Jeffrey D. Wilhelm – författare

This powerful book lays out an inspiring new vision for the teaching of English, building on themes central to Wilhelm’s influential ""You Gotta BE The Book.""  With this new work, Wilhelm and Novak challenge business as usual in the language arts. They call for nothing short of a revolution in our understanding of the aims and methods of the English classroom, showing what English can do for democratic life, inside and outside of classrooms.  With moving portraits of teachers and students, as well as practical strategies and advice, they provide a roadmap to educational transformation far beyond the field of English that will be of interest to a wide audience of teachers, teacher educators, curriculum developers, and educational leaders. Essential questions explored by Teaching Literacy for Love and Wisdom:Why is what English teachers do so often underestimated?How can we teach literature in a way that fully taps into its transformative power?How can we artfully teach all subjects, at all levels, for personal wisdom, democratic community, and social and ecological justice?

This award-winning book continues to resonate with teachers and inspire their teaching because it focuses on the joy of reading and how it can engage and even transform readers. In a time of next generation standards that emphasize higher-order strategies, text complexity, and the reading of nonfiction, “You Gotta BE the Book” continues to help teachers meet new challenges including those of increasing cultural diversity. At the core of Wilhelm’s foundational text is an in-depth account of what highly motivated adolescent readers actually do when they read, and how to help struggling readers take on those same stances and strategies. His work offers a robust model teachers can use to prepare students for the demands of disciplinary understanding and for literacy in the real world. The Third Edition includes new commentaries and tips for using visual techniques, drama and action strategies, think-aloud protocols, and symbolic story representation/reading manipulatives.Book Features:A data-driven theory of literature and literary reading as engagement.A case for undertaking teacher research with students.An approach for using drama and visual art to support readers’ comprehension.Guidance for assisting students in the use of higher-order strategies of reading (and writing) as required by next generation standards like the Common Core.Classroom interventions to help all students, especially reluctant ones, become successful readers.

Critical thinking and online reading need to go hand in hand—but they often don’t. Students click, swipe, and believe because they don’t know how to do otherwise. At times, so do we. And that’s a problem. Fighting Fake News combats this challenge by helping you model how to read, myth-bust, truth-test, and respond in ways that lead to wisdom rather than reactivity.

No matter what content you teach, the lessons showcased here provide engaging, collaborative reading and discussion experiences so students can:

Notice how teacher and peers read digital content, to be mindful of how various reading pathways influence perceptionIdentify the author background, the website sponsor, and other evidence that help set a piece in contextStress-test the facts by evaluating news sources, reading laterally, and other critical reading strategiesUse “Reader’s Rules of Notice” to learn to identify common rhetorical devices used to influence the readerBe aware of how for-profit social media platforms feed on our responses to narrow rather than widen our reading landscape

We are still in the wild west era of the digital age, scrambling to impart a safer, ethical framework for evaluating information. Thankfully, it distills to one mission: teach students (and ourselves) how to think critically, and we will forever have the tools to fight fake news.

Empower your students to unlock the hidden power of fiction

Fiction has the unique power to unlock a profound way of knowing the world, yet many learners struggle to understand and connect with literature on a deeper level. Building on the game-changing strategies from their bestselling Diving Deep Into Nonfiction, renowned educators Jeffrey D. Wilhelm and Michael W. Smith introduce a revolutionary framework that demystifies fiction for adolescent readers. This book empowers teachers to show students how to recognize the Rules of Notice—the conventions that signal what's important in a text—and analyze key literary elements like genre, character, point of view, symbolism, and theme. The essential mental models in the book will guide students as they read and write fictional texts. When students learn to pay attention to these signals, they begin to unlock the rich, complex worlds that fiction offers.

This practical guide provides everything you need to help students become more competent and confident readers of fiction. Inside, you'll find:

A clear introduction to the four Rules of Notice that accomplished readers use intuitively: direct statements, calls to attention, ruptures, and reader's responseClassroom-tested lessons and engaging short excerpts that model how to apply these rules to any fictional textSample think-alouds and ready-to-use materials that guide students to connect with what they notice and make their own meaningStrategies for interpreting essential literary elements, including genre, character, point of view, symbols, and thematic conversations

With this book, you'll gain the tools to teach your students how to read fiction with intention and insight, giving them the confidence to navigate complex texts and discover the connections between literature and their own lives.

Let’s face it, weak rivets notwithstanding, the Titanic wouldn’t have sunk if the iceberg had been spotted in time. And let’s face it, the CCSS won’t be classroom-worthy unless practitioners chart our course. Depend on Michael Smith, Deborah Appleman, and Jeff Wilhelm to help you navigate through some potentially treacherous waters. Uncommon Core puts us on high-alert about some outright dangerous misunderstandings looming around so-called  “standards-aligned” instruction, then shows us how to steer past them—all in service of meeting the real intent of the Common Core. Smith, Appleman, and Wilhelm counter with teaching suggestions that are true to the research and true to our students, including how:

Reader-based approaches can complement text-based ones Prereading activities can help students meet the strategic and conceptual demands texts place on them Strategy instruction can result in a careful and critical analysis of individual texts while providing transferable understandings Inquiry units around essential questions can generate meaningful conversation and higher-order thinking about those texts Selection criteria that consider interpretive complexity can take us so much farther than those that consider textual complexity alone

Given the number of strategies, lesson ideas, and activities in the book, Uncommon Core is really less about the standards and more about timeless, excellent teaching and how to use it like never before to meet the Core ideals. Let’s put instruction where it belongs: back in the hands of the experts.

“Finally! A book with more light than heat on the issue of standards and their implications for learning.” --GRANT WIGGINS Coauthor of Understanding by Design

Are you ready to plan your best lessons ever? With so many demands and so much content available for teachers, we need to put a higher value on an often-overlooked skill: planning learning experiences that will both engage and inspire our students, by design, over time. Planning Powerful Instruction is your go-to guide for transforming student outcomes through stellar instructional planning. Its seven-step framework—the EMPOWER model—gives you techniques proven to help students develop true insight and understanding. You’ll have at your fingertips:

the real reasons why students engage—and what you must do to ensure they do a framework to help you create, plan, and teach the most effective units and lessons in any subject area more than 50 actionable strategies to incorporate right away suggestions for tailoring units for a wide range of learners downloadable, ready-to-go tools for planning and teaching

Whether you are a classroom teacher, an instructional leader, or a pre-service teacher, Planning Powerful Instruction will forever change the way you think about how you teach and the unique value you bring to your learners.