Write Track


Book Description







Real-World Writers: A Handbook for Teaching Writing with 7-11 Year Olds


Book Description

Real-World Writers shows teachers how they can teach their pupils to write well and with pleasure, purpose and power. It demonstrates how classrooms can be transformed into genuine communities of writers where talking, reading, writing and sharing give children confidence, motivation and a sense of the relevance writing has to their own lives and learning. Based on their practical experience and what research says is the most effective practice, the authors share detailed guidance on how teachers can provide writing study lessons drawing on what real writers do and how to teach grammar effectively. They also share a variety of authentic class writing projects with accompanying teacher notes that will encourage children to use genres appropriately, creatively and flexibly. The authors’ simple yet comprehensive approach includes how to teach the processes and craft knowledge involved in creating successful and meaningful texts. This book is invaluable for all primary practitioners who wish to teach writing for real.




School, Family, and Community Partnerships


Book Description

Strengthen programs of family and community engagement to promote equity and increase student success! When schools, families, and communities collaborate and share responsibility for students′ education, more students succeed in school. Based on 30 years of research and fieldwork, the fourth edition of the bestseller School, Family, and Community Partnerships: Your Handbook for Action, presents tools and guidelines to help develop more effective and more equitable programs of family and community engagement. Written by a team of well-known experts, it provides a theory and framework of six types of involvement for action; up-to-date research on school, family, and community collaboration; and new materials for professional development and on-going technical assistance. Readers also will find: Examples of best practices on the six types of involvement from preschools, and elementary, middle, and high schools Checklists, templates, and evaluations to plan goal-linked partnership programs and assess progress CD-ROM with slides and notes for two presentations: A new awareness session to orient colleagues on the major components of a research-based partnership program, and a full One-Day Team Training Workshop to prepare school teams to develop their partnership programs. As a foundational text, this handbook demonstrates a proven approach to implement and sustain inclusive, goal-linked programs of partnership. It shows how a good partnership program is an essential component of good school organization and school improvement for student success. This book will help every district and all schools strengthen and continually improve their programs of family and community engagement.




A Poetry Handbook


Book Description

With passion, wit, and good common sense, the celebrated poet Mary Oliver tells of the basic ways a poem is built-meter and rhyme, form and diction, sound and sense. Drawing on poems from Robert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, and others, Oliver imparts an extraordinary amount of information in a remarkably short space. "Stunning" (Los Angeles Times). Index.




Write Like this


Book Description

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. Recognizing 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 emphasizes 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, analyze 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.




Books to Build On


Book Description

The invaluable grade-by-grade guide (kindergarten—sixth) is designed to help parents and teachers select some of the best books for children. Books to Build On recommends: • for kindergartners, lively collections of poetry and stories, such as The Children’s Aesop, and imaginative alphabet books such as Bill Martin, Jr.’s Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and Lucy Micklewait’s I Spy: An Alphabet in Art • for first graders, fine books on the fine arts, such as Ann Hayes’s Meet the Orchestra, the hands-on guide My First Music Book, and the thought-provoking Come Look with Me series of art books for children • for second graders, books that open doors to world cultures and history, such as Leonard Everett Fisher’s The Great Wall of China and Marcia Willaims’s humorous Greek Myths for Young Children • for third graders, books that bring to life the wonders of ancient Rome, such as Living in Ancient Rome, and fascinating books about astronomy, such as Seymour Simon’s Our Solar System • for fourth graders, engaging books on history, including Jean Fritz’s Shh! We're Writing the Constitution, and many books on Africa, including the stunningly illustrated story of Sundiata: Lion King of Mali • for fifth graders, a version of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream that retains much of the original language but condenses the play for reading or performance by young students, and Michael McCurdy’s Escape from Slavery: The Boyhood of Frederick Douglass • for sixth graders, an eloquent retelling of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and the well-written American history series, A History of US . . . and many, many more!







Writing Works


Book Description

Writing Works is a guide for writers or therapists working with groups or individuals and is full of practical advice on everything from the equipment needed to run a session to ideas for themes, all backed up by the theory that underpins the methods explained. Practitioners contribute detailed accounts of organizing writing workshops for clients.




Developmental Editing


Book Description

The only guide dedicated solely to developmental editing, now revised and updated with new exercises and a chapter on fiction. Developmental editing—transforming a manuscript into a book that edifies, inspires, and sells—is a special skill, and Scott Norton is one of the best at it. With more than three decades of experience in the field, Norton offers his expert advice on how to approach the task of diagnosing and fixing structural problems with book manuscripts in consultation with authors and publishers. He illustrates these principles through a series of detailed case studies featuring before-and-after tables of contents, samples of edited text, and other materials to make an otherwise invisible process tangible. This revised edition for the first time includes exercises that allow readers to edit sample materials and compare their work with that of an experienced professional as well as a new chapter on the unique challenges of editing fiction. In addition, it features expanded coverage of freelance business arrangements, self-published authors, e-books, content marketing, and more. Whether you are an aspiring or experienced developmental editor or an author who works alongside one, you will benefit from Norton’s accessible, collaborative, and realistic approach and guidance. This handbook offers the concrete and essential tools it takes to help books to find their voice and their audience.