The House That Drac Built

In this Halloween version of a familiar cumulative rhyme, the inhabitants of a haunted house get increasingly agitated until a group of children sets things right.

This comprehensive text presents a core of research-based approaches to engaging, effective literacy instruction in the middle grades. Methods and materials are described to foster reading skills, content mastery, and writing in different formats and for different purposes. The authors emphasize the need to tailor instruction to the needs, strengths, skill levels, and interests of diverse students. They offer recommendations for reading lists that incorporate critically acclaimed fiction and nonfiction, popular series books, and other student-friendly materials. Special features include case studies, examples of teaching and assessment activities, and commentary from middle-school teachers and students. Appendices contain reproducible forms and lists of recommended reading materials and resources.

This textbook enhances preservice and practicing music educators' understanding of ways to successfully engage children in music composition. It offers both a rationale for the presence of composition in the music education program and a thorough review of what we know of children's compositional practices to date. Minds On Music offers a solid foundation for planning and implementing composition lessons with students in grades PreK-12.

Implementation of the Common Core State Standards with the integration of children's literature can transform teaching and learning into a holistic and engaging experience. Tackling nearly every aspect of the English Language Arts Standards and the measures they employ, it offers a thorough plan for engaging elementary school students with literature. It explores the benefits and teaching principles behind CCSS, and explains how to apply them to literature. Along with the strengths it has in connection to CCSS, you will learn about the history of children's literature and what both fiction and nonfiction bring to the classroom. You will find plenty of practical applications of the CCSS, including book lists and lesson ideas, along with thorough examples. There is also a wealth of information on the kinds of readers you will encounter and explanations of how to meet their needs. A final section focuses on creating a curriculum, connecting the theory throughout the book with concrete lessons plans and units that cover the main CCSS skill sets.

Whether used for thematic story times, program and curriculum planning, readers' advisory, or collection development, this updated edition of the well-known companion makes finding the right picture books for your library a breeze. Generations of savvy librarians and educators have relied on this detailed subject guide to children's picture books for all aspects of children's services, and this new edition does not disappoint. Covering more than 18,000 books published through 2017, it empowers users to identify current and classic titles on topics ranging from apples to zebras. Organized simply, with a subject guide that categorizes subjects by theme and topic and subject headings arranged alphabetically, this reference applies more than 1,200 intuitive (as opposed to formal catalog) subject terms to children's picture books, making it both a comprehensive and user-friendly resource that is accessible to parents and teachers as well as librarians. It can be used to identify titles to fill in gaps in library collections, to find books on particular topics for young readers, to help teachers locate titles to support lessons, or to design thematic programs and story times. Title and illustrator indexes, in addition to a bibliographic guide arranged alphabetically by author name, further extend access to titles.

This comprehensive listing and discussion of poetic works supports the standards of all areas of the curriculum, helping librarians and teachers working with kindergarten through middle school students. This second edition of Using Poetry Across the Curriculum: Learning to Love Language offers a comprehensive list of poetry anthologies, poetic picture books, and poetic prose works in a wide variety of subject areas. While it maintains the original edition's focus on ideas and resource lists for integration of poetry into all areas of the curriculum, it is thoroughly revised to cover current issues in education and the wealth of new poetry books available. The book is organized by subject areas commonly taught in elementary and middle schools, and, within these, by the national standards in each area. Numerous examples of poetry and poetic prose that can be used to help students understand and appreciate aspects of the standard are listed. A sampling of units that arise from groups of works, writing and performance ideas, and links across the curriculum is also included. While many teaching ideas and topics provide references to the standards they meet, this title is unique in starting with those standards and making links across them.

The simplicity of children's picture books--stories told with illustrations and a few well chosen words or none at all--makes them powerful tools for teaching morals and personal integrity. Children follow the story and see the characters' behaviors on the page and interpret them in the context of their own lives. But unlike many picture books, most children's lives don't feature monsters. This collection of new essays explores the societally sanctioned behaviors imparted to children through the use of monsters and supernatural characters. Topics include monsters as instructors, the normalization of strangers or the "other," fostering gender norms, and therapeutic monsters, among others.