Powerful Poetry celebrates the beauty, power, and pleasure of poetry in the classroom. This highly-readable book outlines the many benefits of integrating poetry into your literacy program, including building reading, writing, and speaking skills, nurturing creativity, and celebrating language. Powerful Poetry provides practical, enjoyable lessons for integrating poetry into your year-long literacy program and engaging ways to introduce poetic structure, language, tools, and devices. Book lists introduce a wide range of wonderful poems and poets. Ideal for new and experienced teachers who are looking to bring the power of poetry into their classroom.

Ten years ago, Reading Power was launched in an elementary school in Vancouver. Now, it has evolved into a recognized approach to comprehension instruction being implemented across Canada, the US, UK, Sweden, and China. This ground-breaking approach showed teachers how to help students think while they read – connect, question, visualize, infer, and transform. Since the publication of her book, Reading Power, Adrienne Gear has continued to reflect and refine her understanding of metacognition, comprehension instruction, and the reading power strategies. In this revised and expanded second edition of her popular book, Adrienne shares this new understanding and offers teachers new ideas, new lessons, and of course, new anchor books to support the Reading Power lessons. An ideal resource for teachers familiar with this strategic approach to teaching reading or those teachers looking for new ways to connect thinking with reading.

In these challenging times, teaching children to think critically and reflectively AND be compassionate, responsible and caring citizens at the same time is a tall order. Powerful Understanding explores effective ways to build social emotional skills and help students make connections, question what they read, and reflect on their learning as they develop into stronger readers and learners. Strategic and critical thinking strategies revolve around core anchor books that help integrate thinking into everything you teach—from social responsibility, to immigration, to life cycles. This highly readable book includes a wealth of classroom examples and extensive hands-on activities designed to help students to think more deeply, learn more widely, and develop a more powerful understanding of what it means to be a responsible and compassionate person.

Nonfiction writing is important in a student’s school life and it is important a skill that they will use throughout their lives. The majority of our daily reading and writing experience is made up of nonfiction, and students are writing nonfiction long before they are taught how to do it in the classroom. They need to recognise that writing nonfiction is far more than the traditional descriptive reports about animals. The principles of nonfiction writing apply to all student writing, even the tweets, texts, and blogs they compose. The writer’s intent is the underlying foundation of Nonfiction Writing Power. Building on Adrienne Gear’s Reading Power books, this valuable addition to her highly successful books addresses the close link between reader and writer. This remarkable book shows teachers how to help students recognize that they write because they have something to say. It argues that writing nonfiction well means considering the writer’s intent and purpose, and choosing the most appropriate form among the various nonfiction genres. Nonfiction Writing Power is designed to help teachers develop a writing program that focuses on the different forms of nonfiction. This practical book helps teachers work with students to explore the Power to Describe; the Power to Instruct; the Power to Compare; the Power to Persuade; the Power to Explain; and the Power to Report. Ideal support for teaching writing in the content areas, the book includes ways that a particular form can link to Science, Social Studies, and other subject areas. This comprehensive resource comes complete with scripted sequential lessons, samples of student work, blackline masters, assessment rubrics, and lists of suggested anchor books. 

At any age or grade level, powerful readers are those who are aware of their thinking as they read. The assumption is that high school students don't need to be taught how to read; but even if they can decode words and gain literal understanding, they often don't think deeply about what they are reading. Presenting a balance of theory and practical lessons, Powerful Readers demonstrates that instructions in the key strategies of connecting, visualizing, questioning, inferring, determining importance, and transforming can help students develop their reading skills and get more out of their work with fiction and nonfiction. Step-by-step lessons for introducing and using the strategies, connections to literary devices, and reading lists for each strategy are all part of this valuable resource.

Writing Power is a practical and thoughtful resource that shows teachers how to encourage students to consider the reader's thinking as they write. Using the same five thinking strategies from Adrienne Gear's groundbreaking Reading Power books-Connect, Question, Visualize, Infer, and Transform-young writers will learn how to engage and invite their readers' thinking through their writing. Writing Power guides teachers through a series of lessons focusing on each of the strategies and includes scripted, sequential lessons, recommended anchor books, reproducibles, and assessment rubrics.

This timely book uses thinking structures to deepen student writing. It revolves around "brain pockets" to help students appreciate the qualities of different writing forms. Some powerful examples include memory pockets for personal narrative writing, fact pockets for nonfiction, and imagination pockets for story writing. Detailed lesson plans are featured along with sample anchor books and book lists. Based on extensive classroom testing, student samples throughout the book illustrate this unique approach to teaching writing. Suggestions for setting up an effective writing program and assessment tips for guiding instruction complete this comprehensive approach to developing a year-long writing program.