7 Keys to Comprehension
How to Help Your Kids Read It and Get It!

By Susan Zimmermann and Chryse Hutchins

Format: Trade Paperback, 224 pages
Publication Date: 2003
ISBN: 0-7615-1549-6

If children don't understand what they read, they will never embrace reading. And that limits what they can learn in school. This fact frightens parents, worries teachers, and ultimately hurts children. 7 Keys to Comprehension is the result of cutting-edge research. It gives parents and teachers, those who aren't already using this valuable program, practical, thoughtful advice about the seven simple thinking strategies that proficient readers use.

Assessing Comprehension Thinking Strategies
By Ellin Oliver Keene

Format: Paperback and CD, 84 pages
Publication Date: 2006
ISBN: 978-1-4258-0436-7

Assessing Comprehension Thinking Strategies is an ideal tool for assessing students' reading comprehension. This book offers a unique way of assessing how students use thinking strategies to comprehend text. The book contains four reading passages for each grade level (1-8) that offer high-interest fiction and nonfiction text. Each assessment is accompanied by a rubric that allows you to document students' thinking and then score and monitor their growth. Strategies assessed include thinking aloud, using schema, inferring, asking questions, determining importance in text, setting a purpose for reading, monitoring comprehension, visualizing, synthesizing and retelling, and story structure/structural patterns. The assessments can be used in various ways to inform instruction and to assess learning. All passages, assessments, and rubrics are provided on the Teacher Resource CD and the assessments and rubrics can be customized.

Clock Watchers
By Stevi Quate and John McDermott
Format: Paperback, 192 pages
Publication Date: 2009
ISBN: 978-0-325-02169-0
For Stevi Quate and John McDermott, this was the missing piece of their teaching: How can I motivate my students and then create a context that will engage them? Clock Watchers is their powerful answer a plan that gets kids to care about learning and truly engage with the curriculum.

Clock Watchers is not a book of tips and tricks. Instead it applies the research on motivation and engagement to support increased achievement and improved attitudes about school. Quate and McDermott's six-step framework:
-catches students interest across the content areas
-holds it through meaningful learning and valuable interactions
-uses assessment to create further opportunities to connect kids with content
-sustains it all with ideas for projects, activities, and even classroom routines and rituals.

Comprehension & Collaboration
Inquiry Circles in Action
By Harvey Daniels & Stephanie Harvey
Format: Paperback, 336 pages
Publication Date: 2009
ISBN 978-0-325-01230-8
Comprehension and Collaboration: Inquiry Circles in Action occurs at the intersection of comprehension, collaboration, and inquiry and serves as a guide for teachers who want to realize the benefits of well-structured, student-led, cross-curricular projects. Daniels and Harvey
- lay the foundation for inquiry circles by chronicling the current research and practices behind comprehension instruction and classroom collaboration
- explain nine fundamental classroom conditions needed for active, small-group learning
- provide 26 practical lessons in comprehension, collaboration, and research
- offer how-to instructions for four types of inquiry circles-mini-research projects; curricular inquiries; extensions of literature circles; and open inquiry projects
- address characteristic management concerns, such as how to use the Internet for research and how to assess and monitor student achievement.

Comprehension Going Forward
Where We are and What's Next
By
Ellin Oliver Keene, Susan Zimmermann, Debbie Miller, Samantha Bennett, Leslie Blauman, Chryse Hutchins, Stephanie Harvey, Anne Goudvis, Brad Buhrow, Gina Cervetti, Marjorie Larner, Cris Tovani, Nancy Commins, Tanny McGregor, P. David Pearson, and Harvey Daniels
Format: Paperback, 288 pages
ISBN: 978-0-325-04163-6

Conferring
The Keystone of Reader's Workshop
By Patrick Allen
Format: Paperback, 232 pages
Publication Date: 2009
ISBN: 978-157110-768-8
In professional workshops with teachers over the years, Patrick Allen has encountered a list of "counterfeit beliefs" about the process of conferring with readers, including such comments as: "I don't have time, I don't know what questions to ask, It's too hard, I don't know what to write in my notes, I don't even take notes, I don't know how to go deep. . . ."In Conferring: The Keystone of Reader's Workshop, Patrick maintains that the benefits of conferring are worth the effort of learning to do it well. Then he sets out to reveal how teachers can overcome their perceived obstacles and make the somewhat intangible aspect of conferring with readers tangible.

Do I Really Have to Teach Reading?
By Cris Tovani

Format: Paperback, 138 pages
Publication Date: 2004
ISBN: 1-57110-376-7

Building on the experiences gained in her own language arts classroom as well as those of colleagues in different disciplines, Cris Tovani, author of I Read It, but I Don't Get It, takes on the challenge of helping students apply reading comprehension strategies in any subject. In Do I Really Have to Teach Reading?, Cris shows how teachers can expand on their content expertise to provide instruction students need to understand specific technical and narrative texts.

I Read It, But I Don't Get It

Comprehension Strategies for Adolescent Readers

By Cris Tovani
Format: Paperback, 152 pages
Publication Date: 2000
ISBN: 1-57110-089-X

I Read It, But I Don't Get It is a practical, engaging account of how teachers can help adolescents develop new reading comprehension skills. Tovani's classroom is a place where students continually learn new strategies for tackling difficult text. You will be taken, step by step, through practical, theory-based reading instruction that can be adapted for use in any subject area.

“These are the tried and true lessons I return to year after year. The lessons that students said made a difference in their writing and that will bring power and beauty to your students’ writing and to your writing classroom.”

—Leslie Blauman, author of The Inside Guide to the Reading-Writing Classroom

“What’s wrong with a little mentorship?” Leslie Blauman asks. Reap the benefits of her years as a Public Education and Business Coalition (PEBC) teacher with 31 of her best kid-tested and approved lessons that lead to great student writing. Not only are these research-based writing lessons kids’ self-proclaimed favorites, they incorporate mentor texts, support the Common Core State Standards, and are research-based.

Four lesson clusters reflect Leslie’s core beliefs for teaching:
• writing narratives, informative texts, and opinion pieces/arguments
• a love of language, word play, vocabulary, and poetry
• writing fictional narratives
• writing research-based nonfiction.

Use these generative lessons as a springboard—giving them your personal stamp—and watch as they lead to great writing for authentic purposes and in testing situations.

Learning Along the Way
Professional Development by and for Teachers

By Diane Sweeney

Format: Paperback, 136 pages
Publication Date: 2003
ISBN: 1-57110-343-0

Can your school or district improve its approach to building expertise among teachers, those both new to the profession and those interested in refining their craft? Sweeney answers this question as she tells the story of how the inner-city public school in Denver, where she was a teacher and literacy coach, used learner-centered professional development to achieve outstanding gains in teacher knowledge and effectiveness.

Mosaic of Thought
Teaching Comprehension in a Reader's Workshop
By Ellin Oliver Keene and Susan Zimmermann

Format: Paperback, 255 pages
Publication Date: 2007 (second edition)
ISBN: 0-435-07237-4

Ellin Oliver Keene and Susan Zimmermann have returned with a new edition of Mosaic of Thought that features 70 percent new material. When the first edition published ten years ago, Mosaic of Thought became a runaway best seller as the first book to explicitly describe the use and benefits of strategy-based comprehension instruction. Since then comprehension strategy instruction has exploded, leading to numerous inspiring variations on Mosaic’s instructional principles, as well as a widening of the comprehension research base. Now the second edition offers up-to-the-minute insight for classroom teachers, literacy coaches, and school leaders everywhere, and reminds everyone of precisely what effective, long-lasting comprehension teaching looks like.

The strategies presented in Mosaic of Thought serve as the cornerstone of the PEBC professional development model. The theories presented in this book are the basis for all other books written by PEBC Staff Developers.

Nonfiction Matters
Reading, Writing, and Research in Grades 3-8

By Stephanie Harvey

Format: Paperback, 248 pages
Publication Date: 1998
ISBN: 1-57110-072-5

Nonfiction Matters offers teachers practical tools to help students read nonfiction to reach a more comprehensive understanding of the world around them, and report their insights in a compelling manner. Stephanie Harvey shows how students can read expository text, conduct research, and write authentic nonfiction that is captivating, visual, and full of authority.

Pathways
Charting a Course for Professional Learning

By Marjorie Larner

Format: Paperback, 165 pages
Publication Date: 2004
ISBN: 0-325-00624-5

From deep and ongoing experiences in all aspects of school life, Larner presents an authentic description of both the broad picture and the specific steps‹the struggles, the pathways and the possibilities‹leading to ongoing classroom and school improvement. A belief that teachers need to be in charge of their own learning is at the heart of every structure, activity, and proposed plan. Both a philosophical approach and a practical how-to guide, this book is a resource for teachers, administrators, and coaches to make well-informed decisions about their own course of learning with a viable action plan to improve instruction for all children.

By Lori Conrad, Missy Matthews, Cheryl Zimmerman and Patrick Allen

Format: Paperback, 165 pages
Publication Date: 2008
ISBN: 978-157110-731-2

How can teachers use the comprehension strategies put forward in books like Strategies That Work and Mosaic of Thought to help students become not just better readers and thinkers but also better test takers? The four authors of Put Thinking to the Test have spent years pursuing that question and have developed a groundbreaking approach. Just as comprehension strategies have helped millions of students learn to read like proficient readers, they can also help students think like effective test-takers.

Reading with Meaning
Teaching Comprehension in the Primary Grades

By Debbie Miller

Format: Paperback, 208 pages
Publication Date: 2002
ISBN: 1-57110-307-4

Debbie Miller focuses on how best to teach children the strategies for comprehending text. She leads the reader through the process of teaching students to become thoughtful, independent, and strategic readers. Through explicit instruction, modeling, classroom discussion, and, most importantly, by gradually increasing expectations of students reading abilities, Miller provides a model for creating a climate and culture of thinking and learning.

Science as Thinking
The Constants and Variables of Inquiry Teaching
By Wendy Ward Hoffer
Science as Thinking
By Wendy Ward Hoffer

Format: Paperback, 280 pages
Publication Date: 2009
ISBN: 978-0-325-02577-3
Wendy Ward Hoffer uses the fundamental scientific principles of constants and variables as a framework for highly effective science teaching. She begins with constants, the basics of science instruction: Inquiry, Big Ideas, Workshop, Assessment, Culture. Hoffer shows how building a teaching foundation on these constants ensures that all of your planning, lessons, and interactions spark students’ interests and support deep thinking about science.

In So What Do They Really Know? Cris Tovani explores the complex issue of monitoring, assessing, and grading students' thinking and performance with fairness and fidelity. Like all teachers, Cris struggles to balance her student-centered instruction with school system mandates. Her recommendations are realistic and practical; she understands that what isn't manageable isn't sustainable.

Cris describes the systems and structure she uses in her own classroom and shows teachers how to use assessments to monitor student growth and provide targeted feedback that enables students to master content goals. She also shares ways to bring students into the assessment cycle so they can monitor their own learning, maximizing motivation and engagement.

Format: Paperback, 176 pages
ISBN: 978-157110-730-5

When it comes to standards and assessment, educators and researchers tend to have differing opinions on what works for all students, but they will agree on one thing—standards and assessment are the core of quality instructional practices. This anthology includes research and advice from industry experts on various topics that include performance assessment, frequent assessment in math and science, assessing 21st-century learners, effective grading practices, and scoring student work collaboratively, among others. All of the topics in this book are tied to the Common Core State Standards and all will leave the reader with strategies and concepts that will help all students succeed.

Format: Paperback, 360pp
Publication Date: 2007 (2nd edition)
ISBN: 978-157110-481-6

Since its publication in 2000, Strategies That Work has become an indispensable resource for teachers who want to explicitly teach thinking strategies so that students become engaged, thoughtful, independent readers. In this revised and expanded edition, Stephanie and Anne have added twenty completely new comprehension lessons, extending the scope of the book and exploring the central role that activating background knowledge plays in understanding. Another major addition is the inclusion of a section on content literacy which describes how to apply comprehension strategies flexibly across the curriculum

Defining Beliefs, Aligning Practice, Taking Action

By Debbie Miller

Format: Paperback
Publication Date: September, 2008
ISBN: 9781571103871

Effective, intentional teaching begins with a strong set of beliefs, but even the best teachers -- including Debbie Miller -- struggle to make sure that their classroom practice consistently reflects their core convictions. In Teaching with Intention, Debbie shares her process of defining beliefs, aligning practice, and taking action to ensure that children are the true beneficiaries of her teaching.

That Workshop Book
New Systems and Structures for Classrooms That Read, Write, and Think

By Samantha Bennett

Format: 240pp
Publication Date: 2007
ISBN: 978-0-325-01192-9

Twenty-five years after Donald Graves popularized workshop teaching, the concept is widely implemented but not always deeply understood. That Workshop Book changes all that. It shows a new generation of teachers how the systems, structures, routines, and rituals that support successful workshops combine with thinking, planning, and conferring to drive students’ growth, inform assessment and instruction, and increase teacher’s professional satisfaction. And it shows those already using the workshop how to increase its instructional power by seeing its big ideas and its component parts in fresh, dynamic ways.

The Inside Guide to the Reading-Writing Classroom, Grades 3-6
Strategies for Extraordinary Teaching
By Leslie Blauman
Format: Paperback +CD, 288 pages
Publication Date: 2011
ISBN: 978-0-325-02837-6

The Literate Kindergarten
Where Wonder and Discovery Thrive

by Susan L. Kempton

Format: Paperback, 208 pages
Publication Date: 2007
ISBN: 978-0-325-00833-2

Kindergarten has changed, and not necessarily for the better. Once a joyful time when children grow into school gradually, today it often resembles a watered-down first grade, where academic pressures squelch creativity and play. The Literate Kindergarten shows how carefully balancing academics with song, movement, talk, and play creates an environment where every child can grow and learn.

Creating a Culture of Thinking

By Suzanne Plaut, Ed.D.

Format: Paperback
Publication Date: October, 2008
ISBN: 0807749184

This inspirational resource challenges educators to view adolescent literacy as a “civil right” that enables students to understand essential content and to develop as independent learners. Edited by the Vice President of Education at the Public Education & Business Coalition (PEBC), a nonprofit that is nationally known for its expertise in literacy and professional development, the book is a call to action and a practical guide for reform-minded schools and districts, and for teachers seeking to help all adolescent learners achieve at high levels. It is replete with vivid illustrations of exemplary classroom practice across all content areas. It also offers important frameworks to help teachers implement those practices in their own schools. Perfect for professional learning communities, study groups, and individual teachers.

To Understand
New Horizons in Reading Comprehension

by Ellin Oliver Keene

Format: Paperback, 299 pages
Publication Date: 2008
ISBN:978-0-325-00323-8097

The renaissance in comprehension instruction launched by Mosaic of Thought has led to changes in hundreds of thousands of classrooms, where teachers now model reading strategies, and students probe meaning more deeply. But no book in the field has satisfactorily answered the question: What does it really mean to comprehend? In To Understand, Ellin Oliver Keene not only explores this important question, but reveals what teachers can do to encourage all students to engage in deep understanding far more consistently than before.

Writing Through the Tween Years
Supporting Writers, Grades 3-6
By Bruce Morgan with Deb Odom

Format: Paperback, 160 pages
Publication Date: 2005
ISBN: 1-57110-406-2

No longer little children, but not yet teenagers, tweens are beginning to see themselves as autonomous while still struggling to understand where they fit in. It can also be an awkward time for teachers who cherish the hilarious and poignant personalities of tween writers, but feel pressured by a new emphasis on testing in the intermediate grades. Writing Through the Tween Years documents how teachers can get back to the joys of teaching writing in a literature-rich, thoughtful environment. There may be no better way to understand and reach tween writers.