New Releases by Douglas Fisher

Learn why response to intervention is the ideal framework for supporting English learners. Find clear guidelines for distinguishing between lack of language proficiency and learning disability. Follow the application and effectiveness of RTI through the stories of four representative students of varying ages, nationalities, and language proficiency levels. Throughout the book, the authors illustrate the benefits of implementing RTI in a professional learning community.

Prompt students to become the sophisticated readers, writers, and thinkers they need to be to achieve higher learning. The authors explore the important relationship between text, learner, and learning. With an array of methods and assignments to establish critical literacy in a discussion-based and reflective classroom, you’ll encourage students to find meaning and cultivate thinking from even the most challenging expository texts.

Join Nancy Frey and Douglas Fisher as they outline a clear-cut, realistic, and rewarding approach to formative assessment. They explain how four discrete steps work in tandem to create a seamless, comprehensive formative assessment system—one that has no beginning and no end. This ongoing approach enhances an active give-and-take relationship between teachers and students to promote learning. Where am I going? Step 1: Feed-up ensures that students understand the purpose of an assignment, task, or lesson, including how they will be assessed. Where am I now? Step 2: Checking for understanding guides instruction and helps determine if students are making progress toward their goals. How am I doing? Step 3: Feedback provides students with valuable and constructive information about their successes and needs. Where am I going next? Step 4: Feed-forward builds on the feedback from step 3 and uses performance data to facilitate student achievement. Dozens of real-life scenarios demonstrate how to apply these steps in your classroom, always focusing on the presence or absence of student learning to guide the action. By enabling teachers and students alike to see more clearly what they need to do for learning to be successful, this approach builds students'' competence, confidence, and understanding. No matter what grade level you teach, The Formative Assessment Action Plan will help you make better use of assessment data so you can more quickly adjust instruction to keep every student on the path to success.

In this practical guide, authors Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey offer a variety of strategies that K-12 teachers can use to craft effective, standards-based purpose statements, assignments, and tests across grade levels and content areas.

The authors introduce a strengthened model of RTI that emphasizes formative assessment and core instruction rather than multiple layers of intervention

This book explains how teachers can use guided instruction (gradually transferring knowledge and the responsibility for learning to students through scaffolds for learning) to boost students to higher levels of understanding and accomplishment.

The benefits of collaborative learning are well documented—and yet, almost every teacher knows how group work can go wrong: restless students, unequal workloads, lack of accountability, and too little learning for all the effort involved. In this book, educators Nancy Frey, Douglas Fisher, and Sandi Everlove show you how to make all group work productive group work: with all students engaged in the academic content and with each other, building valuable social skills, consolidating and extending their knowledge, and increasing their readiness for independent learning. The key to getting the most out of group work is to match research-based principles of group work with practical action. Classroom examples across grade levels and disciplines illustrate how to * Create interdependence and positive interaction * Model and guide group work * Design challenging and engaging group tasks * Ensure group and individual accountability * Assess and monitor students'' developing understanding (and show them how to do the same) * Foster essential interpersonal skills, such as thinking with clarity, listening, giving useful feedback, and considering different points of view. The authors also address the most frequently asked questions about group work, including the best ways to form groups, accommodate mixed readiness levels, and introduce collaborative learning routines into the classroom. Throughout, they build a case that productive group work is both an essential part of a gradual release of responsibility instructional model and a necessary part of good teaching practice.

A guide to fostering academic discourse in classrooms regardless of subject area, with a focus on English language learners at all levels.

"This book puts into practice what we′ve long known but often ignored: one picture is indeed worth a thousand words! The chapters offer a practical look at how images in all their many forms can be used to motivate reluctant readers."--Donna E. Alvermann, Distinguished Research ProfessorUniversity of Georgia "Just as vision entails more than seeing, being visually literate means that students can interpret and reflect upon images as well as words. These strategies will help your students develop the literacy they need for this brave new century."--Carol Jago, Director, California Reading and Literature ProjectUniversity of California, Los Angeles Spark students′ interest in reading and help them become critical consumers of visual information!Today′s students live in an increasingly visual world where they are engaged not only by words, but also by images. This collection of innovative articles shows classroom teachers and literacy specialists how to use students′ interest in picture books, comics, graphic novels, film, anime, and other visual media to motivate and engage readers in Grades K-12.Teaching Visual Literacy offers background information, research, practical ideas, and sample lessons to help educators: Capture the attention of learners and boost their critical thinking skills Support and strengthen multiple competencies in literacy Help students comprehend and assess visual information Reach students with disabilities and extend their understanding Visual literacy is an integral part of literacy development, and this much-needed classroom companion helps teachers engage students as critical readers and prepare them for living in the twenty-first century.

Reading for Information in Elementary School: Content Literacy Strategies to Build Comprehension was written to give k-5 teachers the tools they need to lay an educational groundwork that promotes students'' success with informational text from the early grades. Packed with research-based, classroom-proven strategies, the book follows a before, during, and after reading format that models the most effective approach to reading for information, focusing on the processes required to develop content literacy. You''ll meet the teachers, sit in on their lessons, witness their students'' responses, and come away from this book with a model for teaching your students to read successfully for information and a handbook of proven strategies to implement. Features: Examples of instructional strategies-This book follows six elementary teachers (grades K-5) as they utilize strategies with informational texts. These examples are detailed and include student and teacher dialogue to provide readers with the sense they are watching the lesson unhold. Each focus instructional strategy is research-based-The instructional strategies outlined in this book have a research base and have been implemented in schools across the country. Margin notes provide readers with additional information and resources-Readers are referred to other sources of information at common places that they may have questions. A clear process for organizing instruction is provided-The strategies and texts presented in the book follow the before/during/after instructional organization used by teachers to foster reading comprehension. Book covers of informational texts-Each chapter features the covers and bibliographical information of some of the best informational texts available today.

We know that literacy is the key to learning in school, yet millions of middle and high school students lack the literacy skills they need to succeed. What can educators do? In Creating Literacy-Rich Schools for Adolescents, authors Gay Ivey and Douglas Fisher make a compelling case that all teachers--across the content areas--have a role to play in students'' development of literacy, which they define as reading, writing, speaking, listening, and viewing. Rather than focusing solely on reading instruction and the cliché that says "all teachers are teachers of reading," they urge teachers to incorporate rich literacy-based learning experiences into their classrooms, with the goal of helping students to learn and think across the curriculum. With research-based findings, engaging examples, and extensive lists of resources, Ivey and Fisher encourage readers to * Reexamine the materials, experiences, and expectations of the English/language arts classroom; * Use strategies to improve literacy in all the content areas and seek alternatives to the traditional textbook; * Make independent reading an important part of students'' ongoing literacy development; * Design and use interventions that really work for struggling students; and * Consider the schoolwide elements--professional development, peer coaching, leadership, and assessment--that should be in place to support teachers and students. Essential questions provide the focus for each chapter, and Quality Indicators for Secondary Literacy help readers gauge where they are on the continuum of providing a meaningful literacy experience for students. Creating Literacy-Rich Schools for Adolescents will inspire educators to take up this challenge in their own school with new confidence that the work is worthwhile and achievable. Note: This product listing is for the Adobe Acrobat (PDF) version of the book.

Ten questions, ten chapters, on such subjects as infusing arts into reading and language arts, as well as math, science, and social studies; teaching about artists and their craft; what works, and for whom; and assessment of student learning within integrated arts lessons.

More than ever before, as they teach to an increasingly diverse population, educators need a clear, concise guide to designing and implementing responsive curriculum. This book, built around the lessons of classroom teachers, provides the ''how'' of instruction design. The first section identifies the most important components of design: addressing standards, designing multiple assessments, identifying richly detailed source materials, and creating interrelated lessons and culminating activities. Section two expands on the needs of diverse learners, and the concluding section contains a completed instructional plan, easily adaptable to your content and grade level.

A book of strategies that will help you become successful in a social studies classroom.