Simple steps that principals and other school leaders can take to foster literacy in the middle and secondary grades.

Create a schoolwide foundation to ensure academic success for ALL students This useful guide supports the needs of culturally, linguistically, and academically diverse learners and demonstrates how a shared vision can increase student engagement and ensure that not-so-common learners benefit from academic rigor. Taking a system-wide approach, the authors offer educators a model arranged in six distinct yet complementary pathways to improve programs, policies, and practices for diverse learners. This innovative framework includes: Mapping and aligning an integrated curriculum—making the mainstream curricula accessible for all learners Collaborative planning and assessment—pooling intelligence so the whole is greater than the sum of its parts Teaching students explicit learning strategies—empowering students by increasing student-led learning Promoting disciplinary literacy—providing all students with access to pertinent academic language learning Featuring helpful tables that outline key concepts and real-life vignettes from schools that have successfully applied the principles, this book unlocks success for all students. "Dove, Honigsfeld, and Cohan recognize the urgent need for practices to change on a schoolwide basis so that diverse learners can be positioned to succeed with the Common Core. This book outlines inclusive practices so that all students are included in these important conversations." —Diane Staehr Fenner, President DSF Consulting "In Beyond Core Expectations, the authors present a coherent framework for schoolwide instructional inclusiveness. This book is an essential guide for educators with a vision for true college and career readiness for ALL students, driven by sound curriculum, instruction and assessment practices." —Cheryl H. Champ, Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction Sewanhaka Central High School District, Floral Park, NY

This practical book shows literacy leaders how to win the support of the whole school community and implement school-wide initiatives that improve student reading and writing. Exemplary reading and writing projects are introduced along with strategies for successful collaboration in a variety of situations. This comprehensive resource clarifies the role of coach or principal and recognizes how important the empowerment of teachers is throughout the collaborative process.

A K-12 guide distills reading skills down to six fundamentals, helping to pinpoint reading problems and remedy them with the appropriate strategies and activities.

This book provides key insights into how educational leaders can successfully navigate the turbulence of political debate surrounding leading student assessment and professionalised practice. Given the highly politicised nature of assessment, it addresses leaders and aspiring leaders who are open to being challenged, willing to explore controversy, and capable of engaging in informed critical discourse. The book presents the macro concepts that these audiences must have to guide optimal assessment policy and practice. Collectively, the chapters highlight important assessment purposes and models, including intended and unintended effects of assessment in a globalised context. The book provides opportunities to explore cultural similarities and particularities. It invites readers to challenge taken-for-granted assumptions about ourselves and colleagues in other settings. The chapters highlight the cultural clashes that may occur when cross-cultural borrowing of assessment strategies, policies, and tools takes place. However, authors also encourage sophisticated critical analyses of potential lessons that may be drawn from other contexts and systems. Readers will encounter challenges from authors to deconstruct their assessment values, beliefs, and preconceptions. Indeed, one purpose of the book is to destabilise certainties about assessment that prevail and to embrace the assessment possibilities that can emerge from cognitive dissonance.

What is trauma and what does it mean for the literacy curriculum? In this book, elementary teachers will learn how to approach difficult experiences through the everyday instruction and interactions in their classrooms. Readers will look inside classrooms and literacies across genres to see what can unfold when teachers are committed to compassionate, critical, and relational practice. Weaving her own challenging experiences into chapters brimming with children’s writing and voices, Dutro emphasizes that issues of power and privilege matter centrally to how attention to trauma positions children. The book includes questions and prompts for discussion, reflection, and practice and describes pedagogies and strategies designed to provide opportunities for children to bring the varied experiences of life, including trauma, to their school literacies in positive, meaningful, and supported ways. “This stunning book about trauma interrogates the very notion. Dutro excels at interweaving her stories with those of teachers and students and at challenging readers to find their way into the fabric. I recommend this book to teachers so that they might accept her challenge to explore and understand the importance of both witnessing and testimony in relation to trauma in literacy curriculum and pedagogy.” —Mollie Blackburn, The Ohio State University

This book presents an ambitious model for how educators can design high-quality, challenging, and supportive learning opportunities for English Learners and other students identified to be in need of language and literacy support. Starting with the premise that conceptual, analytic, and language practices develop simultaneously as students engage in disciplinary learning, the authors argue for instruction that amplifies—rather than simplifies—expectations, concepts, texts, and learning tasks. The authors offer clear guidance for designing lessons and units and provide examples that demonstrate the approach in various subject areas, including math, science, English, and social studies. This practical resource will guide teachers through the coherent design of tasks, lessons, and units of study that invite English Learners (and all students) to engage in productive, meaningful, and intellectually engaging activity. “This book offers the most detailed guide available for designing instruction for students categorized as ELLs. Theoretically grounded and informed by years of implementation and study, this work is without equal in the field. I recommend the book enthusiastically as required reading in all teacher preparation programs.” —Guadalupe Valdés, Bonnie Katz Tenenbaum Professor of Education, Stanford Graduate School of Education “Reflecting its title, this book is an amplification of what it means to provide the best learning opportunities for English Language learners. Drawing on classroom-based research, Amplifying the Curriculum offers many practical examples of intellectually engaging units and tasks. This innovative book belongs on the bookshelves of all teachers.” —Pauline Gibbons, UNSW Sydney “This timely book is a call to educators across the nation to integrate language, literacy, and disciplinary knowledge to improve the education of our new American students.” —Tatyana Kleyn, The City College of New York