Category: ELA & Literacy

Differentiating ELA Instruction with Menus

With its ready-made product menus and immediate applicability, Differentiating Instruction with Menus is one of those books that won’t gather dust, as teachers will turn to it for quick reference throughout the school year, says ELA and gifted facilitator Kim Rensch.

Challenging ELA Activities & Extensions

Gifted and advanced fifth graders will find the four units in this book – fiction and nonfiction – packed with graphic organizers, tech, and student discourse. Each unit focuses on a text exemplar. Instructional coach Donna Wall says the units provide suitable rigor.

Engineering Language Arts to Excite MS Kids

In 112 pages, Elyse S. Scott shares how she engineered (designed and created) lessons to achieve the learning goals for her 8th graders. The ELA activities and projects she shares are sure to produce readers, writers, and thinkers, says reviewer Anne Anderson.

Gallagher: Staying True to What Works in ELA

Teachers will see the standards movement differently after finishing Kelly Gallagher’s “In The Best Interest of Students.” Reviewer Beth Morrow expects readers will have a renewed passion for making a difference in students’ lives with best ELA practices.

Teaching Literary Elements

Reviewer Mark Domeier finds that the authors do a fine job of mixing theory and practical applications of it. But he would recommend the book to high school literature teachers, not middle school ELA educators with packed curricula.