The current emphasis on the body of research known as the "Science of Reading" has renewed the reading wars and raised challenging questions for balanced literacy teachers about the best way to teach reading. Instead of fueling the debate, Dr. Jan Burkins and Kari Yates immersed themselves in the research and produced Shifting the Balance, Grades K-2: 6 Ways to Bring the Science of Reading into the Balanced Literacy Classroom.
 
This best-selling guide is concise and practical, integrating effective reading strategies from each perspective. Every chapter of Shifting the Balance, Grades K-2 focuses on one of the six simple and scientifically sound shifts reading teachers can make to strengthen their approach to early reading instruction in these areas:
 

• Reading Comprehension
• Phonemic Awareness
• Phonics
• High-Frequency Words
• Cueing Systems
• Text Selection

Practical Instruction for Primary Grades: Whether your students are just learning to read or building more advanced reading comprehensive skills, Shifting the Balance, K-2 is designed to help teachers meet the instructional needs of K-2 students.

Six Manageable Shifts: Each chapter focuses on a key shift that helps educators understand common misconceptions and adjust their thinking around some common instructional practices that teachers have been using for decades.

Evidence-Based Instruction: Burkins and Yates offer busy educators a blueprint for integrating finding from brain research, cognitive science, and child development into their daily instruction, while keeping meaningful experiences with books a priority.

Classroom Applications: Shifting the Balance, K-2 is full of sample activities and classroom vignettes that paint a picture of what these shifts look like in action with roomful of learners.

The book has already helped countless educators by taking the guesswork out of how to blend best practices with the latest research while keeping students at the forefront of reading instruction. "We've written this book to support you in making sound decisions anchored in the best of science, the truth of responsiveness, and a relentless focus on providing all children learning experiences saturated with meaning," the authors write.

The past two decades have brought giant leaps in our understanding of how the brain works. But these discoveries—and all their exciting implications—have yet to make their way into most classrooms.
 
In Brain Words: How the Science of Reading Informs Teaching, authors J. Richard Gentry and Gene Ouellette, bring their original, research-based framework of “brain words”—dictionaries in the brain where students store and automatically access sounds, spellings, and meaning. This book aims to fill the gap between the science of reading and classroom instruction by providing up-to-date knowledge about reading and neurological circuitry, including evidence that spelling is at the core of the reading brain.
 
Brain Words will show how children’s brains develop as they become readers and discover ways you can take concrete steps to promote this critical developmental passage, including:

• Incorporating tools to recognize what works, what doesn’t, and why
• Practical classroom activities for daily teaching and student assessment
• Insights about what brain research tells us about whole language and phonics-first movements
• Deepened understanding of dyslexia through the enhanced lens of brain science

With the insights and strategies of Brain Words, you can meet your students where they are and ensure they gain confidence as readers, spellers, and writers.

Once upon a time...children's nonfiction books were stodgy, concise, and not very kid friendly. Most were text heavy, with just a few scattered images decorating the content and meaning, rather than enhancing it. Over the last 20 years, children's nonfiction has evolved into a new breed of visually dynamic and engaging texts.

In 5 Kinds of Nonfiction: Enriching Reading and Writing Instruction with Children’s Books, Melissa Stewart and Dr. Marlene Correia present a new way to sort nonfiction into five major categories and show how doing so can help teachers and librarians build stronger readers and writers. Along the way, they:

• Introduce the 5 kinds of nonfiction: Active, Browseable, Traditional, Expository Literature, and Narrative—and explore each category through discussions, classroom examples, and insights from leading children’s book authors
• Offer tips for building strong, diverse classroom texts and library collections
• Provide more than 20 activities to enhance literacy instruction
• Include innovative strategies for sharing and celebrating nonfiction with students. 

With more than 150 exemplary nonfiction book recommendations and Stewart and Correia’s extensive knowledge of literacy instruction, 5 Kinds of Nonfiction will elevate your understanding of nonfiction in ways that speak specifically to the info-kids in your classrooms, but will inspire all readers and writers.

Stacey Shubitz and Lynne Dorfman welcome you to experience the writing workshop for the first time or in a new light with Welcome to Writing Workshop: Engaging Today's Students with a Model That Works. Through strategic routines, tips, resources, and short focused video clips, teachers can create the sights and sounds of a thriving writing workshop where:

• Both students and teachers are working authors
• Students spend most of their time writing—not just learning about it
• Student choice is encouraged to help create engaged writers, not compliant ones
• Students are part of the formative assessment process
• Students will look forward to writing time—not dread it.

From explanations of writing process and writing traits to small-group strategy lessons and mini-lessons, this book will provide the know-how to feel confident and comfortable in the teaching of writers.

With the rise of teacher stressors, new and changing state standards, and high-stakes testing, it is more important than ever to remind literacy teachers and teacher-librarians about the reason that brought them to this profession: the love of story. 

The Gift of Story: Exploring the Affective Side of the Reading Life, by John Schu (affectionately known as "Mr. Schu" all over reading communities), invites readers to consider literacy beyond its academic benefits and explore how universal truths found in stories can change us, inspire us, connect us to others, answer our deepest questions, and even help us heal along the way. Using his experience as a teacher, librarian, book lover, and story ambassador, Mr. Schu asks readers to reflect on what it means to share their hearts through stories and how it can connect us to individuals and learning communities.

The Gift of Story is presented through a study of five affective elements: Healer, Inspiration, Clarifier, Compassion, and Connector.  Along the way, readers will encounter insightful contributions from educators, children’s writers, and illustrators, as well as recommendations for sharing the gift of story with learning communities including: treasured book suggestions that stir reflection, engaging tips for celebrating literacy, and heart-growing applications to lift classroom and library practices.

Celebrate the way we define and imagine ourselves through literacy by using stories to connect to others, build and strengthen community, and honor the children we were called to teach.