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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

How can you help students find meaning in informational texts and become independent strategic readers and thinkers? "Nonfiction Reading Power" gives teachers a wealth of effective strategies for helping students think while they read material in all subject areas. Using the best children's books to motivate students, Adrienne Gear shows teachers how help students zoom-in, question and infer; find the main idea, make connections, and transform what's on the printed page. Key introductory concept lessons for each of the five reading powers provide valuable insight into the purpose of each strategy. The book also explores the particular features of nonfiction and offers lists of key books organized around strategies and subject areas.