Teaching and learning in grades 4-8

Making Room for Poetry in Standards-Based Classes

How often do you share poetry with students? Reading interventionist and literacy coach Gwen Flaskamp shows how increasing students’ experience with poetry can build literacy, analytical and social-emotional skills and help meet Common Core standards.

How Visualization Can Improve Comprehension

Jeff Wilhelm’s practical strategies – including unique frontloading ideas for addressing prior knowledge – will set students up for using visualization techniques that can improve reading comprehension, says literacy consultant Anne Anderson.

Training Parents to Help in School

Former teacher Paddy Eger offers detailed training guidelines to prepare adult assistants for the classroom, says reviewer Karen Linch. “I spent many years learning to be a teacher, so it makes perfect sense that parents and volunteers need to be trained.”

Negotiating Science through Writing

In this thought-provoking book, the teacher-authors’ Science Writing Heuristic (SWH) strategy goes beyond the argumentation of the subtitle, says reviewer and science teacher Tracey Muise, modeling how learning can be driven by student inquiry.

How Leadership Impacts Learning

Linking Leadership to Student Learning draws on a major US study to reveal how school leaders actually impact student achievement, says reviewer Holly Procida. Key finding: Collaborative leadership has more impact than individual leadership.

Self-Assessment: My Final Rubric

Middle grades teacher Mary Tarashuk has reached the final rubric in her state’s mandated teacher self-assessment: Professional Responsibilities. She says the words used to define “highly effective” performance seem out of synch with real teaching.

Teaching Media Literacy: It’s the Diet Ad Season

What does the annual avalanche of diet advertising mean to the classroom teacher? It’s a teachable moment, says media literacy expert Frank Baker — an opportunity to sharpen visual literacy and critical thinking skills and bring the Common Core standard for argument writing into play.