Authors: Isabel Beck, Margaret McKeown and Linda Kucan

Publisher: The Guilford Press (2002)

Bringing Words to Life is an excellent resource that provides research-based strategies for vocabulary development with children from the earliest grades through high school.  It explains why providing rich information about words and their uses enhances students' language comprehension and production.  Teachers are guided in selecting words for instruction, developing student-friendly explanations of new words, creating meaningful learning activities and getting students involved in thinking about, using, and noticing new words both within and outside the classroom.  "You Try It" sections are provided to give teachers exercises to bring concepts to life.  Appendices are included in the back.  Appendix A gives lists of books rich in vocabulary for kindergarten through second grade.  Appendix B offers lists of books for creating a lively verbal environment.

Bringing Words to Life Facilitator's Guide

Authors: Robert J. Marzano, Debra Pickering and Jane E. Pollock

Publisher: Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development (2001)

Classroom Instruction that Works answers many questions about what works in education.  This book examines decades of research findings to condense the results into nine strategies that have positive effects on learning.  The authors provide the statistical effect sizes and show how these translate into percentile gains for students.  The book makes this easy to understand and shows the impact of each strategy on student achivement.  There are examples of successful instruction that allow for teachers to plan and implement the strategies in their classrooms.

Classroom Instruction that Works Facilitator's Guide

Editors: Kathryn Parker Boudett, Elizabeth A. City and Richard J. Murname

Publisher: Harvard Education Press (2006)

Data Wise grew out of a cooperative effort between public school administrators and Harvard Graduate School of Education professors.  This book is a road map for school leaders in search of improving student outcomes through the use of data.  The authors provide a process: Prepare, Inquire, Act.  Each step of the process is outlined in the various chapters and provides guidance to school leaders in the pursuit of school improvement.  Resources are provided at the end of the book.

Data Wise Facilitator's Guide

Author: Debbie Diller

Publisher: Stenhouse Publishers (2003)

Literacy Work Stations: Making Centers Work will help teachers resolve the dilemma of what does the rest of the class do while a teacher is working with a small reading group.  Debbie Diller offers practical suggestions for over a dozen literacy work stations that link to instruction and make preparation and management easy for teachers.  Readers will learn how to create and set up work stations, how to manage them, and how to keep them going throughout the school year.

Authors: Ellin Oliver Keene and Susan Zimmerman

Publisher: Heinemann (2007)

Mosaic of Thought (2nd edition) is an excellent book that focuses on explicitly describing the use and benefits of strategy-based comprehension instruction.  It provides key ideas for each strategy and describes critical comprehension concepts.  It is full of classroom examples, both primary and intermediate, that demonstrate the strategy instruction in application.  The information, research and practical application provided by the authors is an insightful guide for comprehension instruction in a mult-tiered system of support.

Mosaic of Thought Facilitator's Guide

Author: Lori Oczkus

Publisher: Christopher Gordon Publisher, Inc. (2004)

Super Six Comprehension Strategies is an excellent resource that can be used by K-6 regular and special educators who are looking for practical ways to build comprehension in students' reading.  Lori Oczkus offers a research-based, hands-on resource that helps you achieve reading success with all students in your classroom through motivating lessons that can be used with any materials.  The strategies, which Ocskus refers to as the "Super Six," include: Building Background and Making Connections, Predicting/Inferring, Questioning, Monitoring, Summarizing/Synthesizing and Evaluating.

Super Six Comprehension Strategies Facilitator's Guide

Author: Elaine K. McEwan

Publisher: Corwin Press (2002)

Teach Them All to Read focuses on the issues surrounding reading failure and provides extensive guidelines for preventing it.  Chpater 1 answers the following questions: which students are falling through the cracks?  Why are they falling, and why are there so many?  Chapter 2 explains why an action plan is necessary in addressing the problem and describes the nine "Pieces of the Reading Puzzle."  Subsequent chapters expand the description of those puzzle pieces.  Chapter 3 looks at phonological awareness, phonics and spelling.  Chpater 4 deals with the importance of fluency.  Chpater 5 looks at the essentials of comprehension: language, knowledge, and cognitive strategies.  Chpater 6 gives us ways in which we can get our students to read extensively.  Chapter 7 gives us a view of three schools and their before and after success stories.  The concluding chapter is an extensive explanation of how to create the reading culture necessary to "Teach Them All to Read."  Also included are several practical resource sections: a list of phonics readers, brain-based reading activities, a description of Project Pride, a lesson sequence, and finally, several useful checklists and forms.

Teach Them All to Read Facilitator's Guide

Author: Robert J. Marzano

Publisher: Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development (2007)

The Art and Science of Teaching: A Comprehensive Framework for Effective Instruction represents an instructional design while respecting the need to know individual students' strengths and weaknesses when using strategies in the classroom.  This design is based on a sequence of questions that look at goal setting, acquiring knowledge, engaging students in the learning process, and establishing rules and procedures to maximize outcomes.  This book is filled with charts, rubrics, and organizers to ensure that teachers are examining every component of the teaching process and setting up a logical plan using effective instructional, management, and curriculum design strategies.

The Art and Science of Teaching Facilitator's Guide 

Author: Janet Allen

Publisher: Stenhouse (2000)

Yellow Brick Roads: Shared and Guided Paths to Independent Reading 4-12 provides a path for teachers to follow in developing their own literacy program.  It focuses on grades 4-12 langauge arts classrooms or Tier 2 reading classrooms.  Allen focuses on literacy development through making reading and writing so enticing that students cannot resist.  She promotes reaching students  where they are and respecting them for their individual differences.  Yellow Brick Roads outlines and directs the use of read alouds, shared reading, guided reading, independent reading, writing, and vocabulary development.  It also provides many tools for assessing and evaluating students and their progress.

Yellow Brick Roads Facilitator's Guide