Stenhouse Publishers

Can we skip lunch and keep writing?; collaborating in class and online, grades 3-8.

Alabama elementary school teacher Ramsay has 16-plus years of experience teaching reading and writing across content areas. She has discovered numerous innovative and interesting ways to put writing in the center of her classroom, and to encourage students to see writing as communication with a wider audience — not just an activity done in response to a teacher's prompt. Here she shares with fellow teachers a variety of techniques for using technology-assisted writing to create engaged, productive, digitally-competent students. The tools and projects are suitable whether working with an open-ended curriculum or very prescriptive subject requirements. While designed for teachers in the intermediate and middle-grades, many of the concepts and examples could be adapted to other grades and situations, such as ESL and adult education. Additional materials are available at a free companion website. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Math exchanges; guiding young mathematicians in small-group meetings.

Wedekind, an elementary math coach, describes an original approach to short, small-group instruction sessions where all students' interests and contributions are valued. In the workshops described here, K-3 students actively construct their understanding of a particular topic and come together in small groups to share ideas. One key to using the method is an understanding of different problem types and children's successful and not-so-successful problem-solving strategies for each type. Full of ideas for planning, the book offers many examples of activities and workshop sessions, illustrated with vignettes, classroom photos, examples of children's work, and summary tables. Appendices offer teacher planning tools such as monthly and weekly charts and record keeping tools. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Moving the classroom outdoors; schoolyard-enhanced learning in action.

Broda (education, Ashland U.) explains how K-8 teachers and administrators can make the schoolyard a learning resource. He focuses on basic elements and features that can be created inexpensively, do not depend on a lot of help from consultants, and do not require participation from the entire faculty. He discusses planning and barriers, parental and volunteer involvement, fundraising, urban challenges, and integration with technology. He also details examples of schoolyard-enhanced learning in about 30 urban, suburban, and rural schools, nature centers, and organizations in the US and Canada, with ideas for seating, signage, planting, teaching and meeting areas, outdoor classroom management, pathways, equipment storage, and raised gardens, and activities. B&w photos support the text. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Real revision; authors' strategies to share with student writers.

Messner, a seventh-grade English teacher, is the award-winning author of The Brilliant Fall of Gianna Z. In this unique resource, she helps teachers lead middle-school students through the revision process by using techniques from 34 real-life authors of middle-grade titles such as The Strange Case of Origami Yoda, The Crossing, and the Babymouse series. Two-page spreads on each mentor author offer brief profiles, excerpts from interviews giving insight on how they edit and revise their work, and related student exercises on creating and deleting characters and scenes and making language more vivid, with reproducible worksheets provided in an appendix. Messner gives tips on creating a revision-friendly classroom and creating a space safe to talk about student writing, along with many ideas on brainstorming, planning, researching, and copyediting. She also offers notes on using Microsoft Word's editing features, such as the comment feature, and other technology tools such as author blogs, Skype chats, and classroom Twitter accounts. The mentor author pages are illustrated with b&w photos of the authors and their book jackets. The book also includes b&w classroom photos, as well as photos of Messner's own in-progress manuscripts from her novels. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)