Teaching Mockingbird


Book Description

Teaching Mockingbird presents educators with the materials they need to transform how they teach Harper Lee's novel To Kill a Mockingbird. Interweaving the historical context of Depression-era rural Southern life, and informed by Facing History's pedagogical approach, this resource introduces layered perspectives and thoughtful strategies into the teaching of To Kill a Mockingbird. This teacher's guide provides English language arts teachers with student handouts, close reading exercises, and connection questions that will push students to build a complex understanding of the historical realities, social dynamics, and big moral questions at the heart of To Kill a Mockingbird. Following Facing History's scope and sequence, students will consider the identities of the characters, and the social dynamics of the community of Maycomb, supplementing their understanding with deep historical exploration. They will consider challenging questions about the individual choices that determine the outcome of Tom Robinson's trial, and the importance of civic participation in the building a more just society. Teaching Mockingbird uses Facing History's guiding lens to examine To Kill a Mockingbird, offering material that will enhance student's literary skills, moral growth, and social development.




Reading Reconsidered


Book Description

TEACH YOUR STUDENTS TO READ WITH PRECISION AND INSIGHT The world we are preparing our students to succeed in is one bound together by words and phrases. Our students learn their literature, history, math, science, or art via a firm foundation of strong reading skills. When we teach students to read with precision, rigor, and insight, we are truly handing over the key to the kingdom. Of all the subjects we teach reading is first among equals. Grounded in advice from effective classrooms nationwide, enhanced with more than 40 video clips, Reading Reconsidered takes you into the trenches with actionable guidance from real-life educators and instructional champions. The authors address the anxiety-inducing world of Common Core State Standards, distilling from those standards four key ideas that help hone teaching practices both generally and in preparation for assessments. This 'Core of the Core' comprises the first half of the book and instructs educators on how to teach students to: read harder texts, 'closely read' texts rigorously and intentionally, read nonfiction more effectively, and write more effectively in direct response to texts. The second half of Reading Reconsidered reinforces these principles, coupling them with the 'fundamentals' of reading instruction—a host of techniques and subject specific tools to reconsider how teachers approach such essential topics as vocabulary, interactive reading, and student autonomy. Reading Reconsidered breaks an overly broad issue into clear, easy-to-implement approaches. Filled with practical tools, including: 44 video clips of exemplar teachers demonstrating the techniques and principles in their classrooms (note: for online access of this content, please visit my.teachlikeachampion.com) Recommended book lists Downloadable tips and templates on key topics like reading nonfiction, vocabulary instruction, and literary terms and definitions. Reading Reconsidered provides the framework necessary for teachers to ensure that students forge futures as lifelong readers.




To Kill a Mockingbird in the Classroom


Book Description

This book examines ways of engaging students as they study Harper Lee's novel. Included are collaborative learning, discussion, writing, and inquiry-based projects as well as activities related to the film version of To Kill a Mockingbird. Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel To Kill a Mockingbird is a staple of secondary school curricula nationwide. The novel has never been out of print since its initial publication in 1960 and continues to enjoy both critical and popular success worldwide. To Kill a Mockingbird in the Classroom: Walking in Someone Else's Shoes examines ways of engaging students as they study Lee's novel. Included are collaborative learning, discussion, writing, and inquiry-based projects as well as activities related to the film version of To Kill a Mockingbird. The twelfth book in the NCTE High School Literature Series, this volume features sample student work and excerpts of relevant literary criticism and reviews.




To Kill a Mockingbird


Book Description

Voted America's Best-Loved Novel in PBS's The Great American Read Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning masterwork of honor and injustice in the deep South—and the heroism of one man in the face of blind and violent hatred One of the most cherished stories of all time, To Kill a Mockingbird has been translated into more than forty languages, sold more than forty million copies worldwide, served as the basis for an enormously popular motion picture, and was voted one of the best novels of the twentieth century by librarians across the country. A gripping, heart-wrenching, and wholly remarkable tale of coming-of-age in a South poisoned by virulent prejudice, it views a world of great beauty and savage inequities through the eyes of a young girl, as her father—a crusading local lawyer—risks everything to defend a black man unjustly accused of a terrible crime.




When We Get There


Book Description

Over the course of one winter in 1974, in the coal-mining town of Banning, Pennsylvania, the youngest member of a large and boisterous Eastern European family gives himself a tall order: to find his mother, who recently disappeared without explanation. Lucas, an only child whose father died several years earlier in a coa-mine blast, lives with the legacy of loss. Despite his heavy inheritance, Lucas is still just a thirteen-year-old boy puzzling out the world around him. He shuttles between the homes of his family elders whose old-world ways he can't quite understand. When Zoli, his mother's embittered admirer, takes it upon himself to find his lost love, violence and retribution escalate until no one, especially Lucas, is safe. As he struggles to find his place in this unsettling landscape, Lucas's extended family and close-knit ethnic community circle around him. Set against the collapse of the industry that has sustained the family and the town for generations, When We Get There is a startling tale of one family's long winter-and the spring that eventually comes hard on winter's heels.




Classroom Guide: to Kill a Mockingbird


Book Description

This classroom guide for To Kill a Mockingbird provides numerous activities designed to foster student engagement, learning, and a meaningful connection to literature. It is the perfect companion to introducing To Kill a Mockingbird in any classroom!Contained in this book are sample activities on annotating, close reading, outlining, essay prompts and essential questions. Other instructional guides simply give basic details of the literature, meaning that students read over material without digesting or learning it. Other guides take complex themes, concepts, and information and just regurgitate it to readers. This Classroom Guide series is different, in that the activities ASK of the students, and focus on citing evidence from the text in order to complete and reflect on your reading.Designed under the guidance of an experienced and certified educator, these activities guide series GUIDES the learner to discovering the answers for themselves, creating a fully detailed study guide, in the user's own words. Filled with guided reading activities, students are able to fill this guidebook with the information they gather, as they seek a deeper understanding of the text. If you read it, write it, and reflect on it, you will learn it!Teachers, you can also purchase a set of these books (or one book and make copies) for your entire class. It makes the perfect guided reading activity and will teach students how to internalize the reading, note taking, and learning process that advanced readers naturally perform. These make the perfect workbook to keep your class engaged and learning. And if your budget is an issue, feel free once you purchase to book, to make as many copies as you want for your classroom!




A Classroom Guide to to Kill a Mockingbird


Book Description

There are plenty of cheaper Mockingbird guides out there; so why choose this one? (1) It's substantial, with more than 250 pages filled with all of the features that make Craig's guides thorough, practical, and insightful: chapter summaries, commentary, and ready-to-copy exploratory questions, quizzes, tests, vocabulary, literary activities, projects and writing ideas, research, and much more. (2) It contains a play adaptation of the trial scenes, with intervening critical thinking questions students can use to lead the class in presentations and interpretive discussions. (3) It was published in August of 2015, and that means it includes activities that incorporate Lee's second novel, Go Set a Watchman, and recent events across the United States, from Ferguson, Missouri to Charleston, South Carolina and New York City. With Craig's guide, teachers will have even more reason to taut Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel for being as relevant today as it was in the years immediately following its publication in 1960.




Gcse "to Kill a Mockingbird" Text Guide


Book Description

This CGP Text Guide contains everything you need to write top-grade essays about Harper Lee's 'To Kill a Mockingbird'. It's suitable for all GCSE English exams, including the new ones starting in summer 2017. Inside, you'll find clear, thorough notes on the novel's context, plot, characters, themes and the writer's techniques - with quick questions, in-depth questions and exam-style questions included at the end of every section. There's also detailed exam advice to help you improve your grades, plus a cartoon-strip summary to remind you of all the important plot points!