Close Reading. Not in a very long while has a term been freighted with so much responsibility to pull every student out of a reading tailspin and into a great future of college and career readiness. Finally, here’s a book that tunes out all of the hubbub and gets down to the business of showing how exactly to "get close reading right." What makes Closer Reading such a have-to-have resource? Nancy Boyles knows full well that we’ll never realize the promise of close reading unless we figure out where it fits in with existing literacy practices. So she magnifies all the planning that goes into powerful close reading lessons, while providing a wide-angle lens to answer our biggest questions—top among them how close reading relates to text complexity and strategic reading comprehension. Chapter by chapter, Nancy delivers astoundingly practical ideas on how to import close reading into daily planning, including how to: Connect close reading with other instructional practices (whole class, read alouds, guided reading, conferring) Select rich texts and plan for initial close reading lessons Deliver initial and follow-up close reading lessons Engage students in peer practice after close reading Coordinate comprehension strategies and close reading Use close reading to deepen students’ independent reading Close—closer—closest. Yes, if we want our students to intimately understand a text′s ideas, we′ll need to make some shifts in our instruction. Fortunately, we now have Closer Reading to lean on as we go into higher gear. A former classroom teacher and professor of reading, Nancy Boyles is a literacy consultant, who provides workshops, model lessons, and curriculum support to districts and organizations nationally, regionally, and locally. Over the course of her career she has received numerous awards , including New England Reading Association’s Outstanding Literacy Leader Award and Connecticut Reading Association’s Celebrate Literacy Award for exemplary service. "Closer Reading, Grades 3-6, will become a treasured friend and guide, as you will value every tip, model lesson, and complex book recommendation. It is a must-have book for your professional library and for professional learning communities!" —LAURA ROBB, Author of Unlocking Complex Texts

Ready-to-go units to ramp up close reading Want a yearlong close reading curriculum to insert in your literacy block? You’ve got it. Nancy Boyles’ Lessons & Units for Closer Reading features 32 lessons, based on readily available complex picture books and organized by eight learning pathways for approaching literature and information. Get started right away, with the help of: Short nonfiction articles to kick off each unit Assessment tasks, rubrics, planning templates, and more Links to 20+ instructional video segments Page-by-page text-dependent questions for every book With Closer Reading, Nancy expertly delivered answers to the why and how of close reading. Now, with this phenomenal sequel, you’re treated to her playbook.

Every teacher in K-2 who has ever wished for comprehension lessons that get students where they need to be in reading, talking, and writing about texts, take notice: your wish just came true. With Lessons and Units for Closer Reading: K-2 you get 20 initial close reading lessons and 80 follow-up comprehension skill lessons that expertly scaffold young readers. What makes these lessons so spot-on is that Nancy combed through hundreds of standards and standardized assessments to arrive at the 12 skills that matter most at K–2. The lessons are arranged into 5 units of study, providing you with instant standards-aligned curriculum. Other can’t-live-without features: 12 illustrated reproducible sets of Active Reader Cards that give children tactile and visual support for key comprehension skills (available to print in four-color!) Step-by-step and day–by-day how-to’s for the initial lessons and follow-up lessons, including text-dependent questions for every featured picture book Illustrated, short fables that engage kids with themes including making choices, making a difference, and making sense of character traits 12 Formative Assessments that take the scare factor out of testing for young learners with lots of graphic support and options for oral and written tasks Performance criteria that give you standards-aligned means of measuring what your students have learned, so you can adjust your instruction Teachers in K-2: Nancy knows what an amazing feat you pull off each year, taking young learners from 0-60 in the space of the school year. With Lessons and Units for Closer Reading, she gives you the gift of time, with a treasure trove of at-the-ready materials. Nancy Boyles, a former classroom teacher, is the author of many best-selling books and a literacy consultant who provides curriculum support nationwide. This book is part of a three-part series that offers schools a K-6 solution for reading instruction.

In a Fresh Look at Phonics, Wiley Blevins, author of the blockbuster Phonics from A-Z, explains the 7 ingredients of phonics instruction that lead to the greatest student gains, based on two decades of research in classrooms. For each of these seven must-haves, Wiley shares lessons, routines, word lists, tips for ELL and advanced learners, and advice on pitfalls to avoid regarding pacing, decodable texts, transition time, and more. A Fresh Look at Phonics is the evidence-based solution you have been seeking that ensures all students develop a solid foundation for reading.

One in a million. Yes, that’s how rare it is to have so many write-about-reading strategies so beautifully put to use. Each year Leslie Blauman guides her students to become highly skilled at supporting their thinking about texts, and in Evidence-Based Writing: Fiction, she shares her win-win process. Leslie combed the ELA standards and all her favorite books and built a lesson structure you can use in two ways: with an entire text or with just the excerpts she’s included in the book. Addressing Evidence, Character, Theme, Point of View, Visuals, Words and Structure, each section includes: Lessons you can use as teacher demonstrations or for guided practice, with Best the Test tips on how to authentically teach the skills that show up on exams with the texts you teach. Prompt Pages serve as handy references, giving students the key questions to ask themselves as they read any text and consider how an author’s meaning and structure combine. Excerpts-to-Write About Pages feature carefully selected passages from novels, short stories, and picture books you already know and love and questions that require students to discover a text’s literal and deeper meanings. Write-About-Reading Templates scaffold students to think about a text efficiently by focusing on its critical literary elements or text structure demands and help them rehearse for more extensive responses. Writing Tasks invite students to transform their notes into a more developed paragraph or essay with sufficiently challenging tasks geared for grades 6-8. And best of all, your students gain a confidence in responding to complex texts and ideas that will serve them well in school, on tests, and in any situation when they are asked: What are you basing that on? Show me how you know.

Implementation of the Common Core State Standards with the integration of children's literature can transform teaching and learning into a holistic and engaging experience. Tackling nearly every aspect of the English Language Arts Standards and the measures they employ, it offers a thorough plan for engaging elementary school students with literature. It explores the benefits and teaching principles behind CCSS, and explains how to apply them to literature. Along with the strengths it has in connection to CCSS, you will learn about the history of children's literature and what both fiction and nonfiction bring to the classroom. You will find plenty of practical applications of the CCSS, including book lists and lesson ideas, along with thorough examples. There is also a wealth of information on the kinds of readers you will encounter and explanations of how to meet their needs. A final section focuses on creating a curriculum, connecting the theory throughout the book with concrete lessons plans and units that cover the main CCSS skill sets.

30 Big Idea Lessons for Small Groups provides an amazing framework, with a bank of engagement tools, that gets students interacting with texts. Follow this unique 4-part process to develop students’ literal, inferential, evaluative, and analytical skills: Engage: Before Reading Students use a tactile tool like a topic card or a pyramid Discuss: During Reading Students read and mark up a short text Deep-See Think: After Reading Students re-read and revise their interpretations together Connect: After Reading Students begin to transfer their understandings to other texts