Category: Book Reviews

Empower Students with Metacognition Skills

In Metacognition: The Neglected Skill Set, Robin Fogarty and Brian Pete offer 30 grab-and-go strategies to help students create a new habit of mind, writes middle school director Jeny Randall. Along with tools for teaching, they invite us to hone our own metacognitive skills.

How to Help Students Think for Themselves

A Teacher’s Guide to Philosophy for Children is a short, comprehensive approach to teaching students the process of thinking for themselves. Instead of being the giver of knowledge, teachers can focus on helping students find answers worth knowing, writes Erin Corrigan-Smith.

Kids Today Need the Skills of a Generalist

Noting that Thinking Like a Generalist is “exactly the type of book a busy teacher needs,” educator Michael DiClemente says the book explains how to help students become truth seekers, developing questions and getting answers they need using concrete and practical skills.

Using Menus to Differentiate Literature

Differentiating Instruction with Menus: Literature (3-5) provides a variety of excellent activities to involve students in thoughtful and purposeful engagement with and response to texts. Some teachers may wish to substitute more diverse texts, writes Sarah Pennington.

8 Ways to Revitalize Your School Leadership

This year the complex and demanding job of a school principal has become even more difficult and challenging. In her book Principal Reboot Jen Schwanke shares ways you can “relax, rediscover, and revive” your success as a principal, writes retired principal Frank Hagen.

Where Reading and Writing Converge

Using the ideas in The Literacy Workshop: Where Reading and Writing Converge can transform literacy teaching, writes Linda Biondi. The authors offer an easy-to-follow, research-based guide as teachers journey into making a dual reading-writing workshop a reality.

A Toolbox Packed with Practical Math Ideas

In The Math Teacher’s Toolbox Bobson Wong and Larisa Bukalov offer strategies, tools, resources and advice that will help any math teacher better serve middle and high school learners. Laura Von Staden says the book should be part of all new math teacher training.

Key Insights for New and Aspiring School Leaders

Navigating the Principalship offers real insight into a principal’s work, spending equal time on the rewards and challenges of the job. Teacher leader and aspiring principal Michael DiClemente says new and soon-to-be school leaders will benefit from the book’s many profiles.

Mentor Texts Can Help Kids Grasp Grammar

In The Elementary School Grammar Toolkit Sean Ruday shows how to use mentor texts as a tool to help kids connect with engaging material as they learn proper writing conventions. Teacher Kathie Palmieri says the book will enrich writing in the intermediate grades and beyond.