Our Book Stack

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What stories make you who you are? How have your experiences shaped you as a learner? Who are you as a reader and writer? Exploring your history as a learner can help you reflect on your teaching practices and make instructional decisions that positively impact student learning.

In Leading Literate Lives, Stephanie outlines a framework for reading and writing that makes a direct connection between reflection and classroom practice. In each chapter you will find concrete ideas, tools, and activities for reading and writing to help move you from teacher reflection to instruction. For every specific reflection Stephanie will show you how to put the same idea into practice in your classroom, with the goal of helping you and your students:

• build and cultivate habits that make reading and writing a priority
• make space and create opportunities in your lives and classrooms to do what real readers and writers do
• explore and embrace your reading and writing identities
• find and create thriving communities filled with inspiration and support, where the reading and writing lives of every member are shared and celebrated.

Fueled with the understandings that come from leading a literate life, you can learn to embrace reflective practices that bring greater intention and joy to your classrooms and schools.

 "Strategies make the often invisible work of reading actionable and visible," Jen writes. In The Reading Strategies Book, she collects 300 strategies to share with readers in support of thirteen goals-everything from fluency to literary analysis. Each strategy is cross-linked to skills, genres, and Fountas & Pinnell reading levels to give you just-right teaching, just in time.  

 The current emphasis on the body of research known as the "Science of Reading" has renewed the reading wars and raised challenging questions for balanced literacy teachers about the best way to teach reading. Instead of fueling the debate, Dr. Jan Burkins and Kari Yates have immersed themselves in the research and produced Shifting the Balance: 6 Ways to Bring the Science of Reading into the Balanced Literacy Classroom. 

Reader, Come Home is a great resource, with insight and a perspective on the impact of technology. 

Author, Maryanne Wolf, poses the question, "How can we preserve deep reading processes in future iterations of the reading brain?" She brings up the reality we all are asking about.  How does the screen impact attention span, critical reasoning, and over-reliance on technology for children as well as adults?  Knowledge is power and Wolf captures what is critical to know and think about.  

This incredible book opens your mind and heart to how one’s culture programs the brain to process data and affects learning relationships. Author Zaretta Hammond, provides direct "key moves" to build students’ learner operating systems.  Intentional implementation of these "key moves" will prepare them to become independent learners.  

This is an awesome read! A lot of fun and humor.  The book is a tale about ten different blocks, all the different ways that kids can walk home from school.  Their lives intertwine as they face one exciting adventure together, though different. 

Brain Words will show how children’s brains develop as they become readers and discover ways you can take concrete steps to promote this critical developmental passage, including:

• Incorporating tools to recognize what works, what doesn’t, and why
• Practical classroom activities for daily teaching and student assessment
• Insights about what brain research tells us about whole language and phonics-first movements
• Deepened understanding of dyslexia through the enhanced lens of brain science

With the insights and strategies of Brain Words, you can meet your students where they are and ensure they gain confidence as readers, spellers, and writers.