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Brain Rules:  12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School by John Medina

From Publishers Weekly

"Multitasking is the great buzz word in business today, but as developmental molecular biologist Medina tells readers in a chapter on attention, the brain can really only focus on one thing at a time. This alone is the best argument for not talking on your cellphone while driving. Medina (The Genetic Inferno) presents readers with a basket containing an even dozen good principles on how the brain works and how we can use them to our benefit at home and work. The author says our visual sense trumps all other senses, so pump up those PowerPoint presentations with graphics. The author says that we don't sleep to give our brain a rest—studies show our neurons firing furiously away while the rest of the body is catching a few z's. While our brain indeed loses cells as we age, it compensates so that we continue to be able to learn well into our golden years. Many of these findings and minutiae will be familiar to science buffs, but the author employs an appealing style, with suggestions on how to apply his principles, which should engage all readers."

                                                                                                               Review posted at www.amazon.com

 

The Continum of Literacy Learning (K-8) by Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell

" Gay Su Pinnell and Irene Fountas understand that a high-quality curriculum is the important first step toward good teaching and successful learning. Good curriculum comes from knowing what students can do, can almost do, and need to learn how to do as readers, writers, and language users. In The Continuum of Literacy Learning, Grades K-8 they combine everything they have learned about literacy development to create a powerful tool that enables curriculum coordinators and literacy specialists to observe teaching and learning, to plan responsive instruction, and to ensure consistency across buildings, grades, or classrooms.
Across the Grades
The Continuum of Literacy Learning, Grades K-8 places the behaviors and understandings children can be expected to demonstrate on continua that reflect seven critical instructional contexts:
Level by Level
The first six continua are organized by grade, while the guided reading milestones are laid out level-by-level along Pinnell and Fountas' A-Z gradient to facilitate reading instruction at the precise level at which it is most appropriate to support new learning.
This helpful representation of goals for literacy growth make it easy to analyze whether curriculum goals are aligned among grades, buildings, or districts. They can serve as a foundation for the creation of responsive, flexible curriculum documents. And, they present the information in Pinnell and Fountas' Continua for grades K-2 and 3-8 in a different organization that enables literacy specialists and coaches to effectively communicate commonly shared expectations that are grounded in research and expressed as teaching practices. In fact, they provide numerous opportunities for conversations with teachers about:
Discover the convenient, easy-to-read resource that supports every aspect of your curriculum by presenting a unified vision of language and literacy development. Read The Continuum of Literacy Learning, Grades K-8 and discover the key to a new standard for excellence in literacy education."
 

                  

                                                                                                  Book Description from Amazon http://www.amazon.com

 

The Daily Five by Gail Boushey and Joan Moser (K-6)

Do you love teaching but feel exhausted from the energy you expend cajoling, disciplining, and directing students on a daily basis? If so, you'll want to meet “The Sisters”, Gail Boushey and Joan Moser. Based on literacy learning and motivation research, they created a structure called The Daily Five which has been practiced and refined in their own classrooms for ten years, and shared with thousands of teachers throughout the United States. The Daily Five is a series of literacy tasks (reading to self, reading with someone, writing, word work, and listening to reading) which students complete daily while the teacher meets with small groups or confers with individuals.

This book not only explains the philosophy behind the structure, but shows you how to carefully and systematically train your students to participate in each of the five components.

Explicit modeling practice, reflecting and refining take place during the launching phase, preparing the foundation for a year of meaningful content instruction tailored to meet the needs of each child.

The Daily Five is more than a management system or a curriculum framework; it is a structure that will help students develop the habits that lead to a lifetime of independent literacy.

                                                                                                                   Book Description from Amazon http://www.amazon.com

 

 

Discipline with Dignity by Richard Curwin, Allen Mendler and Brian Mendler

"If you only read one book about teaching, read this one. If you read two books about teaching, read this one twice. I read this for the first time in the middle of my sixth year of teaching and it changed my classroom more than anything else I have ever tried.

On the surface the message of this book seems obvious: treat students with respect and they will treat you with respect. But anyone who has been in front of a classroom knows that it isn't that simple. This book gives you the why and the how. It walks you through the steps, and the authors clearly know what it is like to be a teacher.

The new edition includes important updates that make the book even more relevant to teaching today. It also includes a section at the end of each chapter for administrators. If you want even the students who are failing your class to know that you care about them as individuals, even the kids who you give detention to to say you are their favorite teacher, even the totally checked out kids to check in every once in a while, then you need to read this.

I can't guarantee that it will change your life, but it did change mine." Review posted on Amazon.com  from: Discipline With Dignity: New Challenges, New Solutions (Paperback)

 

Teach Like a Champion: 49 Techniques that Put Students on the Path to
      College by Doug Lemov

"Teach Like a Champion offers effective teaching techniques to help teachers... become champions in the classroom. These powerful techniques are concrete, specific, and are easy to put into action the very next day. Training activities at the end of each chapter help the reader  further their understanding through reflection and application of the ideas to their own practice. The book includes a DVD of 25 video clips of teachers demonstrating the techniques in the classroom.  

Among the techniques:
 No Opt Out :How to move students from the blank stare or stubborn shrug to giving the right answer every time. 
 No Warning: If you're angry with your students, it usually means you should be angry with yourself. This technique shows how to effectively address misbehaviors in your classroom."

                                                                      Book Description from Wiley Knowledge for Generations http://www.wiley.com

 

Teaching Writing in the Middle School: What Every English Teacher Needs to Know (5-9) by Laura Robb
             

“My whole goal with this book was to come at teaching writing from the angle that matters most: students’ perspective. They taught me what I needed to know to make this book live up to their passion for writing.”
—Laura Robb

Adolescents have robust and rewarding writing lives outside of school that involve journals, emails, text messages, blogs, and an astounding array of genres. Unlike their personal reading lives that teachers frequently tap into, their personal writings typically exist under the curricular radar—that is until now.

While grounded in the common schedule constraints and curriculum demands of middle school, Laura Robb’s Teaching Middle School Writers offers teachers lessons and routines that are uncommonly attuned to adolescents’ developmental and social needs. As she taps into the energy and enthusiasm of adolescents’ personal writing lives, Laura presents:
• writing plans that support first drafts
• strategies for crafting leads that grab and endings that satisfy
• grammar lessons that address writing conventions
• editing lessons that have students revise their writing before the teacher reads it
• guidelines for grading and responding to student work.

Straight-from-the-classroom writing samples and videos give teachers the opportunity to see how Laura uses compelling questions and powerful mentor texts to teach writing, support struggling writers, and weave twenty-first century literacies into the writing curriculum. Throughout, teachers learn ways of connecting to students’ lives in order to bring out their best writing, their best self."

                                                                                  Book Description from http://www.heinemann.com

 

What if Your ABC’s Were Your 123’s?  by Leslie Minton
              

Transform the way you think about and teach elementary-level mathematics!

"While many teachers feel confident about their preparation and strategic repertoire for literacy instruction, some are less confident about their preparation and content depth for teaching math. Based on the idea that mathematics and reading are two subject areas more alike than different, What If Your ABCs Were Your 123s? illustrates the parallels between literacy and mathematics and helps elementary teachers take what they know about teaching literacy and apply that knowledge to strengthen their math instruction.

Designed for the primary and elementary levels, this practical handbook illustrates how teachers can deepen their own mathematical understanding and improve students' achievement."

                                                                                                                 Book Description from Amazon http://www.amazon.com

What Really Matters in RTI  by Dick Allington
              

 "Literacy researcher and best-selling author Dick Allington offers clear recommendations and a teacher-friendly framework to guide classroom teachers in designing response to intervention programs.  To help teachers acquire a fuller understanding of the complexity of response to intervention designs, literacy researcher and best-selling author Dick Allington offers clear recommendations to guide classroom teachers in designing response to instruction (RtI) programs such that struggling readers will develop their reading proficiencies to match those of their achieving peers.  MARKET: Written for administrators and teachers, reading specialists, school psychologists, and classroom teachers who serve kindergarten through ninth grade. "

                                                                                              Book Description from Amazon http://www.amazon.com

When Kids Can't Read (6-12) by Kylene Beers
              

Review

“If I had to recommend just one book to middle and secondary teachers working to support struggling readers, this would have to be the book. When Kids Cant Read, What Teachers Can Do is a comprehensive handbook filled with practical strategies that teachers of all subjects can use to make reading skills transparent and accessible to adolescents. Blending theory with practice throughout, Kylene Beers moves teachers from assessment to instruction from describing dependent reading behaviours to suggesting ways to help students with vocabulary, fluency, comprehension, word recognition, response to text, and so much more. But its not just the strategies that make this book so valuable. Its the invitations to step inside a classroom and eavesdrop on teacher/student interactions. Its the student profiles, the if/then charts, the extensive booklists and, of course, the experiences of a brilliant reading teacher. This is simply the best book published to date to support struggling adolescent readers!”–Gillda Leitenberg,District-wide Coordinator, English/Literacy Toronto District School Board

                                                                                                          Book Description from Amazon http://www.amazon.com