BREAKING THROUGH AUTISM

Carly’s Voice: breaking through autism by Arthur Fleischmann with Carly Fleischmann, takes the autism conversation to new places and disproves the ridiculous notion that nonverbal people with autism don’t have feelings and thoughts or are unintelligent.   At the age of two Carly was diagnosed with severe autism and an oral motor condition that prevented her from speaking.  After years of intensive behavioral and communication therapy, Carly remained largely unreachable.  Then at the age of ten, she had a breakthrough.  In Carly’s Voice, her father, Arthur Fleischmann, blends Carly’s own words with his story of getting to know his remarkable daughter.  Many thousands of people follow her  via her blog, Facebook, and Twitter.

Link to Catalogue

INCLUSIVE CLASSROOMS AND FLUENCY

Literacy Is Not Enough: 21st-Century Fluencies For The Digital Age by Lee Crockett, Ian Jukes, Andrew Churches.  The fourth book in the 21st Century Fluency series identifies and explains the fluencies: solution fluency, information fluency, creativity fluency, media fluency, collaboration fluency, and global digital citizenship. The balance of the book introduces the framework for integrating the fluencies in traditional curriculum.

Link to Catalogue

Apps for Learning: 40 Best iPad/iPod Touch/iPhone Apps For High School  Classrooms by Andrew Churches, Harry Dickens.  Covers mobility apps categories for utilities, general classroom applications also specialty apps designed with unique learning tools that students can utilize both in class and on the go.  Includes detailed descriptions for some of the best apps around for high school students.  Explores the versatility of utility apps like Atomic Web Browser and GoodReader.  Make use of general apps like Evernote, Pages, and Dragon Dictation, or have fun on projects using Garage Band, iMovie, or Whiteboard HD.  Or create unique learning adventures using speciality apps like Comic Touch, StoryKit, Video Science, or NASA App HD. 

Link to Catalogue

The Active Classroom: Practical Strategies For Involving Students in the Learning Process by Ron Nash. Just by dipping into the book, teachers will be able to begin implementing Nash’s ideas immediately.  A highly valuable resource for busy teachers, who can look at almost any section and within minutes select an idea, a tool, or a strategy, and put it into action the next day.

Link to Catalogue

On Purpose: How Great School Cultures Form Strong Character by Samuel Casey Carter.  In telling the stories of twelve very different but equally extraordinary schools from all across the country, Carter explains how school cultures are made, how they form student character, and ultimately, how great school cultures harness student character to drive achievement.

Link to Catalogue

Making Friends PreK-3: A Social Skills Program For Inclusive Settings by Ruth Herron Ross, Beth Roberts-Pacchione.  Second edition. Revised edition of Wanna Play: Friendship Skills For Preschool and Elementary Grades. Reworked to be more effective and added to the program’s strengths for a more enriched social experience.  There are details guiding teachers with lesson objectives and goals.  More suggestions have been added for compensating for different cognitive and developmental levels.  Specifics about lesson preparation and implementation time have been added to help the flow of lesson planning.

Link to Catalogue

 Unison Reading: Socially Inclusive Group Instruction For Equity and Achievement by Cynthia McCallister.   Unison Reading is a method that shifts responsibility to children for determining which information sources to attend to during the reading process and how these should be integrated.  The method is also based on a commitment to social justice.

Link to Catalogue

Academic Instruction For Students With Moderate and Severe Intellectual Disabilities in Inclusive Classrooms by June E. Downing. The information and strategies are based in the understanding of the importance and interrelatedness of curriculum, context, and instruction for all students but especially for students with significant disabilities.  Students are not likely to pick up all the possible skills in general education classrooms unless the material has been adapted and the skills taught to them.

Link to Catalogue

Connecting Content and Academic Language For English Learners and Struggling Students Grades 2-6 by Ruth Swinney, Patricia Velasco. Focuses on amplifying the teaching strategies and modifying the instructional strategies so as to recognize the emergent bilinguals’ “cats and dogs,” and then build upon them.  Swinney and Velasco give teachers ways of leading emergent bilinguals to also find the lions, and tigers, and bears that they’re sure to find if they’re allowed to walk on the same challenging curricular road as all the other children.

Link to Catalogue

40 Active Learning Strategies For The Inclusive Classroom, Grades K-5 by Linda Schwartz Green, Diane Casale-Giannola. Terms such as brain-based learning, differentiated instruction, and information processing come alive through the vignettes, step-by-step directions, activities, and reflections.  The text steers students and teachers in the direction of learning for retention with active strategies that connect to both the concepts and individual learners.

Link to Catalogue

QUICKREADS AND SAMPLE SADDLEBACK PUBLISHER SERIES

Newly acquired samples are available for  Language Arts Hi-Lo reading from Saddleback Educational Publishing.  Here are a few of the series with some of the sample titles.

Choices: Life strategy novels for striving readers. Reading level: 1.0 to 2.0 / Grades: Young Adult High School.

Link to Catalogue

Carter High Mysteries: High School with a twist.  Reading level: 1.0 to 2.0 Grades: Young Adult High School.

Link to Catalogue

District 13: Edgy Hi-Lo Sports Novels. Reading level: 1.0 to 2.0 / Grades: Young Adult High School.

Series written using carefully chosen vocabulary and simple sentences.  The novels offer compelling teen stories about characters that interest young adult readers.  Using sports as a backdrop, these edgy and mature titles confront issues that are of great importance to urban teens, especially teenaged boys:  coming of age, dating, fitting in, friendship, drugs, self-esteem, and school.  Straightforward plots move readers through the 48-pages of text quickly and efficiently with satisfying resolutions.

Link to Catalogue

The Heights: Low-level gentle reads.  Reading level: 1.0 to 2.0 / Grades: 5 to 8.

Link to Catalogue

Right Now!: …But what happens next!  Reading level: 1.0 to 2.5 / Grades: Young Adult High School.

The Right Now! series contains colorful high-impact graphics and cutting edge design, which adds drama to every page.  These 40-page stories, containing no more than 600 words each, are intended for striving readers who struggle with traditional classroom fiction.  The gripping realism of each story draws the reader on…but what happens next?  The endings are ambiguous – students can debate what’s next in a series of activities designed to further explore the subject.

Link to Catalogue

Strange But True: sure to intrigue even the most reluctant reader… Reading level: 3.5 to 4.0 / Grades: Young Adult High School.

Who isn’t fascinated by the world of the weird?  These stories are the ultimate in high-interest reading.  Fact or fiction?  Real or unreal?  Let your students decide.  The people, places and things in these story collections range from the peculiar to the preposterous, from the creepy to utterly terrifying, from the odd to the awful.  Yet all are based on eyewitness accounts or the solid scholarship of series investigators.

Link to Catalogue

True Crime: shocking stories of lawlessness and justice.  Reading level: 4.0 / Grades: Young Adult High School. One title in this series is  Forensics.

The science of forensics is little understood except for what we watch in prime time.  Five chapters explore forensic dentistry, ballistics, computer forensics, facial reconstruction, and fingerprinting.

Link to Catalogue

 

Students Taking Charge

Teaching the 3Cs: Creativity, Curiosity, and Courtesy: Activities That Build a Foundation For Success, by Patricia A Dischler.

Part 1. addresses creativity, that is allowing for creative moments to happen and expanding on them when they do.  Discusses what makes a creative person and what attributes can enhance and bring out creativeness in all children.  Includes activities.

Part 2. focuses on curiosity.  Discusses the importance of curiosity and how it supports further learning.  Explores the connection between curiosity and creativity.  Includes activities that foster creativity.

Finally courtesy is explored.  Teachers and parents are key in supporting this attribute through our modeling.  Activities included that promote courtesy in children. 

The purpose is to create a basis for further learning.

Link to catalogue

Students Taking Charge: Inside the Learner-Active Technology-Infused Classroom, by Nancy Sulla.

Intended as a guide to designing an Authentic Learning Unit and structures and strategies to support its implementation.  The early chapters delve into designing an appropriate core problem for students to solve and the analytic rubic to provide them with clearly articulated expectations.  Chapter 4 introduces the notion of “participatory structures”, or ways in which students participate in the learning process.  Chapter 5 addresses differentiation techniques.  Chapter 6 offers a variety of structures and strategies for creating an environment in which students take responsibility for their own learning and thus engage more fully in the learning process.  Chapter 7 offers a look at facilitating learning in this environment.  Chapter 8 addresses physical classroom design. 

The ten principles of the “Learner-Active, Technology-Infused Classroom” are woven throughout and then addressed in the final chapter.

Link to catalogue

Making Math Accessible To Students With special Needs: Practical Tips and Suggestions, Grade 3-5.

Each chapter offers informed choices for an array of understandable, doable, best-practice instructional procedures.  Four students are followed throughout with opportunities for reflection to increase personal awareness of both the teacher’s role and students’ needs in the mathematics classroom, tasks to provide interaction with the content of the book, and tips for ideas applicable to real-world classroom situations.  Reflections and tasks in each chapter will actively engage readers and can be used as a self-study professional development tool or as a group book study.

Aims to provide useful tools to provide high-quality, research-based instruction and support for students with special needs.  Includes reproducibles.  Easy-to-read resource, full of practical strategies and lessons based on best practices.  Explains the 5E instructional model – engage, explore, explain, elaborate, and evaluate – and provides a sample 5E lesson plan with clear objectives and materials checklists.

Link to catalogue

Activities for English Language Learners Across the Curriculum, Grades K-5, by Stephen A. White. 

Designed to provide educators with diverse classroom activities that will help meet English language learners educational needs.  Includes a variety of strategies that support opportunities for the following: building academic vocabulary, increasing comprehension, developing oral language, developing socialization, cooperative learning, building and activating prior knowledge, and informal assessment with progress monitoring.  The classroom-tested activities are based on students’ language proficiency needs and the key to success with these activities is to know the proficiency level of the students and the appropriate questions to ask students at that proficiency level.

An interactive-Whiteboard-compatible CD is included that contains reproducible teacher resource materials and student activity pages for use with either Macintosh or Windows.  Activities are provided for reading, writing, mathematics, science, and social studies.  The included list of questions is based on new Bloom’s Taxonomy.

Link to catalogue

Making Thinking Visible

Multimedia Text Sets: Changing the Shape of Engagement and Learning by Janice Marcuccilli Strop and Jennifer Carlson.

Organized around a set of nested metaphors, each of which is important to understanding and appreciating its message.  Luke and Freebody’s Four Resources Model provides the structure for dividing the book into chapters.  There are separate chapters on the reader as decoder, reader as meaning maker, reader as text user, and reader as text critic.  The focus is on helping  provide students with the tools they need to understand why authors write what they do the way they do, so students are able to articulate both the transparent and hidden meanings of the messages they encounter in a variety of text forms.

Link to Catalogue

Making Thinking Visible: How to Promote Engagement, Understanding, and Independence For All Learners, by Ron Ritchhart, Mark Church, Karin Morrison.

Offers research-based solutions for creating classrooms as places of intellectual stimulation where learning is viewed in the development of individuals who can think, plan, create, question, and engage independently as learners.  Inside diverse learning environments shows how thinking can be made visible at any grade level and across all subject areas through the use of effective questioning, listening, documentation, and facilitative structures called thinking routines.  By applying these processes thinking becomes visible as learners’ ideas are expressed, discussed, and reflected upon.  Includes a DVD of instructive video clips.

Link to Catalogue

Thinking Through Quality Questioning:  Deepening Student Engagement, by Jackie Acree Walsh and Beth Dankert Sattes.

The framework and accompanying strategies and tools are appropriate for all K-16 classrooms and all content areas.  It consists of five component behaviors, each of which, in turn, consist of a set of contributing behaviors.  A source of questioning techniques offering practical tools for crafting questions worth thinking about.

Link to Catalogue

Reach Out and Teach: Helping Your Child Who Is Visually Impaired Learn and Grow, New Edition by Kay Alicyn Ferrel.

Reflects the increasing knowledge about the development of young visually impaired children, the growing body of literature about early intervention, and the changes in the existing laws and services.  Written for parents, by parents.

The original premise-giving parents the tools to communicate with professionals and to make decisions about their children’s early education –  remains at the heart of this book.  This book presumes that visual impairment changes how children learn, not what children learn.  The goal is to demystify professional practice, so families understand why a particular strategy or intervention is recommended, why it might be important, and why they might wish to utilize it.

Link to Catalogue 

Schools For All Kinds of Minds:  Boosting Student Success By Embracing Learning  Variation, by Mary-Dean Barringer, Craig Pohlman and Michele Robinson.

Based on cutting-edge brain research this groundbreaking book offers a dynamic approach to closing the ever-widening achievement gap in schools.  The focus – which recognizes kids’ learning strengths, not just deficits – can lead to school success even for struggling students.  Includes reflection exercises and accompanying online resources that can facilitate the use of the model within school-based professional learning communities and other staff development activities.

Link to Catalogue

The Kinesthetic Classroom: Teaching and Learning Through Movement, by Traci Lengel and Mike Kuczala.

Discover the link between physical activity and academic success.  Shows how to integrate movement with classroom teaching and learning to increase attention span and help the brain master new information.  Readers will learn how to use short activity breaks to refocus students and movement games to reinforce the academic curriculum.

Link to Catalogue

Differentiating the Curriculum For Gifted Learners, by Wendy Conklin and Shelby Frei.

Take the mystery out of teaching gifted children by addressing effective research-supported ways to differentiate instruction, as well as how curriculum can be extended, accelerated, and enriched for gifted children.  Find additional resources at the end of each chapter with professional readings for further research. 

Link to Catalogue

Environmental Print For Early Childhood Literacy Skills, by Jennifer Prior and Maureen R. Gerard, provides dynamic lessons that use the words that young children see in their everyday experiences to build literacy skills.  Lessons focus on building phonological awareness, fluency, comprehension, and vocabulary, while making connections to content areas and to literacy experiences at home and at school.  Includes strategies for working with English language learners, extension ideas for family involvement, and center ideas.

Link to Catalogue

 

Problem Solving To Brain Breaks

Problem solving in mathematics Grades 3-6: powerful strategies to deepen understanding, by Alfred S. Posamentier and Stephen Krulik.  

Each chapter begins with a problem posed for the teacher. Compare your solution with that suggested.  Work out several problems intended for students.   Compare the teacher solution with those intended for the students.  Teaching notes included.

The book is divided into nine strategies: organizing the data; intelligent guessing and testing; solving a simpler, equivalent problem;  acting it out/simulating the action; working backwards;  finding a pattern;  logical reasoning;  making a drawing;  adopting a different point of view.

Link to Catalogue

Brain breaks for the classroom Grades K-5 : quick and easy breathing and movement activities that help students reenergize, refocus, and boost brain power- any time of the day! by Michelle Gay.

Each activity pairs simple step-by-step directions with an imaginative prompt to enhance students movement experience.  Variations and tips are provided to offer easier modifications and more rigorous challenges.  Choose one brain break to do during a short transition or put together a series of exercises for alonger break.  Fosters individual and group focus.

Link to Catalogue

Teaching the female brain: how girls learn math and science, by Abigail Norfleet James.

Taking the position that both biology and environment influence how girls learn, the focus is on making sure that teachers recognize and understand the cognitive gender differences and social influences that affect how girls learn.

Dr. James establishes a broad understanding of gender differences and an awareness of the many ways to influence positively girls’ confidence in math and science.  Specific strategies for math (ch. 4) and science (ch.5) are covered.  Some boys who approach the learning process in ways similar to girls will also benefit from the approaches discussed.  Finally suggestions are included for developing schoolwide programs to help all students.

Link to Catalogue

Teaching numeracy: 9 critical habits to ignite mathematical thinking, by Margie Pearse and K.M. Walton; foreword by Arthur Hyde.

Each of the chapters in Part I is devoted to one of the nine habits.  The appendix contains sample numeracy-based lesson plans such as the introduction to division (Grades 2-3), elapsed time (Grades 5-6) ; surface area of a right rectangular prism (Grades 7-8). Part II focus is on the how, and the style of lesson planning.  Five essential components of a numeracy based mathematics lesson are developed.

Transform mathematics learning from “doing” to “thinking.”  Applications throughout the book show how to monitor and repair students’ understanding; represent mathematics nonlinguistically; develop students’ mathematics vocabulary; create numeracy-rich lesson plans.

Link to Catalogue

School Library and Classroom

Connecting Libraries with Classrooms: the curricular roles of the media specialist. 2nd edition, Kay Bishop.

An in-depth exploration of the topics that are currently relevant in K-12 curricula, including the school librarian’s role in dealing with these issues, collaborating with the teachers, and connecting to classrooms.

The introduction relates how some school librarians use this book as staff development taking from the book one chapter and presenting it to classroom teachers in professional development settings.  Definite help for practicing school librarians to integrate library services into the curriculum.  Further reading and Websites for most part lead to practical information, include lesson plans for specific subject areas or groups of students.

Link to Catalogue

Books, Media & the Internet : children’s literature for today’s classrooms. edited by Shelley Stagg Peterson, David Booth and Carol Jupiter.

Find inspiration and strategies for melding technology and children’s literature from classroom teachers, librarians, university educators and journalists, who have found effective ways to engage young people with text, both in print and on screen.  There are five sections with current information, classroom examples, and anecdotes to help teachers use digital media, and print texts to extend students learning.  The helpful “Teaching Tools” section at the end of the book explains how to use a variety of digital tools in the classroom.

Link to Catalogue

Bookmapping: lit trips and beyond. Terence W. Cavanaugh and Jerome Burg.

Bookmapping can enhance readers adventures and journeys of the mind in an interdisciplinary strategy that unites the settings of literature and the geography of social studies to help students understand both.

Working with maps / Google Earth, the reader can bring text into the real world.  A bookmap creates a cognitive connection between literature and geography- literary geography.

The book is divided into 12 chapters, organized to lead the reader from understanding and using existing mapped resources to creating their own mapped resources using the bookmap concepts for digital flat maps and for Google Earth.

Link to Catalogue

First weeks

Kindergarten Plus! has 10 theme-based units.  Each unit contains hands-on activities that integrate all the subject areas.  Highlights of each monthly theme includes; reproducible parent letter, engaging Math lesson plans; weekly poems with daily lesson plans; detailed Integrated Studies lesson plans;  classroom centre suggestions, comprehensive list of children’s books;  assessment suggestions and blackline masters.

Provincial curriculum correlation chart is a PDF on Portage & Main’s website.

The CD titled “Songs” circulates with the Resource Overview volume.

Link to Catalogue

New Guided Reading Titles

Twelve new readers are now added to the existing Tadpoles series.  Tadpoles are structured to provide support for early readers.  The stories may also be used by adults for sharing with young children.  A list of words inside the front cover allows a review of words in the book before reading.  Provides strong visual support and repeats words and phrases.  Reading levels with interest levels are indicated.  Sturdy hardcovers.

Link to catalogue

Sixteen new titles in the MY WORLD series from Crabtree answer questions such as,  when is a dog not a dog?  in “It looks like a dog“.  Simple question-and answer format  features rhyme in “What is it?” For spring, check-out “I like riding“, “I like to play” or “Which season is it?” Cover animal topics with “Farm animals“, “Animal mothers“,  “How are they the same?”, “Night animals“, “Animals move like this“, “How do animals grow and change?”, “What is a food chain?”  For Earth theme try “Water changes” or “How do plants help us?” Discover ”Where does our food come from?” or what different objects are made from in “What is it made from?”

Link to catalogue

Six titles in new THE SCIENCE of NUTRITION series explore the purpose of particular nutrients and explains why our bodies need them, how we get them, and what happens if we get to much or too little of them.  Detailed diagrams show how the body processes nutrients.

Link to catalogue

RABBIT AND BEAR PAWS GRAPHIC NOVELS

Four new Adventures of Rabbit and Bear Paws graphic novels and teacher guides,  The sugar bush ; The Voyageurs ; True hearts ; Tall tale are now available.  The teacher guides are on CD-ROM published by Goodminds.com. 

“The first series of comic strips are based upon the teachings of  The Seven Grandfathers (wisdom from the Anishinabek Community)…” from the website.  Set in 18th century colonized North America, two mischievous Ojibwa brothers play pranks and have adventures using a traditional Ojibwa medicine that transforms them into animals for a short time.

Link to catalogue