In Text Sets in Action: Pathways through Content Area Literacy, Mary Ann Cappiello and Erika Thulin Dawes reveal how text sets can prompt serious thinking far more effectively than a textbook or any single text. As the authors explain, exploring many texts leads teachers and learners to 'think more deeply, empathize more fully, and take action more deliberately.' Teachers who adopt this approach find that the texts' various lenses enable students not only to meet curriculum standards but also to experience lasting engagement and a spirit of inquiry across the disciplines. This book will: Move beyond what is merely required and inspire integrated, customized curriculum. Demonstrate how teachers can build on students' interests and questions. Provide resources and suggestions for designing text sets – books, news articles, websites, YouTube videos, primary source documents, and works of art. Offer logical and creative ways to sequence texts. Demonstrate how text sets can scaffold, differentiate, and extend students' learning. Present specific invitations for designing, curating, and juxtaposing multi-genre, multi-model texts, accessible for at-home learning as well as in classrooms. Share a panoply of student work in response to learning with text sets. When texts are intentionally sequenced and juxtaposed with one another, readers discover different ways to see and explain the world around them. Immersion into text sets fosters critical thinking and appreciation for different points of view, which is crucial in nurturing a respect for diversity and preserving democracy.

From the authors of the popular blog and resource for teachers, The Classroom Bookshelf, this book offers a framework and teaching ideas for using recently released children's and young adult literature to build a culture of inquiry and engagement from a text-first approach. Reading With Purpose is designed to help K–8 teachers tap into their inner reader, to make intentional text selections for their students, and to create joyful and purpose-driven literacy learning experiences. The heart of the book is organized according to four purposes for selecting and using literature: care for ourselves and one another, connect with the past to understand the present, closely observe the world around us, and cultivate critical consciousness. Each chapter includes classroom stories, accessible research, reasons for why this matters now, and criteria for selecting for this purpose. A final section provides teaching invitations that pair with suggested books but can also be used with any high-quality book teachers may already have in their classrooms. Book Features: Builds on important work from thought leaders, urging teachers to create their own reading identities so they can help their students do the same. Describes a simple, sustainable framework teachers and teacher educators can use immediately to make more purposeful text selections. Provides myriad teaching ideas, narrative anecdotes from diverse classrooms, student work samples, and reflective questions. Offers a list of recommended, recently published children's and young adult literature.