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"What is the very best instruction for English learners? How do we capitalize on and further develop the linguistic knowledge and skill of this segment of society? Nonie Lesaux and Julie Harris are exceedingly well qualified to address these questions. On the cutting edge of EL instruction, their combination of research knowledge and practical experience makes for guidance that can be trusted, and implemented, in classrooms throughout the country." --Nell Duke, Series Editor, University of Michigan In today's linguistically diverse elementary classrooms, research suggests that a universal approach to building academic vocabulary and conceptual knowledge holds huge promise for closing the opportunity gaps among English learners. In Cultivating Knowledge, Building Language, Nonie Lesaux and Julie Harris present a knowledge-based approach to literacy instruction that supports young English learners' development of academic content and vocabulary knowledge and sets them up for reading success

The ABC's of Emergent Literacy video and guide provide information about and strategies for promoting emergent literacy in child care settings -- guide.

Increasingly, research supports the importance of teaching children to read and write informational text, but few resources show us how to do it well. This book fills that gap. The authors explain why it's important to weave informational text into the primary curriculum. From there, they provide a framework for organizing your time and space, and classroom-tested strategies for incorporating informational text into reading, writing, and the content areas. For use with Grades K-3.

Too often in classrooms, English Learners are described by what they cannot do, rather than by what they can do. Particularly in mainstream classrooms in which teachers have little or no training in how to meet their needs, ELs are seen through a deficit lens. In No More Low Expectations for English Learners, esteemed EL researcher Jana Echevarria argues that teacher attitude affects student achievement, and describes what best practice methods for supporting ELs academic achievement look like. Julie Nora, an educator and advocate, offers strategies to provide the instructional supports ELs need for both language acquisition and content-area learning. Together, Julie and Jana provide a framework of understandings and practices to make you a more capable teacher of English Learners.

"In general, teacher training and teacher evaluation prioritize lesson planning and learning objectives, not strategies for building relationships with students. Yet we know that learning depends on relationships; children cannot learn from people they don't like or who dislike them. Too often teachers, usually unconsciously, make the decision not to have a relationship with a student and thereby deny that student access to their education. This book focuses on the foundations of building relationships with students, even when difficult"--

While most parents understand the importance of promoting literacy in their young children, they often aren't sure how to do it. This book provides guidance. Taking a "literacy-throughout-the-day" approach, the authors organize the book around spaces in the home--the kitchen, bedroom, living room, and so forth--and suggest fun, stimulating activities for building children's reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills in those spaces. They also offer suggestions for building literacy away from the home, for example, at the grocery store, in the car, and on vacation. They end with a chapter entitled "Advocating for Literacy in Your Child's Educational Setting" that helps you build strong relationships with young children's teachers and caregivers. Filled with practical tips, checklists, photos, suggestions for children's books, developmental milestones to watch for, and great ideas to try today, Beyond Bedtime Stories is essential reading.

No More Sharpening Pencils during Work Time and Other Time Wasters shows you where to find more classroom time as well as research-based ways to align crucial classroom minutes with the goals you have for learners. The most important learning in any classroom occurs when students actively engage in work that matters, so clearing away anything that siphons off learning time is crucial. Elizabeth Brinkerhoff and Alysia Roehrig provide tools for assessing your classroom time, a summary of pertinent research, and suggestions for planning and teaching that help make every minute count. Their strategies will help you create and leverage instructional opportunities by: finding new efficiencies in your classroom management; improving alignment between instruction and learning objectives; increasing the time students spend in higher-level thinking. --

"Pencils ready? On your mark...get set...begin!" Remember flipping over a page full of unrelated fact problems and scrambling to answer as many as possible in a minute? Remember trying to memorize math facts by rote? Many of our children are still asked to learn this way-even though research shows this approach can harm student learning more than help. Explore an effective, research-based approach to math fact instruction. No More Math Fact Frenzy examines this research and concludes that our approaches to math fact instruction are often ineffective. We want our students to know their math facts. We know they're better mathematicians when they're comfortable with them. Yet the ways we ask students to learn them in many classrooms remain unproductive. To address this, the authors outline three phases for helping students master their math facts. Building foundational concepts and strategies Learning more efficient reasoning strategies Meaningful, ongoing practice leading to full fact fluency Then they share recommendations for all three phrases: activities and games that build number sense, strategies that lead to flexible thinking, and ways to create and sustain a classroom culture of fluency. This kind of teaching helps students learn their math facts more successfully-and with less stress and anxiety. "When we emphasize foundation concepts and reasoning strategies as the path towards building authentic fluency, students can develop their number sense, articulate their thinking, and understand the reasoning of others." -Linda Ruiz Davenport, Connie S. Henry, Douglas H. Clements, and Julie Sarama

Every child is a cultural being with a unique history and rich cultural practices; a member of communities in and outside of school. Yet too many children spend their days inside classrooms where they rarely find their voices, values, and cultural practices reflected in curriculum materials, much less embraced and celebrated through instructional practices. Culturally relevant teaching is essential, now more than ever. If we want children to develop as successful learners, we must communicate that they belong in our classrooms. They need to see themselves, their cultures, their families, and their communities reflected in the materials and resources they find there. Culturally relevant teachers honor students' identities by positioning them at the center of teaching and learning. Each and every day, they make sure children and their families feel that they belong in school. They include multiple perspectives and points of view in the curriculum. In this book, four teachers who teach in richly diverse classrooms and have studied culturally relevant pedagogy for years with researcher Mariana Souto-Manning, share specific practices, strategies, and tools that make their teaching culturally relevant. Join the authors of No More Culturally Irrelevant Teaching and show your students that their lives do matter...in teaching, in learning, and in society.

Gaining knowledge from informational texts is an essential academic skill. Yet for too many English Learners, this skill is not developed sufficiently and as they move from elementary into middle school, the reading gap becomes a knowledge gap. This doesn't have to happen, researcher Ana Taboada Barber explains, if we support EL's reading of informational texts by pairing motivation practices with explicit reading comprehension instruction. Taboada Barber shows us that "When we make motivation part of reading instruction, we show ELs that education is about identity and agency; we acknowledge who they are right now and invite them to grow through and by reading. The comprehension strategies and motivational practices discussed in this book help us identify tools to use with informational texts that foster curiosity rather than frustration." In Reading to Learn for ELs, Taboada Barber provides models of her instructional framework for reading informational texts so that reading teachers, content-area teachers, and ESL teachers alike can take on the work of teaching English Learners how to succeed and gain knowledge through reading informational texts.