Reading Aloud Across the Curriculum: How to Build Bridges in Language Arts, Math, Science, and Social Studiesby Lester Laminack

This book is a practical guide to expanding your read–aloud instruction to accomplish literacy–based goals in four key subject areas–math, social studies, language arts, and science. You’ll find strategic advice for planning thematic, content–driven units that use reading aloud to scaffold understanding and increase engagement. Beginning with smart ideas for introducing students to new content through picture books, Laminack and Wadsworth share ideas for assembling themed sets of children’s literature that help kids use the predictable structures of the read–aloud to connect with new ideas. Then Reading–Aloud Across the Curriculum provides suggestions for helping students do research that extends the knowledge they’ve gotten from whole–class readings and build a bridge from literacy skills to content knowledge. Laminack and Wadsworth give you three specific units of study each for social studies, language arts, science, and even math–twelve units altogether. Each comes with dozens of recommended titles, over 400 in all!

Cracking Open the Author's Craft: Teaching
the Art of Writing by Lester Laminack

Lester Laminack invites you and your students to join him as he peels back the layers of his picture book--Saturdays and Teacakes--to make the writing moves visible. With Lester as guide on the enclosed DVD, your young writers will observe and explore what he did, how he did it, and why he did it that way. As Lester demonstrates how to read with a writer's eyes and ears, your students will gain increasing control over their own narrative writing.

The Daily Five: Fostering Literacy Independence in the Elementary Grades
by Gail Boushey and Joan Moser

Based on literacy learning and motivation research, The Sisters created a structure called The Daily Five which has been practiced and refined in their own classrooms for ten years, and shared with thousands of teachers throughout the United States. The Daily Five is a series of literacy tasks (reading to self, reading with someone, writing, word work, and listening to reading) which students complete daily while the teacher meets with small groups or confers with individuals. This book not only explains the philosophy behind the structure, but shows you how to carefully and systematically train your students to participate in each of the five components. Explicit modeling practice, reflecting and refining take place during the launching phase, preparing the foundation for a year of meaningful content instruction tailored to meet the needs of each child. The Daily Five is more than a management system or a curriculum framework; it is a structure that will help students develop the habits that lead to a lifetime of independent literacy.

The Daily Five Alive!: Strategies for Literacy Independenceby Gail Boushey and Joan Moser

The Daily Five—a structured set of literacy tasks that research shows are linked to literacy achievement. The five tasks are outlined in detail in Gail and Joan's book The Daily Five. This video, shot in Joan's K–2 multiage classroom, focuses on launching three of the "Dailies" — read to self, read to someone, and work on writing.

The Daily Five Alive! package includes everything needed for productive professional development workshops. In addition to the DVD, the viewing guide (both printed and on CD-ROM) provides workshop suggestions and focus questions, a selection of related readings, and handouts.

Simply Beautiful: Classroom Design for Gracious Living and Learningby Gail Boushey and Joan Moser

Classrooms don't have to be dank and dreary places - in fact, teachers are discovering that more inviting classrooms create more opportunities for learning. In Simply Beautiful, Gail Boushey and Joan Moser (also known as "The Sisters") visit the classrooms of five new teachers to help each one deal with specific design challenges that include:

• redesigning poor lighting in the meeting area;
• displaying student work creatively;
• reorganizing materials for easy access;
• sorting through accumulated materials in a cramped storage area; and
• dressing up plain walls on a budget.

The video includes a fifteen-minute tour of a model classroom at the start, giving viewers a sense of possibility and the research base that supports elegant classroom design. Joan and Gail then move into the classrooms of their young colleagues, and with flair and humor show how simple, "quick change" strategies can yield amazing results. Each makeover takes less than 30 minutes in real-time, with minimal expense. Inspiring and fun, Simply Beautiful will have you itching to roll up your sleeves and start transforming your own classroom in no time.