Both students and teachers will love this handy guide that features twelve classroom-tested strategies that add value to story writing. It will help students set and reach personal goals for using effective planning strategies, writing better beginnings and endings, writing with voice, dealing with spelling and usage demons, using purposeful revision strategies, and much more.

From focusing on meaning and technique to sharing and transforming texts, Reading in the Real World is full of simple yet effective ways to read all text forms with confidence. Strategies to use before, during, and after reading help students discover how meaning and technique work together in real-world texts.

Based on the many forms of texts that modern readers encounter, the book uses familiar genres to guide readers to a better understanding of new text formats. It includes reproducible organizers and examples--ranging from stories and poetry to comics and print...

Teachers recognize that frequent independent reading increases student knowledge on a wide range of topics, enhances vocabulary, and improves comprehension. Ban the Book Report inspires teachers to go beyond narrow and analytical book reports by exploring the potential of book talks, alternate book covers, identifying features of informational books, newspaper headlines and articles, talk-show interviews, diary entries for characters and letters to authors. This remarkable resource offers more than twenty specific assignments with its own rubric written in student-friendly language...