Standards

New Releases: Inside the K-12 Classroom

By Catherine A. Cardno — March 26, 2012 4 min read
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Today’s new K-12 education book list focuses on books from inside the classroom, specifically art, the common core, literacy, and science.

ART:

Transforming City Schools Through Art: Approaches to Meaningful K-12 Learning, edited by Karen Hutzel, Flávia M.C. Bastos, and Kim Cosier (Teachers College Press & National Art Education Association, 2012). This anthology places art at the center of urban education reform by describing a positive, asset-based community development model designed to tap into the teaching and learning potential already available in urban cities.

COMMON CORE:

95 Strategies for Remodeling Instruction: Ideas for Incorporating CCSS, by Laura E. Pinto, Stephanie Spares, and Laura Driscoll (Corwin, 2012). This book shows teachers how to enhance lessons with 95 research-based strategies to align with the Common Core State Standards, develop 21st-century skills, and engage students.

Kid-Tested Writing Lessons for Grades 3-6: Daily Workshop Practices That Support the Common Core State Standards, by Leslie Blauman (Heinemann, 2012). This book includes 31 of the author’s best kid-tested and approved lessons that lead to great student writing. The lessons are the kids’ self-proclaimed favorites, incorporate mentor texts, support the Common Core State Standards, and are research-based.

Mapping Comprehensive Units to the ELA Common Core Standards, K-5, by Kathy Tuchman Glass, Foreword by Cindy A. Strickland (Corwin, 2012). This guide for connecting standards to lessons demonstrates how to design effective curriculum units to align with the Common Core State Standards.

Opening the Common Core: How to Bring All Students to College and Career Readiness, by Carol Corbett Burris and Delia T. Garrity (Corwin, 2012). This book shows how to leverage the Common Core State Standards to equip all students—not just high achievers—for college and careers. The authors, who helped lead their district in closing achievement gaps and increasing the number of students who completed four-year college programs, provide practical strategies and standards-based model lessons.

LITERACY:

Adolescent Literacy, edited by Jacy Ippolito, Jennifer L. Steele, and Jennifer F. Samson, Foreword by Douglas Fisher (Harvard Education Press, 2012). This book explores key issues and debates in the adolescent literacy crisis, the popular use of cognitive strategies, and disciplinary and content-area literacy.

American Sign Language and Early Literacy: A Model Parent-Child Program, by Kristin Snoddon (Gallaudet University Press, 2012). This book includes the results of a Canadian study to teach American Sign Language (ASL) literacy to deaf children, public resources for supporting ASL literacy, and a discussion of the benefits of early ASL literacy programs for deaf children and their families.

Crossing Boundaries: Teaching and Learning with Urban Youth, by Valerie Kinloch (Teachers College Press, 2012). This book uses a critical teacher-researcher lens to propose new directions for urban youth literacies and achievements. The text features examples of classroom engagements, student writings and presentations, discussions of texts and current events, and conversations on skills, process, achievement, and underachievement.

Strategic Reading Groups: Guiding Readers in the Middle Grades, by Jennifer Berne, Sophie C. Degener, Foreword by Donna Ogle (Corwin, 2012). This book features a practical model for small-group differentiated reading instruction in Grades 4-8. The authors offer a detailed discussion of how to position this instruction inside middle school language arts or reading classrooms and strategies for classroom management, groupings, and assessment.

What Readers Really Do: Teaching the Process of Meaning Making, by Dorothy Barnhouse and Vicki Vinton (Heinemann, 2012). This book offers practical tips for meeting today’s rigorous standards while focusing on the deeper purposes and processes of reading.

STEM:

Buzz Into Action: The Insect Curriculum Guide for Grades K-4, by David Alexander (NSTA Press Book, 2012). An insect-education curriculum designed to introduce children to insects through investigations that involve scientific inquiry and knowledge building rather than memorization.

Bringing Outdoor Science In: Thrifty Classroom Lessons, by Steve Rich (NSTA Press Book, 2012). This guide contains more than 50 science lessons in six units: Greening the School, Insects, Plants, Rocks and Soils, Water, and In the Sky. Almost all the needed materials are inexpensive or even free (such as leaves and rocks), and the lessons can be used inside the classroom or outside on a field trip.

Connecting With Nature: A Naturalist’s Perspective, by Robert Stebbins (NSTA Press Book, 2012). The book includes activities, examples, and stories with the author’s perspectives on the importance of dealing objectively yet compassionately with social and environmental problems.

Front-Page Science: Engaging Teens in Science Literacy, by Wendy Saul, Angela Kohnen, Alan Newman, and Laura Pearce (NSTA Press Book, 2012). This book uses science journalism techniques to help students become better consumers of, and contributors to, a scientifically literate community.

Please let me know if you have a new release, or know of a new release, that you would like to be considered for a book list.

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A version of this news article first appeared in the BookMarks blog.