State tests are assessing reading and writing together—Are you ready? The heat is on—state tests now assess reading and writing together. And that’s a good thing, but we’ve got some catching up to do in developing students’ facility with written response. With Text Structures and Fables, Gretchen Bernabei and Jayne Hover share lessons and short texts to use right away. They harness the inviting format of fables to teach many ways to respond to texts in any genre. Students will learn easy structures for: Answering comprehension questions Connecting theme or moral to self or world Answering questions about author’s craft Showcasing thinking in non-traditional formats such as graphics And much more!

It’s one of education’s greatest challenges: How do we shape our youngest students, who often are just learning how to hold a pencil, into capable writers within the span of a single school year? Text Structures from Nursery Rhymes offers the solution: a clear and actionable framework for guiding young students to write successfully in any style, from narrative to descriptive to persuasive. The key to the strategy lies in using familiar text structures to break down a story into its main components — for example, "Where I was," "Who I saw," and "What I thought" — in order to immediately thrust students into the role of the writer. This groundbreaking book provides 53 lessons, each centered around a classic nursery rhyme, and all the tools you’ll need to Capitalize on the story’s rhythm and rhyme to make an instant connection with your students Convey the story’s text structure using the lesson’s whimsical illustrations, providing a visual model that resonates with children Lead the classroom in creating new stories — in words, pictures, or both — utilizing the text structure you’ve defined Put each nursery rhyme to work as a springboard for important language-arts topics Fine-tune your approach at every step based on your preferred teaching style and students’ progress Put Text Structures from Nursery Rhymes to work in your classroom and discover how text structures, already a remarkable success in later grades, can also have a profound impact on younger students’ progress. Bonus! Includes eight downloadable paper dolls—1 man, 1 woman, 1 girl, 1 boy, and 4 animals. Your students can use the paper dolls to retell the nursery rhymes, illustrate their own stories based on a nursery rhyme, or even to act out stories from other books in your classroom library.

Poetry is a joyful art form, but how do you teach students to joyfully read, analyze, and write poems? In Text Structures from Poetry, Grades 4-12, award-winning educator Gretchen Bernabei teams up with noted poet Laura Van Prooyen to light the path. Centered around 50 classroom-proven lesson and poem pairs, the mentor texts represent a broad range of voices in contemporary poetry and the canon. These unique and engaging lessons show educators how to "pop the hood" on a poem to discover what makes it work, using text structures to unlock the engine of a poem. This method enables educators to engage students in reading and re-reading a poem closely, to identify how the parts of the poem relate to each other to create movement, and to leverage what they have learned to write their own evocative poems. Each of the 50 lessons includes a mentor poem that serves as an excellent model for young writers, a diagram that illustrates the text structure of the poem, and several inspiring examples of student poems written to emulate the mentor poem. Easy-to-use instructional resources enhance instructor and student understanding and include: Teaching notes for unlocking the text structure of a poem and the engine that makes it work. Tips for exploring rhyme scheme, meter, and fixed forms. Instructional sequences that vary the ways students can read and write poems and other prose forms. Ideas for revising and publishing student poems. A "Meet the Contemporary Authors" section that includes fascinating messages from the contemporary poets. Teach your students to learn about poetry using the magic of poems themselves and lead the way to a rewarding love of poetry for teachers and students alike.

"The state test is changing in Texas. For the last 20 years, Texas students in grades 4, 7, 9 and 10 have been asked to write an essay in response to a stand-alone prompt like "What's your favorite season?" or "What's the importance of friendship?" But in the spring of 2023, this will all change. Now, the Texas legislature will be assessing reading and writing together. Students will no longer have stand-alone essays on the high-stakes tests, but will be asked to answer questions, both in short format and as more extended length. But the kicker is that now students will be tested on this writing at every grade from grade 3 to 10. This means that teachers of grades formerly tested only for reading will now have writing components at every grade level, sending Texas teachers and administrators into panic mode, as teachers of grades 3, 5, 6, and 8 have never received training for writing instruction. Text Structures and Fables: Writing About What We Read, is designed to meet this pressing need. Part I, Building Strong Readers and Writers and Part II, Assessing Strong Readers and Writers will assist not only ELA teachers, but also those teachers formerly known as "reading teachers." Additionally, the Texas Education Agency intends to eventually add short-answer questions on all tests, including social studies and science. Part III, Using Non-traditional formats to "Show me you read it," is to help those teachers add a non-threatening writing component into their coursework"--

State tests are assessing reading and writing together—Are you ready? I wish students would interact with a text on their own...I wish it wasn’t like pulling teeth to get them to elaborate their thinking. Wish no more, because bestselling author Gretchen Bernabei shows you how to guide students to be nimble at both short answer and extended responses. Her secret? "Teach students text structures, and they can pour their swirling ideas about the text into cogent writing." Using the accessible format of fables, Bernabei and Hover share lessons and an appendix full of fables so you can teach students five concrete ways to respond to text in any genre: Generate basic responses, using structures that support clarity Craft fiction inspired by the text to unveil literary knowledge and imaginative response Write essays about a theme or moral that display empathic and evidence-based interpretation Answer open-ended questions by selecting a technique that reflects the text and their engagement Use non-traditional formats like graphics and spoken dialogue to showcase their learning The heat is on—beginning in third grade, state tests are now assessing reading and writing together. And that’s a good thing, but we’ve got some catching up to do. With Text Structures and Fables in hand, your students will swiftly and surely become text-savvy readers and writers.

A Revolutionary Strategy for Teaching Writing to Children How can we shape young students, often just learning how to hold a pencil, into capable writers? This groundbreaking book offers the solution: a clear framework for guiding children to write in any style, from narrative to persuasive. The key lies in using familiar text structures to break down a story into its main components, immediately thrusting students into the role of the writer. Included are 53 lessons, each centered around a classic nursery rhyme, and all the tools you’ll need to lead your students in crafting their own story — in words, pictures, or both. Discover how text structures, already a success in later grades, can also have a profound impact on younger students’ progress.