The Joyful Teacher

"My wish," writes Berit Gordon, "is for there to be more joy and less struggle in a profession where people put in such tremendous effort and do such essential work." No matter what supports you might have in your school or district, you can take charge of your teacher growth and craft your own professional learning journey. The Joyful Teacherprovides a structure to help K-12 teachers across all content areas reflect on their professional development needs, set goals that work, and access practical strategies that will help them meet those goals. While anyone can pop in and pull out strategies for what's needed right now, the goals and strategies are organized in a progression to set teachers up for the most success and highest impact. Coaches and administrators will also find numerous ways to support the teachers they work with and help them feel and be effective. Each chapter begins with a self-assessment checklist to help you find which goal and strategy will be your entry point. Within each strategy you'll find step-by-step instructions, explanations for why and how the strategy works, a detailed "how to," supports and indicators to help you know if the idea is working, and references to help you continue exploring if you want to learn even more. Berit includes grade band suggestions and grade level modifications to help you make the strategy work best for you and your students. There is no "right" place to start and no goal that is more sophisticated or more important than any other. The Joyful Teacherhelps you prioritize what is most essential for what you need and choose goals and strategies that work for you and your students. Where will your journey begin?

For middle- and high-school teachers, it’s one of today’s most vexing problems: How do you motivate students with varied interests and little appetite for classic literature to stop faking their way through texts and start advancing as skilled, engaged readers? Independent reading is an important part of the answer, but it’s just that — a part of the whole. In this groundbreaking book, Berit Gordon offers the complete solution, a blended model that combines the benefits of classic literature with the motivational power of choice reading. With the blended model, teachers lead close examinations of key passages from classic texts, guiding students to an understanding of important reading strategies they can transfer to their choice books. Teachers gain a platform for demonstrating the critical reading skills students so urgently require, and students thrive on reading what they want to read. In this research-backed book, Gordon leads you step by step to classroom success with the blended model, showing: The basics of getting your classroom library up and running How to build a blended curriculum for both fiction and non-fiction units, keeping relevant standards in mind Tips and resources to help with day-to-day planning Ideas for selecting class novel passages that provide essential cultural capital and bolster students’ reading skills Strategies for bringing talk into your blended reading classroom How to reach the crucial learning goal of transfer A practical, user-friendly approach for assessing each student’s progress No More Fake Reading gives you all the tools you need to put the blended model to work for your students and transform your classroom into a vibrant reading environment. Berit Gordon coaches teachers as they nurture lifelong readers and writers. Her path as an educator began in the classroom in the Dominican Republic before teaching in New York City public schools. She also taught at the Teachers College of Columbia University in English Education. She currently works as a literacy consultant in grades 3-12 and lives in Maplewood, New Jersey with her husband and three children.

Discover motivating, personalized learning strategies that all of your students will love! Build an active, responsive, and inclusive classroom where every student benefits. Through step-by-step directions, reproducible handouts, classroom-tested examples, and specific guidelines, teachers and teacher teams will discover 60 activities to help you: Quickly and easily modify and adapt design instruction for diverse learners, including students with cultural, language, learning, physical, or sensory differences Transform lectures and whole-class discussions through dynamic, student-centered learning experiences Immerse students in discussion, debate, creative thinking, questioning, teamwork, and collaborative learning Flexibly co-plan and co-teach with a variety of school professionals The revised edition of this bestselling resource includes step-by-step directions, reproducible handouts, classroom-tested examples, and specific guidelines. Discover quick and easy ways to help all learners participate, contribute, and learn with this unique guide! "This book is a gold mine of strategies to increase engagement, participation, and JOY for all students in inclusive classrooms. The examples and implementation suggestions make is easy for K-12 teachers to select and apply strategies that make learning meaningful and fun." —Barb Gruber, Inclusion Facilitator Maryland Coalition for Inclusive Education "One of the many things I appreciate about this new edition is the range of its examples. Regardless of grade level or subject area, all K-12 teachers will find relevant gems here." —Kelly Chandler-Olcott, Associate Dean for Research Syracuse University

The best-selling book of easy-to-implement classroom lessons from the world’s premier educational system—now available in paperback. Finland shocked the world when its fifteen-year-olds scored highest on the first Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a set of tests evaluating critical-thinking skills in math, science, and reading. That was in 2001; even today, this tiny Nordic nation continues to amaze. How does Finnish education—with short school days, light homework loads, and little standardized testing—produce students who match the PISA scores of other nations with more traditional “work ethic” standards? When Timothy Walker started teaching fifth graders at a Helsinki public school, he began a search for the secrets behind the successes of Finland’s education system. Highlighting specific strategies that support joyful K–12 classrooms and can be integrated with U.S. educational standards, this book, available in paperback for the first time, gathers what he learned and shows how any teacher can implement many of Finland's best practices. A new foreword by the author addresses the urgent questions of teaching, and living, in these pandemic times.

"Start with Joy is a guidebook describing ways teachers can make joy and purpose the center of their teaching and students' literacy learning. Organized by seven pillars, based on the science of happiness, this book offers reasons why students' happiness matters now more than ever, providing lessons, strategies, resources, and children's literature suggestions for how to make sure joy and purpose are at the heart of all instruction"--

Students learn more—and with more joy—when lessons connect with their lives and interests while challenging them to stretch and grow. In this book, you'll find practical, ready-to-use strategies for creating active and exciting lessons. You'll learn about: Partnering and grouping students for optimum learning Using interactive learning structures such as Maître d' and Swap Meets to support active learning Incorporating acting, drawing, debating, and more into daily lessons while still meeting rigorous learning goals Infusing lessons with choices in what or how to learn to increase students ownership of their learning Incorporating student self-assessment tools to help children monitor and evaluate their own work and identify ways to improve their learning Filled with lesson plans, precise directions for interactive learning structures, planning guides, and more!

The Joyful Reading Resource Kit All children deserve a chance to learn to love reading. The Joyful Reading Resource Kit offers teachers an impressive array of tools, resources, and activities for getting students at all levels excited about reading while developing their proficiency in comprehension. Serving as a companion to Joyful Reading, the book offers teachers everything they need to implement the Schoolwide Enrichment Model in Reading (SEM-R), a differentiated instructional approach that encourages students to read independently for a period of time each day on books of their own choice. Implemented in three phases, the SEM-R program has been shown by research to improve fluency and comprehension among at-risk students. The Joyful Reading Resource Kit includes: Reproducible "bookmarks" for scaffolding students in critical thinking and comprehension activities Extensive lists of recommended books Tips for supporting students in selection of appropriately challenging books Materials for managing independent reading in the classroom, including log sheets, five-minute conference tips, writing prompts, assessment rubrics, and a reading growth chart Exciting enrichment resources to develop students' reading interests, including a survey form, online books, Web-based activities, and Renzulli Learning resources Hands-On Creativity activities that help students elaborate ideas, develop fluency, brainstorm, and much more Reproducible X-ploration projects on varied topics that students can pursue independently at their own pace The Joyful Reading Resource Kit is a vital compendium not only for classroom teachers but also for parents and after-school educators who wish to support students in discovering the rich rewards and delights of reading.

About This Book: Joyful Literacy Interventions describes a research-based, comprehensive classroom intervention approach that promises over 90% literacy success for all children by the end of third grade when implemented in its entirety.The stage is set in a playful primary classroom learning environment. While play is critical in early learning classrooms where child development theories must prevail, vulnerable children need more than play. Play is simply not enough! This book is also about explicit skill instruction in preschool, kindergarten and first and second grade-as a top priority. What makes this book unique is that Janet describes how to implement a skill-mastery model invisibly in a play-based environment through games, play, inquiry and targeted small group instruction. Janet's passion and determination to make a difference for disadvantaged children shines through in Joyful Literacy Interventions. Her book is based on the most recent literacy research such as the NELP (National Early Literacy Panel, 2008) report, which is a meta-analysis of 500 exemplary literacy studies conducted in the last decade. This compelling research highlights the factors that have the most lasting effect on future reading success if implemented in the early years. Alphabetic principles, phonological awareness, shared reading and shared writing, rapid automatized naming, and use of children's names as a key instructional strategy are featured prominently.In Joyful Literacy Interventions Janet has merged the recommendations of the NELP Report with her 40 years of experiences as a primary teacher and administrator; her recent PhD in Language, Literacy and Early Learning and the experiences of 200 classroom sites where her approach was field-tested.She has designed a unique assessment and tracking system that facilitates skill development and differentiated instruction in the midst of a playful and inquiry-based learning center classroom. It elegantly provides the teacher with detailed data to inform daily instruction for small "like-need" groups. Vulnerable children get the "catch-up" instruction they require while feeling safe and happy. Janet describes how to joyfully implement play and the essential literacy skills so that vulnerable children will thrive in classroom-based interventions. The book weaves nine essential research-based components into practical classroom applications. Each chapter describes essential skills, concepts and experiences needed for literacy success for all children. Implemented together the result is a holistic classroom experience that promises literacy success for many disadvantaged children.The first seven chapters provide the reader with: Janet's wisdom that evolved over 40 years in her experiences as teacher, principal, superintendent and professor; a synopsis of the latest, persuasive research; key references to other popular authors; teacher implementation stories from Janet's pilot sites; hundreds of practical ideas for the reader to implement; and colored photos throughout the book that illustrate possibilities and results. The chapters' topics address: a dynamic classroom environment; assessment and tracking; the essential literacy skills; learning center design; word recognition; shared reading and writing; and involving families in practice literacy activities at home.Chapter 8 provides a checklist that describes the ideal classroom by listing the research-based criteria and observable indicators in a classroom when full implementation is achieved. Chapter 9 describes a district and a classroom case study from Janet's 200 pilot sites. Joyful Literacy Interventions weaves the essential components together into practical classroom applications that are already proving to be highly effective for disadvantaged children.This book is a "must-read" for advocates of vulnerable children.