"Teaching is art-creation-and a curriculum map is only as good as the teacher who considers it, who questions it, and who revises it to meet the needs of each year's students." -Kelly Gallagher and Penny Kittle Two teachers. Two classrooms. One school year. 180 Days represents the collaboration of two master teachers-Kelly Gallagher and Penny Kittle-over an entire school year: planning, teaching, and reflecting within their own and each other's classrooms in California and New Hampshire. Inspired by a teacher's question, "How do you fit it all in?" they identified and prioritized the daily, essential, belief-based practices that are worth spending time on. They asked, "Who will these students be as readers and writers after a year under our care?" What we make time for matters: what we plan, how we revise our plans while teaching, and how we reflect and decide what's next. The decision-making in the moment is the most essential work of teaching, and it's the ongoing study of the adolescents in front of us that has the greatest impact on our thinking. With both the demands of time and the complexity of diverse students in mind, Kelly and Penny mapped out a year of engaging literacy practices aligned to their core beliefs about what matters most. They share their insights on managing time and tasks and offer teaching strategies for engaging students in both whole class and independent work. Video clips of Kelly and Penny teaching in each other's classrooms bring this year to life and show you what a steadfast commitment to belief-based instruction looks like in action. 180 Days. Make every moment matter. Teach fearlessly. Empower all students to live literate lives.

180 Days: Two Teachers and the Quest to Engage and Empower Adolescents

Reference

Kittle, Penny

Gallagher, Kelly

Words, Language & Grammar

Heinemann

Product Description 
Essay. Poetry. Book Clubs. Digital Composition. Penny Kittle and Kelly Gallagher extend their work in 180 Days: Two Teachers and the Quest to Engage and Empower Adolescents by taking a deep dive into four essential studies. Their aim is to move beyond compliance and formula, and to develop students' agency, independence, and decision-making skills. These four practices, they argue, have the power to transform students' relationship with literacy-and truly prepare them for the more demanding work of college. 
A central belief underlies each of the four studies-that composing involves choosing, picking among options. It is not following a pre-set pattern. But if students are to make these choices, they need to be aware of the moves and possibilities open to them. That's what this book does-it shows how teacher demonstrations, the skillful use of mentor texts, effective feedback (and many other tools) can make choices possible. 
By reimagining how we teach essay, poetry, book clubs, and digital composition, we can open the door to more engaged, connected, and challenging learning. 
 About the Author 
Penny Kittle teaches freshman composition at Plymouth State University in New Hampshire. She was a teacher and literacy coach in public schools for 34 years, 21 of those spent at Kennett High School in North Conway. She is the co-author (with Kelly Gallagher) of Four Essential Studies: Beliefs and Practices to Reclaim Student Agency as well as the bestselling 180 Days. Penny is the author of Book Love and Write Beside Them, which won the NCTE James Britton award. She also co-authored two books with her mentor, Don Graves, and co-edited (with Tom Newkirk) a collection of Graves' work, Children Want to Write. She is the president of the Book Love Foundation and was given the Exemplary Leader Award from NCTE's Conference on English Leadership. In the summer Penny teaches graduate students at the University of New Hampshire Literacy Institutes. Throughout the year, she travels across the U.S. and Canada (and once in awhile quite a bit farther) speaking to teachers about empowering students through independence in literacy. She believes in curiosity, engagement, and deep thinking in schools for both students and their teachers. Penny stands on the shoulders of her mentors, the Dons (Murray & Graves), and the Toms (Newkirk & Romano), in her belief that intentional teaching in a reading and writing workshop brings the greatest student investment and learning in a classroom. Learn more about Penny Kittle on her websites, pennykittle.net and booklovefoundation.org, or follow her on twitter. Penny's students make a statement about how student choice in reading has affected them.\nKelly Gallagher (@KellyGToGo) taught at Magnolia High School in Anaheim, California for 35 years. He is the coauthor, with Penny Kittle, of Four Essential Studies: Beliefs and Practices to Reclaim Student Agency, as well as the bestselling 180 Days. Kelly is also the author of several other books on adolescent literacy, most notably Readicide and Write Like This. He is the former co-director of the South Basin Writing Project at California State University, Long Beach and the former president of the Secondary Reading Group for the International Literacy Association.

4 Essential Studies: Beliefs and Practices to Reclaim Student Agency

Education & Teaching

Schools & Teaching

To Read Stuff You Have to Know Stuff: Helping Students Build and Use Prior Knowledge

"Why should I read?" Can your students answer that question? Do they have trouble seeing the importance that reading may have in their lives? Are they lacking motivation, both in academic and recreational reading? Do you think you can effectively teach reading strategies if students don't understand the benefits of literacy?
In Reading Reasons, Kelly Gallagher offers a series of mini-lessons specifically tailored to motivate middle and high school students to read, and in doing so, to help them understand the importance and relevance reading will take in their lives. This book introduces and explains in detail nine specific "real-world" reasons why students should be readers.
The book contains forty practical, classroom-tested and reproducible mini-lessons that get to the heart of reading motivation and that can be used immediately in English (as well as other content-area) classrooms. These easy-to-use motivational lessons serve as weekly reading "boostershots" that help maintain reading enthusiasm in your classroom from September through June. The mini-lessons, ranging from five to twenty minutes in length, hit home with adolescents, and in turn, enable them to internalize the importance reading will play in their lives. Rather than telling students reading is good for them, the lessons in this book show them the benefits of reading.

Reading Reasons

Routledge

Deeper Reading

Do your students often struggle with difficult novels and other challenging texts? Do they think one reading of a work is more than enough? Do they primarily comprehend at a surface-level, and are they frequently unwilling or unable to discover the deeper meaning found in multi-layered works? Do you feel that you are doing more work teaching the novel than they are reading it?
Building on twenty years of teaching language arts, Kelly Gallagher, author of Reading Reasons, shows how students can be taught to successfully read a broad range of challenging and difficult texts with deeper levels of comprehension. In Deeper Reading, Kelly shares effective, classroom-tested strategies that enable your students to:accept the challenge of reading difficult books;move beyond a "first draft" understanding of the text into deeper levels of reading; consciously monitor their comprehension as they read;employ effective fix-it strategies when their comprehension begins to falter;use meaningful collaboration to achieve deeper understanding of texts;think metaphorically to deepen their reading comprehension;reach deeper levels of reflection by understanding the relevance the book holds for themselves and their peers;use critical thinking skills to analyze real-world issues.
Kelly also provides guidance on effective lesson planning that incorporates strategies for deeper reading.
Funny, poignant, and packed with practical ideas that work in real classrooms, Deeper Reading is a valuable resource for any teacher whose students need new tools to uncover the riches found in complex texts.

Children's Books

Education & Reference

In an increasingly demanding world of literacy, it has become critical that students know how to write effectively. From the requirements of standardized tests to those of the wired workplace, the ability to write well, once a luxury, has become a necessity. Many students are leaving school without the necessary writing practice and skills needed to compete in a complex and fast-moving Information Age. Unless we teach them how to run with it, they are in danger of being run over by a stampede—a literacy stampede.
In Teaching Adolescent Writers, Kelly Gallagher, author of Reading Reasons and Deeper Reading, shows how students can be taught to write effectively. Kelly shares a number of classroom-tested strategies that enable teachers to:understand the importance of teaching writing;motivate young writers;see the importance modeling plays in building young writers (modeling from both the teacher and from real-world text);understand how providing choice elevates adolescent writing (and how to allow for choice within a rigorous curriculum);help students recognize the importance of purpose and audience;assess essays in ways that drive better writing performance.
 Infused with humor and illuminating anecdotes, Kelly draws on his classroom experiences and work as co-director of a regional writing project to offer teachers both practical ways to incorporate writing instruction into their day and compelling reasons to do so.

Teaching Adolescent Writers

Business & Money

In Kelly Gallagher's high school classroom in Anaheim, California, students are not only learning to comprehend difficult novels and texts, they are developing the skills and behaviors of lifelong readers. Drawing from his books Reading Reasons and Deeper Reading, Kelly's new video set brings effective reading strategies to life. Presenting examples of both small- and whole-group discussions, Building Adolescent Readers demonstrates how to engage students with a variety of texts, teaching them what it means to be a good reader.Program 1: The Six Building BlocksBefore we teach students how to read better, we need to help them understand why they should be readers. Kelly outlines his six blocks for motivating students to read more€”both recreationally and academically. He models specific classroom lessons that help students to internalize the value of reading.Program 2: First Draft ReadingAdolescent readers often adopt

Building Adolescent Readers

Stenhouse Publishers

How can we teach today’s students to write with clarity, passion, and purpose? How can we move all students—even those who struggle or are reluctant—forward in their skills as writers? In Improving Adolescent Writers, Kelly Gallagher invites you into his classroom for an in-depth look at ways to successfully answer these questions, and more. Through a variety of methods–modeling, mid-process assessment, small-group conferring, grammar and editing mini-lessons, revision techniques, and identifying the many real-world purposes for writing–Kelly demonstrates how to teach writing so that adolescents internalize the habits and skills of good writers. Along the way they learn that writing is messy, hard work but well worth the struggle and effort. They become more than better writers; ultimately, they become better thinkers. The DVD features three programs: The Importance of Modeling, Writing with Purpose, and Assessment That Drives Better Student Writing.

Improving Adolescent Writers

Read-i-cide n: The systematic killing of the love of reading, often exacerbated by the inane, mind-numbing practices found in schools. Reading is dying in our schools. Educators are familiar with many of the factors that have contributed to the decline—poverty, second-language issues, and the ever-expanding choices of electronic entertainment. In this provocative new book, Kelly Gallagher suggests, however, that it is time to recognize a new and significant contributor to the death of reading: our schools. In Readicide, Kelly argues that American schools are actively (though unwittingly) furthering the decline of reading. Specifically, he contends that the standard instructional practices used in most schools are killing reading by: · valuing the development of test-takers over the development of lifelong readers; · mandating breadth over depth in instruction; · requiring students to read difficult texts without proper instructional support; · insisting that students focus solely on academic texts; · drowning great books with sticky notes, double-entry journals, and marginalia; · ignoring the importance of developing recreational reading; and · losing sight of authentic instruction in the shadow of political pressures. Kelly doesn’t settle for only identifying the problems. Readicide provides teachers, literacy coaches, and administrators with specific steps to reverse the downward spiral in reading—steps that will help prevent the loss of another generation of readers.

Readicide: How Schools Are Killing Reading and What You Can Do About It

When Kelly Gallagher learned that his ninth grade students could not name the vice president of the United States, and when two seniors asked him in all seriousness, "Who is this guy, Al Qaeda?", Kelly was shocked into realizing he needed to do something outside the standard curriculum to build his students' background knowledge. In response, he developed the Article of the Week activity to address the serious gaps in his students' education.
Each week, students read a short article that informs them about the world. Students highlight passages and words they don't understand, consider the author's purpose and intended audience, and work through any confusion. The class then discusses how the structure and craft of the article informs reader comprehension and how they can implement these elements into their own writing.
In 15 minutes, Kelly shows teachers how to integrate the Article of the Week into their own classrooms in a manner that provides the background knowledge that is the foundation for critical reading.

Article of the Week

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