pad is filled with 120 spelling activities. Add prefixes and suffixes, tackle tricky starting and ending sounds, choose the right homophones and more. The activities get progressively harder throughout, and all the answers are at the back.

Regular practice makes perfect - that's why we've written this spectacular Phonics Weekly Workout book for Year 1. It contains a range of 10-Minute Workouts on a mixture of Phonics topics. Each Workout consists of a warm-up, followed by a collection of perfectly sequenced practice tasks. There's also a host of friendly characters giving out useful tips, and self-assessment stars to show how confident pupils are with each task.

Teaching Poetry Writing: A Five Canon Approach is a comprehensive alternative to the full-class workshop approach to poetry writing instruction. In the five canon approach, peer critique of student poems takes place in online environments, freeing up class time for writing exercises and lessons based on the five canons of classical rhetoric: invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery.

The Spelling & Vocabulary series provides a complete and comprehensive course building a child's spelling and vocabulary expertise. Working through the series will give your child a working vocabulary of more than 5,400 words. The series helps prepare children for the GL Assessment and CEM 11+ exams, SATs, CATs, the Northern Ireland Transfer Test, Common Entrance and scholarship examinations for independent schools, and all other styles of verbal reasoning/ability and English tests. This series of books is designed to be used in sequence and is divided into three levels: Foundation (Workbooks 1-3) for children aged 7 to 9 Intermediate (Workbooks 4-7) for children aged 8 to 10 Advanced (Workbooks 8-12) for children aged 9 to 12 We recommend older children who face challenges in spelling and vocabulary work from Workbook 1 to ensure that there are no gaps in their understanding and their skills are built progressively. Children with more developed skills could begin with the Intermediate or Advanced series. All our materials have been rigorously classroom tested. The methodologies have been successfully used in AE Tuition classes for over 20 years.

Classroom-tested methods for boosting secondary students' writing skills

"The Writing Teacher's Activity-a-Day" offers teachers, homeschoolers, and parents 180 ready-to-use, reproducible activities that enhance writing skills in secondary students. Based on Ledbetter's extensive experience consulting to language arts teachers and school districts across the country, the classroom-tested activities included in this book teach students key literary and writing terms like allegory, elaboration, irony, personification, propaganda, voice, and more--and provide them with engaging examples that serve as models for their own Quick Writes.Contains writing prompts and sample passages in student-friendly language that connects abstract literary concepts to students' own livesWritten by popular workshop presenter and veteran educator Mary Ellen LedbetterOffers a user-friendly, value-packed resource for teaching writing skills

Designed for English language arts teachers in grades 6-12, tutors, parents, learning specialists, homeschoolers, and consultants.