Teaching and learning in grades 4-8

Teachers: Plan to Care for Yourself This Year

Amid the enthusiasm and anticipation that typically infuse the start of school, author Debbie Silver shares advice to help teachers plan a successful year by choosing actions that will decrease stress, build stamina, and make sure they take care of themselves first.

Higher Order Thinking with Geometric Shapes

Each student Amy Estersohn shared the book “Which One Doesn’t Belong” with spent time lost deep in thought among the geometric images and was able to articulate a reasonable explanation for why a shape didn’t belong. The teacher’s guide can help build math discussion.

Using Fiction to Launch Our 4th Grade Science

Mary Tarashuk is counting on Peter Brown’s fiction picture books to enliven her 4th graders’ adaptation to their new classroom and their first science unit on animal and plant adaptation. The Global Read Aloud, featuring Brown’s Roz the Wild Robot, is in the wings.

Creating a Classroom Culture of Feedback

William Ferriter and Paul Cancellieri pack their book on rethinking student feedback with knowledge and helpful advice that can benefit teachers and empower students as learners, says educator Bill Ivey. He shares possible applications for his own classroom.

Fiction and Nonfiction: Smart Lesson Planning

Do you want a book filled with lesson plans that you can use the next day or something based in theory that will inform your teaching decisions along the way? Pam Hamilton writes you can have it both ways in these fiction and nonfiction guides by Gravity Goldberg and Renee Houser.

How to Maximize School Board Effectiveness

This is a needed, practical book for superintendents, school leaders, and others who want to know how districts work and how these key figures should function in terms of school governance and working relationships, says retired principal Mary Langer Thompson.