Many students, ranging from native English speakers to recent immigrants, need help in understanding and using the language of school. Language is the lifeblood of learning in all content areas, and it plays a major role in academic achievement. Building Academic Language explains the functions and features of academic language that every teacher (language arts, history, math, &amp; science teachers, etc.) should know for supporting academic reading, writing, and discussion. The book includes research-based instructional and assessment activities that content teachers can use to build students' abilities to understand and describe the many abstract concepts, higher-order thinking skills, and complex relationships in a discipline. The book emphasizes an approach that builds from students' existing ways of learning and communicating, scaffolding them to think and talk as content area experts think and talk about math, science, history, and language arts. 
Major topics and themes include: <ul>
<li>What is academic language and how does it differ by content area?</li> <li>How can language-building activities (discussions, small groups, etc.) support content understanding?</li> <li>How can we build language abilities for content reading and writing - and vice versa?</li> <li>How can we build on students' diverse ways of understanding, learning, and communicating about the world?</li> <li>How can we more effectively model and scaffold academic language in our teaching and assessment?</li> </ul>

Building Academic Language: Essential Practices for Content Classrooms, Grades 5-12

Reference

Zwiers, Jeff

Words, Language & Grammar

Jossey-Bass Inc Pub

Middle and high school coaches and content teachers: Here are great suggestions for teaching comprehension skills to students at varied reading levels and from different cultures and linguistic backgrounds.
 This second edition of Jeff Zwiers' bestseller features more than 80 classroom-tested, research-based ideas. These engaging activities are organized around six strategies of reading comprehension that need to become habits:
Organizing text information by sculpting the main idea and summarizing Connecting to background knowledge Making inferences and predictions Generating and answering questions Understanding and remembering word meanings Monitoring one's own comprehension
 You'll also find 35 reproducible graphic organizers and variations on the activities to help support English learners, struggling readers, and other students who need extra support.
The International Reading Association is the world's premier organization of literacy professionals. Our titles promote reading by providing professional development to continuously advance the quality of literacy instruction and research.
 Research-based, classroom-tested, and peer-reviewed, IRA titles are among the highest quality tools that help literacy professionals do their jobs better. 
 Some of the many areas we publish in include: 
 -Comprehension -Response To Intervention/Struggling Readers -Early Literacy -Adolescent Literacy -Assessment -Literacy Coaching -Research And Policy

Building Reading Comprehension Habits: A Toolkit of Classroom Activities

Intl Literacy Assn

Building Reading Comprehension Habits in Grades 6–12 offers middle school and high school teachers in all curricular areas research-based, innovative activities to strengthen students’ reading comprehension. 
The activities in the book are organized around six automatic habits of reading comprehension that help proficient readers actively construct meaning as they read: 
1) Organizing text information by sculpting the main idea and summarizing 2) Connecting to background knowledge 3) Making inferences and predictions 4) Generating and answering questions 5) Understanding and remembering word meanings 6) Monitoring one’s own comprehension 
The chapters define and describe the habits, then provide activities that you can use to strengthen students’ use of the habits. Each activity offers a brief description of the activity’s purpose and a step-by-step procedure for putting it into place. 
SPECIAL FEATURE: Most activities offer reproducible graphic organizers reproducible graphic organizers and variations on the activities to help English language learners, struggling readers, and other students who need extra support. 
AUDIENCE: Middle school and high school preservice and inservice teachers, teacher educators, remedial teachers, reading specialists, supervisors and administrators.

Building Reading Comprehension Habits in Grades 6-12: A Toolkit of Classroom Activities

Many classroom tasks and texts require additional cognitive skills beyond the reading strategies usually described in the literature on content area reading. This book will help you design effective activities and assessments that foster the academic thinking skills and academic language your students need to understand challenging content area concepts taught in school. 
The chapters are organized into three parts. Part I explains the importance of developing academic thinking skills and the key role that academic language plays in this development. Part I also discusses the key components of assessment and instruction as they relate to the development of academic thinking. 
Part II contains the activities, grouped into chapters by 12 thinking skills: 
* Analyzing * Comparing * Categorizing and Classifying * Identifying Cause and Effect * Problem Solving * Persuading * Empathizing * Synthesizing * Interpreting * Evaluating * Communicating * Applying 
Each skill-based chapter describes an academic thinking skill, offers a list of academic language terms related to the skill, and provides activities that you can use to strengthen students' use of the skill. All the activities tap into students' multiple intelligences; four intelligences, in particular, are emphasized-interpersonal, visual, kinesthetic, and musical-because of their proven effectiveness in how children learn. 
Part III provides reproducible blackline masters that complement the activities in Part II. The appendixes offer additional multiple intelligence activities, a list of possible questions and controversial topics for use in classroom discussions and in several of the book's activities, and familiar songs for designing music-based activities. 
If you have students who struggle with abstract concepts, academic language, and complex reading and writing tasks, this handbook is for you.
The International Reading Association is the world's premier organization of literacy professionals. Our titles promote reading by providing professional development to continuously advance the quality of literacy instruction and research.
 Research-based, classroom-tested, and peer-reviewed, IRA titles are among the highest quality tools that help literacy professionals do their jobs better. 
 Some of the many areas we publish in include: 
 -Comprehension -Response To Intervention/Struggling Readers -Early Literacy -Adolescent Literacy -Assessment -Literacy Coaching -Research And Policy

Developing Academic Thinking Skills In Grades 6-12: A Handbook Of Multiple Intelligence Activities

Education & Teaching

Schools & Teaching

Adopt a strengths-based, justice-centered approach to teaching multilinguals Offering educators a path to pedagogical justice for multilingual learners,&nbsp;Overhauling Learning for Multilingual Studentsoutlines a comprehensive alternative model for instruction and assessment. With an emphasis on engaging multilingual learners in authentic communication and promoting student agency and creativity, this book is an urgent call-to-action for educators at all levels to value and leverage the many assets that multilingual students bring to every classroom. The book outlines six dimensions of pedagogical justice and offers practical strategies to implement a learner-centered approach that will help all students thrive. Additional features include: <ul> <li>An assets-based framework designed to help multilingual learners learn and grow</li> <li>Guidance for shifting instructional strategies away from remediation and test preparation toward an engaging, justice-centered approach</li> <li>Activities to to help students collaboratively build up unique and important ideas (claims and concepts) across disciplines</li> </ul> Written by scholar, practitioner, and best-selling author, Jeff Zwiers,&nbsp;Overhauling Learning for Multilingual Students&nbsp;supports educators to de-think and rethink traditional one-size-fits-all approaches to teaching and assessing multilingual learners.

Overhauling Learning for Multilingual Students: An Approach for Achieving Pedagogical Justice

Corwin

Essential Connection Skills, K-6: Strategies for Integrating Social Connections Into Core Content

Paonessa, Anne

“Of the over one hundred new publications on the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), this one truly stands out! In the second edition of Building Academic Language, Jeff Zwiers presents a much-needed, comprehensive roadmap to cultivating academic language development across all disciplines, this time placing the rigor and challenges of the CCSS front and center. A must-have resource!” ―Andrea Honigsfeld, EdD, Molloy College “Language is critical to the development of content learning as students delve more deeply into specific disciplines. When students possess strong academic language, they are better able to critically analyze and synthesize complex ideas and abstract concepts. In this second edition of Building Academic Language, Jeff Zwiers successfully builds the connections between the Common Core State Standards and academic language. This is the ‘go to’ resource for content teachers as they transition to the expectations for college and career readiness.” ―Katherine S. McKnight, PhD, National Louis University With the adoption of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) by most of the United States, students need help developing their understanding and use of language within the academic context. This is crucially important throughout middle school and high school, as the subjects discussed and concepts taught require a firm grasp of language in order to understand the greater complexity of the subject matter. Building Academic Language shows teachers what they can do to help their students grasp language principles and develop the language skills they’ll need to reach their highest levels of academic achievement. The Second Edition of Building Academic Language includes new strategies for addressing specific Common Core standards and also provides answers to the most important questions across various content areas, including: <ul>
<li>What is academic language and how does it differ by content area?</li> <li>How can language-building activities support content understanding for students?</li> <li>How can teachers assist students in using language more effectively, especially in the academic context?</li> <li>How can academic language usage be modeled routinely in the classroom?</li> <li>How can lesson planning and assessment support academic language development?</li> </ul>
An essential resource for teaching all students, this book explains what every teacher needs to know about language for supporting reading, writing, and academic learning.

Building Academic Language: Meeting Common Core Standards Across Disciplines, Grades 5-12

Jossey-Bass

This book focuses on how parents and other caregivers can have richer and more fruitful conversations with their children. Parents will be able to use the ideas in this book to improve conversations with their children in ways that help them (a) more effectively learn in school, (b) develop stronger and more lasting relationships in and out of school, and (c) increase their critical thinking and problem-solving abilities. Some children are more prepared for school than others. Much of this preparation comes from the types of conversations that children have and listen to at home. Many children need more practice in developing and using key conversation skills that are expected in school and life. They need more practice co-constructing ideas with other people, face to face, and they need more practice engaging in respectful collaboration and argumentation. This book helps parents to provide such practice.

The Power of Parent-Child Conversations: Growing Your Child’s Heart and Mind for Success in School and Life

Parenting & Relationships

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

"For thousands of years people have been using the skills we describe in this book to engage in conversations with others. What isn’t as prevalent, however, is instruction--especially in primary grades―in which we engage students in productive conversations about academic ideas. This book fills that very big need." --Jeff Zwiers &amp; Sara Hamerla Talk about content mastery . . . Primary teachers, you won’t want to miss this: if you’re looking for a single resource to foster purposeful content discussions and high-quality interpersonal engagement, then put Jeff Zwiers and Sara Hamerla’s K-3 Guide to Academic Conversations at the top of your reading list. Whether your students love to talk or not, all must be equipped with key conversation skills such as active listening, taking turns, posing, clarifying, supporting with examples, and arguing ideas. This ready resource comes packed with every imaginable tool you could need to make academic conversations part of your everyday teaching: <ul>
<li>Sample lesson plans and anchor charts</li> <li>Guidelines for creating effective prompts</li> <li>Applications across content areas, with corresponding assessments</li> <li>Rubrics and protocols for listening to student speech</li> <li>Transcripts of conversations and questions for reflection</li> <li>Companion website with video and downloadable resources</li> </ul>
Tens of thousands of students in the upper grades have reaped the benefits of academic conversations: high-quality face-to-face interactions, increased motivation, stronger collaborative argumentation skills, and better understanding and retention of content. The K-3 Guide to Academic Conversations is that resource for providing your primary students with the same powerful learning opportunities.

The K-3 Guide to Academic Conversations: Practices, Scaffolds, and Activities

Hamerla, Sara R.

The "communication effect" is what happens when we saturate our classrooms with authentic communication, which occurs when students use language to build up ideas and do meaningful things. For starters, authentic communication deepens and increases language development, learning of content concepts and skills, rigor and engagement, empathy and understanding of others' perspectives, agency and ownership of core ideas across disciplines, and social and emotional skills for building strong relationships. And these are just the starters. With The Communication Effect, Dr. Jeff Zwiers challenges teachers in Grades 3 and up to focus less on breadth and more on depth by grounding instruction and assessment in authentic (rather than pseudo-) communication. This book provides: <ul> <li style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">Ideas for cultivating classroom cultures in which authentic communication thrives</li> <li style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">Clear descriptions and examples of the three features of authentic communication: 1. building up key ideas (claims and concepts); 2. clarifying terms and supporting ideas; and 3. creating and filling information gaps</li> <li style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">Over 175 suggestions for using the three features of authentic communication to enhance twenty commonly used instructional activities across disciplines</li> <li style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">Additional examples of not-so-commonly-used activities that embody the three features</li> <li style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">Suggestions for improving four different types of teacher creativity needed to design effective lessons, activities, and assessments that maximize authentic communication</li> </ul> Our students deserve to get the most out of each minute of each lesson. Authentic communication can help. As you read The Communication Effect and apply its ideas, you will see how much better equipped and inspired your students are to grow into the amazing and gifted people that they were meant to become.

The Communication Effect: How to Enhance Learning by Building Ideas and Bridging Information Gaps

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