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Curriculum Connections
Reading and Teaching with Diverse Nonfiction Children’s Books
Representations and Possibilities
Thomas Crisp, Suzanne M. Knezek, and Roberta Price Gardner, editors This edited collection brings together ongoing professional conversations about diverse children’s books and the role and function of nonfiction and informational text in K–8 classrooms. At a time in which truth, science, and reality are under attack, this volume challenges the fields of children’s literature and education to evolve, expand, and divest from the selective tradition and limited literary canons. Each chapter features an overview of relevant texts, criteria for selecting and evaluating nonfiction literature, practical pedagogical strategies, connections to primary sources, and a description of our contemporary context alongside arguments for why it is essential that educators include this literature in their classrooms, curricula, and libraries.
292 pp. | 2021 | Grades K–8 | ISBN 9780814139974 $30.36 member/$37.99 nonmember ebook: ISBN 9780814139981
Making Curriculum Pop
Developing Literacies in All Content Areas
Pam Goble and Ryan R. Goble From body art to baseball cards, comics to cathedrals, pie charts to power ballads . . . students need help navigating today’s media-rich world. And educators need help teaching today’s new media literacy. To be literate now means being able to read, write, listen, speak, view, and represent across all media—including both print and nonprint texts, such as film, TV, podcasts, websites, visual art, fashion, architecture, landscape, and music. This book offers secondary teachers in all content areas a flexible, interdisciplinary approach to integrate these literacies into their curriculum. Students form cooperative learning groups to evaluate media texts from various perspectives (artist, producer, sociologist, sound mixer, economist, poet, set designer, and more) and show their thinking using unique graphic organizers aligned to the Common Core State Standards. Digital content includes full-color reproducible student forms. Free Spirit Publishing and NCTE
213 pp. | 2016 | Grades 6–12 | ISBN 9781631980619 $39.99 member/nonmember
Nonfiction Writers Dig Deep
50 Award-Winning Children’s Book Authors Share the Secret of Engaging Writing
Melissa Stewart, editor In Nonfiction Writers Dig Deep, some of today’s most celebrated writers for children share essays that describe a critical part of the informational writing process that is often left out of classroom instruction. To craft engaging nonfiction, professional writers choose topics that fascinate them and explore concepts and themes that reflect their passions, personalities, beliefs, and experiences in the world. By scrutinizing the information they collect to make their own personal meaning, they create distinctive books that delight as well as inform. In addition to essays from mentor authors, the book includes a wide range of tips, tools, teaching strategies, and activity ideas from editor Melissa Stewart to help students (1) choose a topic, (2) focus that topic by identifying a core idea, theme, or concept, and (3) analyze their research to find a personal connection. By adding a piece of themselves to their drafts, students will learn to craft rich, unique prose.
190 pp. | 2020 | Grades K–12 | ISBN 9780814133521 $27.96 member/$34.99 nonmember ebook: ISBN 9780814133545
The Power of Picture Books
Using Content Area Literature in Middle School
Mary Jo Fresch and Peggy Harkins Picture books aren’t just for little kids. They are powerful and engaging texts that can help all middle school students succeed in language arts, math, science, social studies, and the arts. Picture books appeal to students of all readiness levels, interests, and learning styles. Featuring descriptions and activities for fifty exceptional titles, Mary Jo Fresch and Peggy Harkins offer a wealth of ideas for harnessing the power of picture books to improve reading and writing in the content areas. By incorporating picture books into the classroom, teachers across the disciplines can introduce new topics into their curriculum, help students develop nonfiction literacy skills, provide authentic and meaningful cultural perspectives, and help meet a wide range of learning needs.
147 pp. | 2009 | Grades 5–8 | ISBN 9780814136331 $23.96 member/$29.99 nonmember ebook: ISBN 9780814136317
Compose Our World
Alison G. Boardman, Antero Garcia, Bridget Dalton, and Joseph L. Polman Learn how to develop and sustain multimodal, project-based learning (PBL) instruction in secondary English language arts classrooms. National standards encourage authentic forms of reading, writing, and communication that can support college and career readiness, and this book highlights PBL as a powerful way to harness students’ interests and engage them in academically rigorous learning. The authors provide specific, researchinformed curricular approaches and instructional guidance for classroom teachers, as well as an overview of the dimensions of PBL that are often overlooked in the broad expectations of inquiry-based teaching. Instead of “quick fix” lessons, Compose Our World explores how core dimensions of equitable teaching—such as social and emotional support, universal design for learning, and cultivating classroom community—function as the bedrock for student success in PBL contexts and beyond. Teachers College Press, NCTE, and the National Writing Project
224 pp. | 2021 | Grades 9–12 | ISBN 9780807764541 $22.46 member/$29.95 nonmember
Discussion Pathways to Literacy Learning
Thomas M. McCann, Elizabeth A. Kahn, and Carolyn C. Walter This book examines the function of classroom discussion as an essential element in inquiry and literacy learning, providing examples of classroom discussion activities that have been part of an ongoing partnership between university professors and high school English teachers. The book draws on their research into the effect of discussion on literacy learning and offers examples of activities and guidelines for activities that teachers can use in their own practice. Through real classroom discussions, the authors show how participation in discussions can be pleasurable and meaningful experiences for adolescents, especially when they can choose the focus for their shared inquiry.
156 pp. | 2018 | Grades 9–College | ISBN 9780814112113 $23.96 member/$29.99 nonmember ebook: ISBN 9780814112120
A Symphony of Possibilities
A Handbook for Arts Integration in Secondary English Language Arts
Katherine J. Macro and Michelle Zoss, editors A Symphony of Possibilities explores arts-based pedagogies for secondary teachers of English language arts. Drama, music, poetry, public art, and visual art are explored in detail by experts in their fields sharing proven methods of instruction with secondary students and teachers. Each chapter looks at effective teaching methods that incorporate the arts into secondary English classrooms. Through the arts we see teachers and researchers who explore and expand upon comprehension, memory, issues of identity, and culturally relevant pedagogies. The arts challenge students to approach course material in personal and interactive ways. This book provides a resource for teachers who are looking for creative approaches to their teaching that will allow them to move their students into innovative and thoughtful learning spaces.
240 pp. | 2019 | Grades 7–12 | ISBN 9780814149713 $30.36 member/$37.99 nonmember ebook: ISBN 9780814149720
Susan L. Groenke and Lisa Scherff Foreword by Alan Sitomer Authors Susan L. Groenke and Lisa Scherff offer suggestions for incorporating YA lit into the high school curriculum by focusing on a few key questions:
● Which works of YA literature work better for whole-class instruction and which are more suitable for independent reading and/or small-group activities? ● What can teachers do with YA lit in whole-class instruction? ● How can teachers use YA novels to address the needs of diverse readers in mixed-ability classrooms? Each chapter opens with an introduction to and description of a different popular genre or award category of YA lit—science fiction, realistic teen fiction, graphic novels, Pura Belpré Award winners, nonfiction texts, poetry, historical YA fiction—and then offers suggestions within that genre for whole-class instruction juxtaposed with a young adult novel more suited for independent reading or small-group activities.
177 pp. | 2010 | Grades 9–12 | ISBN 9780814133705 $27.96 member/$34.99 nonmember
Food Literacy in and beyond the English Classroom
Joseph Franzen and Brent Peters
—Alice Waters, owner of Chez Panisse Restaurant and founder of the Edible Schoolyard Project
In 2010 Fern Creek High School in Louisville, Kentucky, was labeled failing by the state and had half of its teachers removed. Brent Peters, a former chef and current English teacher, and Joe Franzen, an eccentric urban homesteader and history teacher, were hired to help ignite students’ passion for learning. Say Yes to Pears tells the story of food literacy at Fern Creek High School and about how Food Lit works in the English classroom, beyond the English classroom, and beyond the school day. The book serves as a pedagogical guide on how to construct a place- and community-based program focused on creative and critical thought and action.
179 pp. | 2019 | Grades 9–12 | ISBN 9780814142417 $27.96 member/$34.99 nonmember ebook: ISBN 9780814142424
Making Middle School
Cultivating Critical Literacy and Interdisciplinary Learning in Maker Spaces
Steve Fulton and Cynthia D. Urbanski
Eighth-grade English teacher Steve Fulton and science teacher Tiffany Green explore the intersections between critical literacy and science through maker spaces alongside their students. With thinking partner Cindy Urbanski, they use the idea of make to center as well as democratize student learning in their classrooms, backloading English and science standards while front-loading the current focus on STEAM. Making—following one’s own desire to create—is based on principles of connected learning; it is student-directed and organic, without a scripted route or destination. By looking closely at the real work of teachers and students, Fulton and Urbanski illustrate the rich and real applications of a make-based approach in today’s middle school classrooms.
128 pp. | 2020 | Grades 6–8 | ISBN 9780814130667 $22.36 member/$27.99 nonmember ebook: ISBN 9780814130674
Developing Contemporary Literacies through Sports
A Guide for the English Classroom
Alan Brown and Luke Rodesiler, editors
With seven interrelated sections— facilitating literature study, providing alternatives to traditional novels, teaching writing, engaging students in inquiry and research, fostering media and digital literacies, promoting social justice, and developing out-of-school literacies—this collection of lessons and commentaries from established teachers, teacher educators, scholars, and authors, as well as the companion website, provide numerous resources that support teachers in developing students’ contemporary literacies through sports. Each section includes (1) four lesson plans written by practicing English teachers and teacher educators that focus on a specific topic and/or method of instruction; (2) a brief introduction from a leading scholar in the field of English education; and (3) a closing “author connection” in which contemporary authors of sports-related young adult literature offer reflections on and connections to the ongoing conversations.
253 pp. | 2016 | Grades 6–12 | ISBN 9780814110959 $30.36 member/$37.99 nonmember ebook: ISBN 9780814110966
Teaching Climate Change to Adolescents
Reading, Writing, and Making a Difference
Richard Beach, Jeff Share, and Allen Webb
This book is THE essential resource for middle and high school English language arts teachers to help their students understand and address the urgent issues and challenges facing life on Earth today. Classroom activities written and used by teachers show students posing questions, engaging in argumentative reading and writing and critical analysis, interpreting portrayals of climate change in literature and media, and adopting advocacy stances to promote change. The book illustrates climate change fitting into existing courses using already available materials and gives teachers tools and teaching ideas to support building this into their own classrooms. Visit the website for this book (http:// climatechangeela.pbworks.com) for additional information and links. All royalties from the sale of this book are donated to Alliance for Climate Education. Routledge and NCTE
