Jeff Zwiers – författare

Adopt a strengths-based, justice-centered approach to teaching multilinguals

Offering educators a path to pedagogical justice for multilingual learners, Overhauling Learning for Multilingual Students outlines 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:

An assets-based framework designed to help multilingual learners learn and growGuidance for shifting instructional strategies away from remediation and test preparation toward an engaging, justice-centered approachActivities to to help students collaboratively build up unique and important ideas (claims and concepts) across disciplines

Written by scholar, practitioner, and best-selling author, Jeff Zwiers, Overhauling Learning for Multilingual Students supports educators to de-think and rethink traditional one-size-fits-all approaches to teaching and assessing multilingual learners.

"Essential Connection Skills is a practical, specific, inspirational, and must-have resource for any teacher, coach, school leader, or parent who aims for a more empowered and successful student."

Julie O'Connell Alholm, Instructional Coach and EL Teacher, MN

"Essential Connection Skills is a must-read for any teacher—whether you're already focused on social skills or looking to include them more in your teaching. The suggestions in each chapter are practical for novice to veteran teachers."

Amber Quirk, Regional Superintendent, DuPage County Regional Office of Education, IL

What do high-achieving schools have in common? Connection.

Today’s classrooms need to move beyond traditional teaching methods; they need strategies that will re-engage students and build on meaningful connections. This book equips educators with evidence-based strategies that are layered into existing instruction, thus improving attendance, reducing behavior issues, and fueling higher academic outcomes. 

Essential Connection Skills offers practical solutions to help educators reignite the joy of learning through purposeful, reflective interactions. These strategies empower students to build connections, embrace multiple perspectives, and develop the social and academic tools necessary for success. Inside you'll find:

Chapter-by-chapter resources and techniquesAssessment recommendationsTargeted strategies for culturally and linguistically diverse studentsTechniques to help students develop self-reflection skills

By cultivating authentic engagement, Essential Connection Skills restores a sense of community and purpose in classrooms and empowers students with the lifelong skills they’ll need to succeed.

Other Books from Corwin

Dohrer, The Schools We Need NowRogers, The SEL Coach

“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: What is academic language and how does it differ by content area?How can language-building activities support content understanding for students?How can teachers assist students in using language more effectively, especially in the academic context?How can academic language usage be modeled routinely in the classroom?How can lesson planning and assessment support academic language development?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.

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.

By now it’s a given: if we’re to help our ELLs and SELs access the rigorous demands of today’s content standards, we must cultivate the “code” that drives school success: academic language. Look no further for assistance than this much-anticipated series from Ivannia Soto, in which she invites field authorities Jeff Zwiers, David and Yvonne Freeman, Margarita Calderon, and Noma LeMoine to share every teacher’s need-to-know strategies on the four essential components of academic language.

The subject of this volume is conversational discourse. Here, Jeff Zwiers reveals the power of academic conversation in helping students develop language, clarify concepts, comprehend complex texts, and fortify thinking and relational skills. With this book as your roadmap, you’ll learn how to:

Foster the skills and language students must develop for productive interactions Implement strategies for scaffolding paired conversations Assess student’s oral language development as you go

It’s imperative that our ELLs and SELs practice academic language in rich conversations with others in school, especially when our classrooms may be their only opportunities to receive modeling, scaffolding, and feedback focused on effective discourse. This book, in concert with the other three volumes in the series, can provide both a foundation and a framework for accelerating the learning of diverse students across grade levels and disciplines.

“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 & 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:

Sample lesson plans and anchor charts Guidelines for creating effective prompts Applications across content areas, with corresponding assessments Rubrics and protocols for listening to student speech Transcripts of conversations and questions for reflection Companion website with video and downloadable resources

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. 

Where would we be without conversation? Throughout history, conversations have allowed us to see different perspectives, build ideas, and solve problems. In Academic Conversations: Classroom Talk That Fosters Critical Thinking and Content Understandings, Jeff Zwiers and Marie Crawford dig into back-and-forth dialogues in which students focus on a topic and explore it by building, challenging and negotiating relevant issues.Academic Conversations identifies five core communication skills to help students hold productive academic conversations across content areas. These skills are:Elaborating and clarifyingSupporting ideas with evidenceBuilding on and/or challenging ideasParaphrasingSynthesizingReaders will find numerous practical activities for working on each of the conversation skills, strategies for crafting conversation-worthy tasks, and examples of how to use conversations to teach and assess. Academic Conversations offers and in-depth and practical approach to helping students develop into the future parents, teachers, and leaders who will collaborate to build a better world.

The Common Core State Standards require students to do more with knowledge and language than ever before. Rather than be mere consumers of knowledge, students must now become creators, critics, and communicators of ideas across disciplines. Yet in order to take on these new and exciting roles, many students need daily teaching with an extra emphasis on accelerating their academic communication skills. Common Core Standards in Diverse Classrooms: Essential Practices for Developing Academic Language and Disciplinary Literacy describes seven research-based teaching practices for developing complex language and literacy skills across grade levels and disciplines: using complex texts, fortifying complex output, fostering academic interaction, clarifying complex language, modeling, guiding, and designing instruction. Most important, you will find clear descriptions and examples of how these essential practices can-;and should-;be woven together in real lessons. The book: Clarifieshow to support the learning of complex language that students need for reaching Common Core and other standardsProvides practical ways to realize the instructional shifts needed with the implementation of new standards in diverse classroomsIncludes frameworks and descriptions on how to develop students' complex language, speaking, and writingHelps maximize strategies and tools for building system-wide capacity for sustained growth in the practicesCommon Core Standards in Diverse Classrooms is a concise guide for helping us improve our practices to strengthen two vital pillars that support student learning: academic language and disciplinary literacy.

Dr. Jeff Zwiers, an educational researcher at Stanford University, has spent the last 15 years analyzing classroom conversations to see how they can be better used and improved in classroom settings. Teachers who have worked with him report significant growth in students’ engagement, content learning, language, creativity, and sense of agency.Zwiers introduced his initial vision for classroom conversations Academic Conversations: Classroom Talk that Fosters Critical Thinking and Content Understanding. His follow-up book, Next Steps with Academic Conversations: New Ideas for Improving Learning Through Classroom Talk, expands on the first book with updated classroom strategies and practices including:an updated synthesis of converstion work across disciplines and grade levelshighlights of the most recent classroom-based research and theory on classroom conversationsanswers to questions that have emerged during this work with teachers and administrators, andnew classroom strategies and practices for fostering and assessing classroom conversations.This resource is the product of his extensive research, co-teaching, and collaborating with a wide range of educators. It was written for busy teachers who want a practical guide for strengthening the quality and quantity of productive conversations in their lessons.