If you want to learn how to shoot a basketball, you begin by carefully observing someone who knows how to shoot a basketball. If you want to be a writer, you begin by carefully observing the work of accomplished writers. Recognising the importance that modeling plays in the learning process, high school English teacher Kelly Gallagher shares how he gets his students to stand next to and pay close attention to model writers, and how doing so elevates his students' writing abilities. Write Like This is built around a central premise: if students are to grow as writers, they need to read good writing, they need to study good writing, and, most important, they need to emulate good writers. In Write Like This, Kelly emphasises real-world writing purposes, the kind of writing he wants his students to be doing twenty years from now. Each chapter focuses on a specific discourse: express and reflect, inform and explain, evaluate and judge, inquire and explore, analyse and interpret, and take a stand/propose a solution. In teaching these lessons, Kelly provides mentor texts (professional samples as well as models he has written in front of his students), student writing samples, and numerous assignments and strategies proven to elevate student writing. By helping teachers bring effective modeling practices into their classrooms, Write Like This enables students to become better adolescent writers. More important, the practices found in this book will help our students develop the writing skills they will need to become adult writers in the real world.

In an increasingly demanding world of literacy, it has become critical that students know how to write effectively. From the requirements of standardized tests to those of the wired workplace, the ability to write well, once a luxury, has become a necessity. Many students are leaving school without the necessary writing practice and skills needed to compete in a complex and fast-moving Information Age. Unless we teach them how to run with it, they are in danger of being run over by a stampede--a literacy stampede.

"In Teaching Adolescent Writers," Kelly Gallagher, author of "Reading Reasons" and "Deeper Reading," shows how students can be taught to write effectively. Kelly shares a number of classroom-tested strategies that enable teachers to: understand the importance of teaching writing;motivate young writers;see the importance modeling plays in building young writers (modeling from both the teacher and from real-world text);understand how providing choice elevates adolescent writing (and how to allow for choice within a rigorous curriculum);help students recognize the importance of purpose and audience;assess essays in ways that drive better writing performance.

Infused with humor and illuminating anecdotes, Kelly draws on his classroom experiences and work as co-director of a regional writing project to offer teachers both practical ways to incorporate writing instruction into their day and compelling reasons to do so.

"Read-i-cide"" n: The systematic killing of the love of reading, often exacerbated by the inane, mind-numbing practices found in schools. " Reading is dying in our schools. Educators are familiar with many of the factors that have contributed to the decline--poverty, second-language issues, and the ever-expanding choices of electronic entertainment. In this provocative new book, Kelly Gallagher suggests, however, that it is time to recognize a new and significant contributor to the death of reading: our schools. In" Readicide, "Kelly argues that American schools are actively (though unwittingly) furthering the decline of reading. Specifically, he contends that the standard instructional practices used in most schools are killing reading by: - valuing the development of test-takers over the development of lifelong readers; - mandating breadth over depth in instruction; - requiring students to read difficult texts without proper instructional support; - insisting that students focus solely on academic texts; - drowning great books with sticky notes, double-entry journals, and marginalia; - ignoring the importance of developing recreational reading; and - losing sight of authentic instruction in the shadow of political pressures. Kelly doesn't settle for only identifying the problems. "Readicide" provides teachers, literacy coaches, and administrators with specific steps to reverse the downward spiral in reading--steps that will help prevent the loss of another generation of readers.

Growing attention has focused on the education of children in the child welfare system, particularly those in foster care, but ninety-two percent of children in the child welfare system stay with their parents and their educational needs receive little attention. Succeeding Together? is an institutional ethnography that analyses front-line accounts from mothers, teachers, and child welfare workers to explore the educational issues facing abused and neglected children outside of foster care. Kelly Gallagher-Mackay examines the complex policy framework and underlying assumptions that shape the practice of collective responsibility for this vulnerable group, shining a light on the implications of their status in-between private and public responsibility. Gallagher-Mackay breaks down collective responsibility into three areas: surveillance and the duty to report, child welfare's poorly defined responsibility to provide educational supports, and the privatized nature of teachers' professional responsibility for caring. The involvement of child welfare represents a public judgment that there should be strong, proactive, and coordinated intervention to ensure protection and well-being. Succeeding Together? reveals significant shortfalls in coordination and commitment to the well-being of society's most vulnerable.

Do your students often struggle with difficult novels and other challenging texts? Do they think one reading of a work is more than enough? Do they primarily comprehend at a surface-level, and are they frequently unwilling or unable to discover the deeper meaning found in multi-layered works? Do you feel that you are doing more work teaching the novel than they are reading it?

Building on twenty years of teaching language arts, Kelly Gallagher, author of "Reading Reasons," shows how students can be taught to successfully read a broad range of challenging and difficult texts with deeper levels of comprehension. In "Deeper Reading," Kelly shares effective, classroom-tested strategies that enable your students to: accept the challenge of reading difficult books;move beyond a "first draft" understanding of the text into deeper levels of reading; consciously monitor their comprehension as they read;employ effective fix-it strategies when their comprehension begins to falter;use meaningful collaboration to achieve deeper understanding of texts;think metaphorically to deepen their reading comprehension;reach deeper levels of reflection by understanding the relevance the book holds for themselves and their peers;use critical thinking skills to analyze real-world issues.

Kelly also provides guidance on effective lesson planning that incorporates strategies for deeper reading.

Funny, poignant, and packed with practical ideas that work in real classrooms, "Deeper Reading" is a valuable resource for any teacher whose students need new tools to uncover the riches found in complex texts.

In his new book, In the Best Interest of Students, Kelly Gallagher reminds us that standards come and go but what remains constant is the need to stay true to what we know works in the teaching of reading, writing, speaking and listening. Instead of blindly adhering to the latest standards movement, Kelly advocates: Dialing up the amount of reading and writing students are doing. Balancing rigorous, high-quality literature and non-fiction with high-interest, student-selected titles. Encouraging readers to deepen their comprehension by moving beyond the "four corners of the text." Using modeling to enrich students' writing skills in the prewriting, drafting, and revision stages. Resisting the de-emphasis of narrative and imaginative reading and writing. Planning lessons that move beyond Common Core expectations. Kelly is a strong voice of reason, reminding us that instruction should be anchored around one guiding question: What is in the best interest of our students?