Amy Benjamin – författare

As schools shift to the Common Core, many English language arts teachers are left with questions about how their classrooms should look. Is fiction out? Can I still do strategy instruction? Does close reading mean deliberating on each word? Finally, there’s a resource with all of these answers and more. In Focus on Text, bestselling author Amy Benjamin provides practical guidance on how to realistically implement the Common Core reading standards. Part I of the book examines misconceptions about the standards and what’s really required. It also takes you inside classrooms to see how teachers are modifying their instruction. Part II tackles each reading standard for grades 4-8. You’ll learn how to teach the standards with literary and informational texts and how to use them as a springboard for instruction in writing, language, speaking, and listening. Topics include…• Defining close reading and how is it different from word-by-word reading. When and how do students need to go over a text meticulously?• How to use scaffolding through background knowledge to help students with challenging texts• The best instructional practices to help students increase their range of reading and level of text complexity• Ideas for teaching key concepts such as text structure, point of view, theme, stated and implied meanings, and the progression of ideas and characters• Tweaking your assessments to better align with the Common Core--how to create reading check quizzes, unit tests, and cold reading tests to see if students are growing as readers. • And much, much more!Throughout the book, you’ll find teaching tips and practical resources to use with students, such as question starters and sentence stems. You’ll also get a wide variety of classroom examples at different grade levels and with different texts. Whether you’re experienced with the Common Core or just getting started, this book will give you exciting new ideas for making them work in your own classroom so your students grow as readers!

As schools shift to the Common Core, many English language arts teachers are left with questions about how their classrooms should look. Is fiction out? Can I still do strategy instruction? Does close reading mean deliberating on each word? Finally, there’s a resource with all of these answers and more. In Focus on Text, bestselling author Amy Benjamin provides practical guidance on how to realistically implement the Common Core reading standards. Part I of the book examines misconceptions about the standards and what’s really required. It also takes you inside classrooms to see how teachers are modifying their instruction. Part II tackles each reading standard for grades 4-8. You’ll learn how to teach the standards with literary and informational texts and how to use them as a springboard for instruction in writing, language, speaking, and listening. Topics include…• Defining close reading and how is it different from word-by-word reading. When and how do students need to go over a text meticulously?• How to use scaffolding through background knowledge to help students with challenging texts• The best instructional practices to help students increase their range of reading and level of text complexity• Ideas for teaching key concepts such as text structure, point of view, theme, stated and implied meanings, and the progression of ideas and characters• Tweaking your assessments to better align with the Common Core--how to create reading check quizzes, unit tests, and cold reading tests to see if students are growing as readers. • And much, much more!Throughout the book, you’ll find teaching tips and practical resources to use with students, such as question starters and sentence stems. You’ll also get a wide variety of classroom examples at different grade levels and with different texts. Whether you’re experienced with the Common Core or just getting started, this book will give you exciting new ideas for making them work in your own classroom so your students grow as readers!

Learn how to make vocabulary instruction more effective by making better use of mini-lessons and word study time to achieve durable learning about words and how they work. In this essential new book, literacy expert Amy Benjamin presents her 4E model (Exposure, Exploration, Engagement, Energy) for teaching vocabulary so that students gain deep understanding, improving their overall language and literacy skills. Benjamin guides you through bringing these 4Es to life in your K-8 reading-writing workshop.-Exposure: Enrich your teacher talk with sophisticated words and phrases to facilitate natural language acquisition and application of new words.-Exploration: Promote consistent vocabulary growth with a multifaceted instructional approach that incorporates etymology, word associations, word families, spelling, and morphology.-Engagement: Build students’ confidence by encouraging meaningful use of new words, both in and out of the classroom.-Energy: Enliven your workshop and increase participation with a variety of word games, puzzles, projects, and cooperative learning activities.Each chapter provides practical examples and scenarios to help you apply the model to your own classroom. The appendices include a variety of strategies for organizing reading-writing workshops, a thorough introduction to academic word lists and their role in vocabulary instruction, and an analysis of forty Latin and Greek word roots for mini-lessons.

Learn how to make vocabulary instruction more effective by making better use of mini-lessons and word study time to achieve durable learning about words and how they work. In this essential new book, literacy expert Amy Benjamin presents her 4E model (Exposure, Exploration, Engagement, Energy) for teaching vocabulary so that students gain deep understanding, improving their overall language and literacy skills. Benjamin guides you through bringing these 4Es to life in your K-8 reading-writing workshop.-Exposure: Enrich your teacher talk with sophisticated words and phrases to facilitate natural language acquisition and application of new words.-Exploration: Promote consistent vocabulary growth with a multifaceted instructional approach that incorporates etymology, word associations, word families, spelling, and morphology.-Engagement: Build students’ confidence by encouraging meaningful use of new words, both in and out of the classroom.-Energy: Enliven your workshop and increase participation with a variety of word games, puzzles, projects, and cooperative learning activities.Each chapter provides practical examples and scenarios to help you apply the model to your own classroom. The appendices include a variety of strategies for organizing reading-writing workshops, a thorough introduction to academic word lists and their role in vocabulary instruction, and an analysis of forty Latin and Greek word roots for mini-lessons.

Do word problems and math vocabulary confuse students in your mathematics classes? Do simple keywords like "value" and "portion" seem to mislead them? Many words that students already know can have a different meaning in mathematics. To grasp that difference, students need to connect English literacy skills to math. Successful students speak, read, write, and listen to each other so they can understand, retain, and apply mathematics concepts. This book explains how to use 10 classroom-ready literacy strategies in concert with your mathematics instruction. You’ll learn how to develop students who are able to explain to themselves - and communicate to others - what problems mean and how to attack them. Embedding these strategies in your instruction will help your students gain the literacy skills required to achieve the eight Common Core State Standards for Mathematics. You’ll discover the best answer to their question, "When am I ever going to use this?" The 10 Strategies: 1. Teaching mathematical words explicitly 2. Teaching academic words implicitly 3. Reinforcing reading comprehension skills that apply to mathematics 4. Teaching mathematics with metaphor and gesture 5. Unlocking the meaning of word problems 6. Teaching note-taking skills for mathematics 7. Using language-based formative assessment in mathematics 8. Connecting memorization to meaning in mathematics 9. Incorporating writing-to-learn activities in mathematics 10. Preparing students for algebraic thinking

Vocabulary at the Core, the expanded and updated edition of Vocabulary at the Center (© 2009), is the definitive guide for every teacher engaged in helping students learn essential academic vocabulary. In clear, precise language, Benjamin and Crow explain why vocabulary is at the core of all learning and communicating and why word study should play a more significant role in English class and across the curriculum—as emphasized by the Common Core State Standards.You will learn... How words get learned and stay learned.Why teachers must emphasize useful academic words. Why rote memorization doesn’t work and why students need opportunities for deep processing.How and why to teach derivations, collocations, register, idioms, and gender.How and why to teach context clues, fluency, and pronunciation.The benefits of graphic organizers and word games in the classroom. Each chapter includes engaging, easy-to-implement classroom applications that are correlated to the Common Core State Standards and will fit seamlessly into your lesson plans. BONUS! Vocabulary at the Core also provides ideas for formative and summative assessments.

Zoom in on the academic skills students are required to learn in reading, writing, speaking/listening, and language! This book cuts through all of the Common Core jargon and gets right to the heart of what students need to learn now. Big Skills for the Common Core is packed with engaging strategies you can use immediately to improve your students' literacy skills and help them retain those skills. Special features include...Charts that break down the skills for each anchor standard and put them into teacher- friendly language. BONUS! The charts highlight the big shifts for teachers for discussion and sharing. Practical strategies to help students tackle and understand complex texts.Helpful ideas for teaching argument writing, plus writing rubrics and assessment strategies.Clear information on Tier II and Tier III words and how to teach them.In addition, each section of the book ends with "Classroom Close-Ups," which take you inside real classrooms that are implementing the Common Core. You'll see the standards in action across the curriculum and get takeaway tips you can use tomorrow in your own classroom!

Like Amy Benjamin’s other books, this one is easy to read and simple to implement. It demonstrates that you can manage the complexities of differentiated instruction – and save time -- by using technology as you teach. It showcases classroom-tested activities and strategies which are easy to apply in your own classroom.

Do you spend entirely too much time correcting your students' papers? Do your students' essays and term papers take side trips to nowhere? Is their writing riddled with mechanical errors? Do their lab reports and essays lack specificity and clarity?Writing in the Content Areas, Second Edition is for middle and high school content area teachers who assign essays, term papers, lab reports, and other writing tasks to students. This book provides strategies and tips to help teachers of social studies, science, art, etc. improve the quality of students' writing and apply national and state curriculum standards in your classroom. The strategies in this book can be integrated easily into every teacher's daily plans. They will help your students improve their abilities to- reflect before writing- organize and classify- provide detail without padding- use technical terminology correctly- avoid unnecessary words- spell correctly- take useful notes while they read and during your lectures.This book will help teachers- get what they want from a writing task- frame their assignments more precisely- correct student papers more quickly and efficientlyThe new second edition offers activities and strategies which involve technology (word processing, presentation programming, the Internet, and e-communications), differentiated instruction, and brain-based learning.

This book demonstrates how to make your classroom more responsive to the needs of individual students with a wide variety of learning styles, interests, goals, cultural backgrounds, and prior knowledge. Focusing on grades 6 through 12, this book showcases classroom-tested activities and strategies. Differentiated Instruction: A Guide for Middle and High School Teachers shows you how to vary your instruction so you can respond to the needs of individual learners. The concrete examples in this book demonstrate how you can use differentiated instruction to clarify:the content (what you want students to know and be able to do)the process (how students are going to go about learning the content)and the product (how they will show you what they know.)This book is uniquely interactive. It features "Reflections" to help you understand your teaching style and guide you towards developing habits of mind which result in effective differentiated instruction. Also included is a chapter on teaching students whose native language is not English.

This book provides step-by-step procedures, student hand-outs, and samples of student work.

This book demonstrates how formative assessments, unlike standardized tests, provide the kind of communication between teachers and students that help teachers make instructional decisions to improve student performance.

Instill grammar fundamentals using lessons that stick! In this book, authors Amy Benjamin and Joan Berger share procedures for teaching grammar effectively and dynamically, in ways that appeal to students and teachers alike. Ideal for teachers just beginning their work in grammar instruction, this book includes day-by-day units and reproducibles to help them embed grammar lessons into writing instruction. Using visuals, wordplay, problem solving, and pattern-finding activities, teachers can forgo methods that fail to engage students in grammar. Through a series of activities designed to delve deeper into grammar learning, the authors share strategies that have proven successful during their extensive years of teaching and literacy consulting. Topics include: Using time wisely: Assess for cumulative understanding and development of writing style The "Verb Map": A visual metaphor of the verb system Teaching parts of speech for effective expression, not just memorization And more!

This book shows content area teachers in middle and high schools how to boost student achievement by including lessons and strategies which focus on students' reading comprehension without detracting from content area focus. These mini-lessons and strategies are research-based and address the specific literacy challenges of each particular subject area (social studies, mathematics, science, etc.). The author has provided a large number of reading examples from texts, sample tests and assessments, and actual mini-lessons, their content areas identified by marginal tabs.

This book helps educators improve students ability to write clear, coherent essays in response to on-demand writing prompts. While it focuses on students abilities to succeed at on-demand writing, it also promotes the teaching of writing as an expression of art and self. For grades 4 -12, it provides examples of responses to narrative and persuasive prompts, and provides savvy advice about what scorers look for.

Help your students improve their language skills and become stronger readers and writers. In this timely book, literacy experts Amy Benjamin and Barbara Golub offer best practices for fortifying the writer’s workshop model with meaningful, relevant instruction in grammar.The book answers questions such as…What does a writer’s workshop look like and how does it fit into balanced literacy models? How does grammar fit into a writer’s workshop?How can you use natural language acquisition to transition children from non-Standard to Standard English patterns?How can you teach students to identify a complete sentence?What are effective ways to teach parts of speech?How can you build on nouns and verbs to teach adjectives, adverbs, prepositional phrases, and dependent clauses?In each chapter, you’ll find out exactly what teaching the targeted concept looks like in a workshop classroom. Examples are provided for different grade levels and can be adapted as necessary to meet your needs.This book is a No-Worksheet Zone. You’ll learnhow to present grammar using authentic text and talk, leading to more durable learning.

Help your students improve their language skills and become stronger readers and writers. In this timely book, literacy experts Amy Benjamin and Barbara Golub offer best practices for fortifying the writer’s workshop model with meaningful, relevant instruction in grammar.The book answers questions such as…What does a writer’s workshop look like and how does it fit into balanced literacy models? How does grammar fit into a writer’s workshop?How can you use natural language acquisition to transition children from non-Standard to Standard English patterns?How can you teach students to identify a complete sentence?What are effective ways to teach parts of speech?How can you build on nouns and verbs to teach adjectives, adverbs, prepositional phrases, and dependent clauses?In each chapter, you’ll find out exactly what teaching the targeted concept looks like in a workshop classroom. Examples are provided for different grade levels and can be adapted as necessary to meet your needs.This book is a No-Worksheet Zone. You’ll learnhow to present grammar using authentic text and talk, leading to more durable learning.

Do you spend entirely too much time correcting your students' papers? Do your students' essays and term papers take side trips to nowhere? Is their writing riddled with mechanical errors? Do their lab reports and essays lack specificity and clarity?Writing in the Content Areas, Second Edition is for middle and high school content area teachers who assign essays, term papers, lab reports, and other writing tasks to students. This book provides strategies and tips to help teachers of social studies, science, art, etc. improve the quality of students' writing and apply national and state curriculum standards in your classroom. The strategies in this book can be integrated easily into every teacher's daily plans. They will help your students improve their abilities to- reflect before writing- organize and classify- provide detail without padding- use technical terminology correctly- avoid unnecessary words- spell correctly- take useful notes while they read and during your lectures.This book will help teachers- get what they want from a writing task- frame their assignments more precisely- correct student papers more quickly and efficientlyThe new second edition offers activities and strategies which involve technology (word processing, presentation programming, the Internet, and e-communications), differentiated instruction, and brain-based learning.

This book helps educators improve students’ ability to write clear, coherent essays in response to on-demand writing prompts. While it focuses on students’ abilities to succeed at on-demand writing, it also promotes the teaching of writing as an expression of art and self. For grades 4 -12, it provides examples of responses to narrative and persuasive prompts, and provides savvy advice about what scorers look for.

This book shows content area teachers in middle and high schools how to boost student achievement by including lessons and strategies which focus on students' reading comprehension without detracting from content area focus. These mini-lessons and strategies are research-based and address the specific literacy challenges of each particular subject area (social studies, mathematics, science, etc.). The author has provided a large number of reading examples from texts, sample tests and assessments, and actual mini-lessons, their content areas identified by marginal tabs.

This book demonstrates how formative assessments, unlike standardized tests, provide the kind of communication between teachers and students that help teachers make instructional decisions to improve student performance.

Instill grammar fundamentals using lessons that stick! In this book, authors Amy Benjamin and Joan Berger share procedures for teaching grammar effectively and dynamically, in ways that appeal to students and teachers alike. Ideal for teachers just beginning their work in grammar instruction, this book includes day-by-day units and reproducibles to help them embed grammar lessons into writing instruction. Using visuals, wordplay, problem solving, and pattern-finding activities, teachers can forgo methods that fail to engage students in grammar. Through a series of activities designed to delve deeper into grammar learning, the authors share strategies that have proven successful during their extensive years of teaching and literacy consulting. Topics include: Using time wisely: Assess for cumulative understanding and development of writing style The "Verb Map": A visual metaphor of the verb system Teaching parts of speech for effective expression, not just memorization And more!

Do word problems and math vocabulary confuse students in your mathematics classes? Do simple keywords like "value" and "portion" seem to mislead them? Many words that students already know can have a different meaning in mathematics. To grasp that difference, students need to connect English literacy skills to math. Successful students speak, read, write, and listen to each other so they can understand, retain, and apply mathematics concepts. This book explains how to use 10 classroom-ready literacy strategies in concert with your mathematics instruction. You’ll learn how to develop students who are able to explain to themselves - and communicate to others - what problems mean and how to attack them. Embedding these strategies in your instruction will help your students gain the literacy skills required to achieve the eight Common Core State Standards for Mathematics. You’ll discover the best answer to their question, "When am I ever going to use this?" The 10 Strategies: 1. Teaching mathematical words explicitly 2. Teaching academic words implicitly 3. Reinforcing reading comprehension skills that apply to mathematics 4. Teaching mathematics with metaphor and gesture 5. Unlocking the meaning of word problems 6. Teaching note-taking skills for mathematics 7. Using language-based formative assessment in mathematics 8. Connecting memorization to meaning in mathematics 9. Incorporating writing-to-learn activities in mathematics 10. Preparing students for algebraic thinking

Vocabulary at the Core, the expanded and updated edition of Vocabulary at the Center (© 2009), is the definitive guide for every teacher engaged in helping students learn essential academic vocabulary. In clear, precise language, Benjamin and Crow explain why vocabulary is at the core of all learning and communicating and why word study should play a more significant role in English class and across the curriculum—as emphasized by the Common Core State Standards.You will learn... How words get learned and stay learned.Why teachers must emphasize useful academic words. Why rote memorization doesn’t work and why students need opportunities for deep processing.How and why to teach derivations, collocations, register, idioms, and gender.How and why to teach context clues, fluency, and pronunciation.The benefits of graphic organizers and word games in the classroom. Each chapter includes engaging, easy-to-implement classroom applications that are correlated to the Common Core State Standards and will fit seamlessly into your lesson plans. BONUS! Vocabulary at the Core also provides ideas for formative and summative assessments.

Zoom in on the academic skills students are required to learn in reading, writing, speaking/listening, and language! This book cuts through all of the Common Core jargon and gets right to the heart of what students need to learn now. Big Skills for the Common Core is packed with engaging strategies you can use immediately to improve your students' literacy skills and help them retain those skills. Special features include...Charts that break down the skills for each anchor standard and put them into teacher- friendly language. BONUS! The charts highlight the big shifts for teachers for discussion and sharing. Practical strategies to help students tackle and understand complex texts.Helpful ideas for teaching argument writing, plus writing rubrics and assessment strategies.Clear information on Tier II and Tier III words and how to teach them.In addition, each section of the book ends with "Classroom Close-Ups," which take you inside real classrooms that are implementing the Common Core. You'll see the standards in action across the curriculum and get takeaway tips you can use tomorrow in your own classroom!

This book provides step-by-step procedures, student hand-outs, and samples of student work.

This book provides step-by-step procedures, student hand-outs, and samples of student work.