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The MUST SEE "In Case You Missed It" Summer Reading List
posted by: Alana | June 21, 2016, 09:09 PM   

Every month, AAE sends our members a special e-newsletter that focuses on professional development for teachers - and in each issue, we feature recommended readings via a book of the month.

Now that summer has officially begun, it's time to catch up on any of those books you may have missed throughout the school year, along with a few extra suggestions in case you're all caught up!
 
AAE suggested readings for the 2015/2016 school year:

- The Reading Strategies Book: Your Everything Guide to Developing Skilled Readers
- Setting the Standard for Project Based Learning
- Better Than Carrots or Sticks: Restorative Practices for Positive Classroom Management
- Tim Gunn: The Natty Professor: A Master Class on Mentoring, Motivating and Making it Work!
- Tap, Click, Read: Growing Readers in a World of Screens: A guide to promoting literacy in the digital age
- The Differentiated Flipped Classroom: A Practical Guide to Digital Learning

See the summary of each book here:

1. The Reading Strategies Book: Your Everything Guide to Developing Skilled Readers

By Jennifer Serravallo

 

With hit books that support strategic reading through conferring, small groups, and assessment, Jen Serravallo gets emails almost daily asking, "Isn't there a book of the strategies themselves?" Now there is!


"Strategies make the often invisible work of reading actionable and visible," Jen writes. In The Reading Strategies Book, she collects 300 strategies to share with readers in support of thirteen goals-everything from fluency to literary analysis. Each strategy is cross-linked to skills, genres, and Fountas & Pinnell reading levels to give you just-right teaching, just in time.

 

2. Setting the Standard for Project Based Learning
By John Larmer, John Mergendoller, & Suzie Boss
Project based learning (PBL) is gaining renewed attention with the current focus on college and career readiness and the performance-based emphases of Common Core State Standards, but only high-quality versions can deliver the beneficial outcomes that schools want for their students.
The authors-leaders at the respected Buck Institute for Education-take readers through the step-by-step process of how to create, implement, and assess PBL using a classroom-tested framework. Also included are chapters for school leaders on implementing PBL system-wide and the use of PBL in informal settings.


3. Better Than Carrots or Sticks: Restorative Practices for Positive Classroom Management
By Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey, & Dominique Smith
Classroom management is traditionally a matter of encouraging good behavior and discouraging bad by doling out rewards and punishments. But studies show that when educators empower students to address and correct misbehavior among themselves, positive results are longer lasting and more wide reaching.

In Better Than Carrots or Sticks, longtime educators and best-selling authors Dominique Smith, Douglas Fisher, and Nancy Frey provide a practical blueprint for creating a cooperative and respectful classroom climate in which students and teachers work through behavioral issues together.
4. Tim Gunn: The Natty Professor: A Master Class on Mentoring, Motivating and Making it Work!

Tim Gunn, America's favorite reality TV cohost, is known for his kind but firm approach in providing wisdom, guidance, and support to the scores of design hopefuls on Project Runway. Having begun his fashion career as a teacher at Parsons The New School for Design, Tim knows more than a thing or two about mentorship and how to convey invaluable pearls of wisdom in an approachable, accessible manner. Tim Gunn: The Natty Professor will focus on Tim "as teacher." Divided into sections on common themes-truth-telling, empathy, asking, cheerleading, and hoping for the best-this practical, timely book takes us on a journey through life lessons and uses Tim's own personal experiences, from the classroom to the therapist's office, to illustrate larger concepts.
5. Tap, Click, Read: Growing Readers in a World of Screens: A guide to promoting literacy in the digital age
By Lisa Guernsey & Michael H. Levine

With young children gaining access to a dizzying array of games, videos, and other digital media, will they ever learn to read? The answer is yes-if they are surrounded by adults who know how to help and if they are introduced to media designed to promote literacy, instead of undermining it. Tap, Click, Read gives educators and parents the tools and information they need to help children grow into strong, passionate readers who are skilled at using media and technology of all kinds-print, digital, and everything in between.
By Eric M. Carbaugh & Kristina J. Doubet

In the flipped classroom, students need to do more than simply re-watch a video to learn effectively. This groundbreaking guide helps you identify and address diverse student needs within the flipped classroom environment. You will find practical, standards-aligned solutions to help you design and implement carefully planned at-home and at-school learning experiences, all while checking for individual student understanding.
By Eric C. Sheninger
UnCommon Learning techniques set the stage for mastery and true student engagement.
Integrate digital media and new applications with purpose and build a culture of learning with pleasure!
Let students use real-world tools to do real-world work and develop skills society demands. Be the leader who creates this environment. UnCommon Learning shows you how to transform a learning culture through sustainable and innovative initiatives. It moves straight to the heart of using innovations such as Makerspaces, Blended Learning and Microcredentials.
8. LIT UP: One Reporter. Three Schools. Twenty-four Books That Can Change Lives
By David Denby
Can teenagers be turned on to serious reading? What kind of teachers can do it, and what books? To find out, Denby sat in on a tenth-grade English class in a demanding New York public school for an entire academic year, and made frequent visits to a troubled inner-city public school in New Haven, and to a respected public school in Westchester county. He read all the stories, poems, plays, and novels that the kids were reading, and creates an impassioned portrait of charismatic teachers at work, classroom dramas large and small, and fresh and inspiring encounters with the books themselves, including The Scarlet Letter, Brave New World, 1984, Slaughterhouse-Five, Notes From Underground, Long Way Gone and many more.
Lit Up is a dramatic narrative that traces awkward and baffled beginnings but also exciting breakthroughs and the emergence of pleasure in reading.
9. Parent Support: 30 Ways to Support Your Child's Education
By AAE Member Jillian Smart

This guide shares teaching strategies to help parents view learning from an educator's perspective. It is comprised of twenty-six lessons. Each lesson discusses practical, relatable ways in which parents can support their children's educational goals. If you want to try a different approach to learning, this is the resource for you.


10. Reading Reconsidered: A Practical Guide to Rigorous Literacy Instruction
By Doug Lemov, Colleen Driggs, and Erica Woolway

The question is a big one: How can we teach our students to read, read well, and read on their own? Reading Reconsidered is the authors's practical, detailed answer to the question. Grounded in advice from successful classrooms nationwide and with over 40 video clips of outstanding teachers, the book provides clear and actionable guidance to make all teachers reading teachers, one tool at a time. The book addresses the often anxiety-inducing world of Common Core, distilling from it four key ideas that help prepare students to be strong readers both in the classroom and in the world beyond it.


11. Launch: Using Design Thinking to Boost Creativity and Bring Out the Maker in Every Student
By John Spencer and A.J. Juliani

Educators John Spencer and A.J. Juliani know firsthand the challenges teachers face every day: School can be busy. Materials can be scarce. The creative process can seem confusing. Curriculum requirements can feel limiting. Those challenges too often bully creativity, pushing it to the side as an "enrichment activity" that gets put off or squeezed into the tiniest time block. We can do better. We must do better if we're going to prepare students for their future.

LAUNCH: Using Design Thinking to Boost Creativity and Bring Out the Maker in Every Student provides a process that can be incorporated into every class at every grade level, even if you don't consider yourself a "creative teacher."

And for all of you grade A teachers, here are some more suggestions to put on that summer reading list:

 

1. What Great Teachers Do Differently: Seventeen Things That Matter Most
By Todd Whitaker

 

This book describes the beliefs, behaviors, attitudes, and interactions that form the fabric of life in our best classrooms and schools. It focuses on the specific things that great teachers do ... that others do not. Readers of author Todd Whitaker's best-selling WHAT GREAT PRINCIPALS DO DIFFERENTLY asked him for a companion volume focusing on great teachers and their classrooms. This book is his response to those requests and focuses on the specific things that great teachers do ... that others do not. It answers these essential questions: Is it high expectations for students that matter? How do great teachers respond when students misbehave? Do great teachers filter differently than their peers? How do the best teachers approach standardized testing? How can your teachers gain the same advantages?

 

2. Differentiating Instruction in the Regular Classroom: How to Reach and Teach All Learners
By Diane Heacox Ed.D.


This updated edition presents a practical introduction to differentiation and explains how to differentiate instruction in a wide range of settings to provide variety and challenge. Chapters focus on evaluation in a differentiated classroom and how to manage both behavior and work tasks. The book includes connections to Common Core State Standards. Digital content includes a PowerPoint presentation for professional development, customizable forms from the book, and curriculum maps, workcards, and matrix plans.

 

3. Teach Like a Pirate: Increase Student Engagement, Boost Your Creativity, and Transform Your Life as an Educator
By Dave Burgess


Based on Dave Burgess's popular "Outrageous Teaching" and "Teach Like a PIRATE" seminars, this book offers inspiration, practical techniques, and innovative ideas that will help you to increase student engagement, boost your creativity, and transform your life as an educator. You'll learn how to:

 

• Tap into and dramatically increase your passion as a teacher
• Develop outrageously engaging lessons that draw students in like a magnet
• Establish rapport and a sense of camaraderie in your classroom
• Transform your class into a life-changing experience for your students

 

This groundbreaking inspirational manifesto contains over 30 hooks specially designed to captivate your class and 170 brainstorming questions that will skyrocket your creativity. Once you learn the Teach Like a PIRATE system, you'll never look at your role as an educator the same again.

 

What books do YOU think are must-reads for teachers this summer?
Tell us in the comments below!
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