Resources

Books:

1.

Guiding Readers and Writers (Grades 3-6): Teaching, Comprehension, Genre, and Content Literacy by Irene Fountas, Gay Su Pinnell (Jan 2001)

 Guiding Readers and Writers (Grades 3-6) contains a wealth of ideas that will inspire students to become more literate. I have literally seen my classroom transformed as I have engaged the students in minilessons, conferences, group sharing and response journals all for the purpose of building a community of learners.

Fountas and Pinnell see the goal of language arts instruction in the intermediate grades to be the creation of lifelong readers and writers. They structure the language arts class in a three-block framework: a sixty-minute reading workshop, a sixty-minute writing workshop, and a thirty- to sixty-minute language/word study segment (including spelling, vocabulary, decoding, and more). In addition to providing a lot of information, Fountas and Pinnell have produced a book that is remarkably readable and user-friendly. The two-column format is extremely helpful. In addition, frequent headings, bullet points, and graphics help you to efficiently get the information you need. With photos and other graphics, Fountas and Pinnell show you how to organize your classroom, your materials, and your time for a reading/writing workshop. The authors provide step-by-step instructions for getting started (in a few instances even offering a sample script). They provide scores of suggestions for minilessons, and they recommend more than 1,000 books for classroom use. In addition, each section includes techniques to use with struggling readers and writers. The book even devotes a section to the "testing genre," helping students develop strategies to maximize their performance on standardized reading tests. Furthermore, _Guiding Readers and Writers_ includes sixty-five appendices (nearly 150 pages)! Fifty-three of the appendices are reproducible pages that the teacher or the student can use for planning, record-keeping, assessment, analysis, etc. Most of the remaining appendices comprise lists of recommended books. A list of 1,000 books is repeated -- organized once by title and again by level. _Guiding Readers and Writers_ will help you 'revamp' the passions that originally prompted you to become an English teacher -- and it will show you how to share those passions with your students. Focusing on the vital elements of communication is likely to produce the best year ever -- for you *and* for your students.

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Here are some great resources for math classes!

     Addressing the reality that English Language Learners (ELLs) need additional support in classes where math instruction is in English, this lesson-based series gives teachers the essential tools for meeting math content goals and language development goals simultaneously. With a deep appreciation for the unique linguistic experiences and diverse cultural traditions that ELLs bring to a classroom, each model lesson takes teachers step-by-step through ways to actively involve ELLs in learning math. Teachers will get a wealth of strategies and activities for modifying their instruction to improve the success of ELLs, suggestions for determining the linguistic demands of math lessons, answers to frequently asked questions including multi-language and multi-level situations, and instant-use reproducibles. Contents cover geometry, number sense, data analysis, algebra, and word problems.

Books available on Amazon.com

Supporting English Language Learners in Math Class, Grades K-2 by Rusty Bresser, Kathy Melanese and Christine Sphar (Jul 18, 2008)

Supporting English Language Learners in Math Class, Grades 3-5 by Rusty Bresser, Kathy Melanese and Christine Sphar (Jul 18, 2008)

Supporting English Language Learners in Math Class, Grades 6-8 by Kathy Melanese, Luz Chung and Cheryl Forbes (Apr 15, 2011)