The Classroom Essentials Series
With fresh and engaging content, books in the Classroom Essentials series bring the transformative power of foundational ideas and student-centered practices to today’s busy teachers.
Delivery Method
Imprint
Heinemann
Each book in the Classroom Essentials series focuses on one essential, student-centered practice, giving you the information you need to get started trying it—or refining it—in your own classroom right away. Each book features a fresh, highly visual design to create an engaging, contemporary reading experience. Most books in the series also include robust online resources—including video that shows you what the practice looks like in today’s dynamic classrooms.
Perhaps most importantly, each author in the series is a nationally-known authority on the book’s topic, and connects you with their own teaching mentors. You’ll see how today’s most progressive practices are built on a solid foundation of research found in professional literature.
Reading Conferences
Why are reading conferences so important?
What do effective reading conferences look and sound like?
How do I fit reading conferences into my literacy block?
“Conferring,” writes Jennifer Serravallo, “is where the magic happens.” In this primer, she reveals that this seeming magic is actually purposeful, responsive instruction.
Jen presents conferences for six specific instructional situations: assessing, goal-setting, strategy lessons, and more. A rich design, replete with infographics and special features, guides you quickly from learning to teaching with:
- Jen’s moves and language
- 9 videos of her teaching in K–8 classrooms
- 13 conference note-taking forms—one for each reading goal from the hierarchy in her Reading Strategies Book
- Suggestions for connecting emergent bilingual learners’ language goals and reading goals.
With Jen’s support, you’ll discover the true magic of conferring—the joyous, aha moments you’ll see in growing readers.
Visit Jennifer Serravallo's Main Page
Writing Conferences
In A Teacher’s Guide to Writing Conferences, Carl Anderson explains the underlying principles and reasons for conferring with students, and how to make writing conferences a part of your daily routine. With clear and accessible language, Carl guides you through the three main parts of a writing conference, and shows you the teaching moves and intentional language that can be used in each one.
He helps you understand:
- how to get started with conferring, or improve your existing conferences
- how to use conferences to meet the diverse needs of your student writers
- how to fit conferences into your busy writing workshop schedule.
More than 25 videos bring the content to life, while Teacher Tips, Q&A’s, and Recommended Reading lists provide everything you need to help you become a better writing teacher.
Getting Started with Beginning Writers
Why are reading conferences so important?
What do effective reading conferences look and sound like?
How do I fit reading conferences into my literacy block?
“Conferring,” writes Jennifer Serravallo, “is where the magic happens.” In this primer, she reveals that this seeming magic is actually purposeful, responsive instruction.
If you’re a new teacher or new to writing workshop, A Teacher’s Guide to Getting Started with Beginning Writers will show you in clear and simple terms what to do to establish a routine for writing in your classroom, offering you vision, insight, and practical support. If you’re an experienced workshop teacher, Katie and Lisa will help you imagine new possibilities.
Writing Workshop Essentials
- How can I get started with writing workshop, or refine my workshop?
- What are the essential elements of a writing workshop?
- How can I create daily structures and routines that support writers?
In this foundational guide, Katherine Bomer and Corinne Arens describe the elegant simplicity of a Writing Workshop focused on just three essentials—time, choice, and response. Based on the research-based belief that children learn to write best when we provide a predictable, daily structure for writing, Katherine and Corinne introduce teachers to the rituals and routines of writing workshop and suggest ways to take small, incremental steps toward implementing them. Shared from the viewpoint of two veteran educators who understand the issues and obstacles teachers face day to day, A Teacher’s Guide to Writing Workshop Essentials also serves as a refresher for experienced workshop teachers looking for a chance to refocus, clarify, and extend the work in their practice. If your teaching has become more complicated and more focused on curriculum than on the writers sitting in front of you, if you’re not sure what your students really need to support them as writers, or if you’re just not sure how to get started with Writing Workshop, this guide is for you.
Mentor Texts, K-12
Mentor Texts K-5
In this step-by-step guide, Carl Anderson shows you how to put teaching with mentor texts at the center of the way you teach writing in your elementary classroom. You’ll learn how to find just-right mentor texts for your students, analyze them for multiple craft and convention teaching points, and teach with mentor texts with your whole class, in small group lessons, and in writing conferences.Classroom video, annotated mentor texts and student writing samples, and teaching and planning tools will give you what you need to teach effectively with mentor texts.
Mentor Texts, 6-12
Using mentor texts from a range of high-interest sources and diverse authors can be a real game changer in secondary writing classrooms. Students learn to read like writers, deepening their understanding of quality writing and inspiring them in their own drafting and revision. In this foundational guide, you’ll learn the what, why, and how of teaching with mentor texts in small ways as well as large—and discover the power of mentor texts to serve as “writing teachers” alongside you.
Allison and Rebekah provide a multitude of annotated examples from professional writers, alongside student samples, to illustrate how mentor texts can teach specific writing skills. Online resources, planning tools, and videos for both teachers and students make A Teacher’s Guide to Mentor Texts an instant companion to your lesson plan book.
A Teacher’s Guide to Interactive Writing
Welcome to interactive writing, a foundational classroom practice that helps our youngest students discover the joy of writing as a community of learners. Letters, sounds, spelling patterns, and concepts of print come to life when teachers share the pen with children, collaborating to create text.
A Teacher’s Guide to Interactive Writing shares the principles, routines, and strategies of interactive writing in the PreK-2 classroom.
You’ll watch how the magic happens, across the day and across subject areas, in 23 classroom videos with teacher Matt Halpern. Abundant teaching tips help you seamlessly weave interactive writing into your daily practice—no matter your curriculum or instructional approach.
Give your students the confidence to become “writers” even from the very beginning, with interactive writing.
A Teacher's Guide to Writing Workshop Minilessons
In writing workshop, the minilesson allows teachers to connect a lesson—often one that is mandated by a set of standards, a district curriculum, or a grade-level unit plan—to the specific objectives you have, as well as to the cultural knowledge and experiences of your students. Lisa Eickholdt and Patricia Vitale-Reilly explain the four-part structure of minilessons and share methodologies and tools, including charts, visuals, and materials that you can use to make your minilessons efficient and engaging for all students.
With tips on inclusive practices, how to deliver minilessons in different instructional settings, and assessment, you’ll have everything you need to get started with writing workshop minilessons.
A Teacher’s Guide to Math Workshop
- How can I get started with math workshop?
- What are the essential elements of math workshop?
- What does a math workshop look like in action?
A Teacher’s Guide to Math Workshop shares a step-by-step process for implementing a math workshop in any classroom and with any math curriculum. Grounded in research-based best practices in math education, this introduction to math workshop is enhanced with classroom videos that bring the content to life. You’ll see students engaged in standards-based, differentiated, academically rich mathematics tasks and activities that help them see the value of math and make connections to math in their everyday lives. Vivid pictures, artifacts, classroom video, and writing from three expert educators show you the daily rituals and routines of math workshop: whole group instruction, small, guided math groups, and purposeful partner and individual math workstations.
Virtual Samples
The Classroom Essentials Series
- A Teacher's Guide to Getting Started with Beginning Writers
- A Teacher's Guide to Writing Conferences
- A Teacher's Guide to Reading Conferences
- A Teacher’s Guide to Writing Workshop Essentials
- A Teacher’s Guide to Vocabulary Development Across the Day
- A Teacher’s Guide to Mentor Texts, 6-12
- A Teacher's Guide to Writing Workshop Minilessons
- A Teacher's Guide to Mentor Texts, K-5
- A Teacher’s Guide to Interactive Writing
- A Teacher’s Guide to Math Workshop