Teacher Resources
For an inside scoop about some of my favorite, and not so favorite, teachers, check out this article from School Library Journal.
Here you will find:
- Educator guides for my books
- Links to pages that talk about research I’ve done on some of my books
- Books for teachers that I’ve contributed to
Educator Guides & Research Pages
- The Boy Who Loved Math Educator’s Guide
- Torpedoed Educator’s Guide, aligned with the Common Core State Standards
- A RIF guide for From Caterpillar to Butterfly
- My research for Vincent & Theo: THE VAN GOGH BROTHERS
Charles and Emma: The Darwins’ Leap of Faith
Books for Teachers:
Nonfiction Writers Dig Deep: 50 Award-Winning Children’s Book Authors Share the Secret of Engaging Writing
Edited by Melissa Stewart
Some of today’s most celebrated nonfiction writers for children share how their writing processes reflect their passions, personalities, beliefs, and experiences in the world. Editor Melissa Stewart offers a wide range of tips, tools, teaching strategies, and activity ideas to help students learn to craft rich, unique prose.
By scrutinizing the information they collect to make their own personal meaning, they create distinctive books that delight as well as inform. In addition to essays from mentor authors, the book includes a wide range of tips, tools, teaching strategies, and activity ideas from editor Melissa Stewart to help students (1) choose a topic, (2) focus that topic by identifying a core idea, theme, or concept, and (3) analyze their research to find a personal connection. By adding a piece of themselves to their drafts, students will learn to craft rich, unique prose.
You can buy the book here.
Thinking Like a Generalist: Skills for Navigating a Complex World
Angela Kohnen and Wendy Saul
Foreword by Deborah Heiligman
What can we teach kids today that will have utility ten or fifteen years from now? Angela Kohnen and Wendy Saul propose an approach to information literacy that goes beyond the teaching of discreet, easily outdated skills. Instead they use activity to help students build identities as curious individuals empowered to ask their own questions and able to navigate their information-filled world in pursuit of credible answers. More info here.
From Text to Epitext: Expanding Students’ Comprehension, Engagement, and Media Literacy
by Shelbie Witte, Melissa Gross, and Don Latham, Editors
With comments from me on a chapter written by Sharon Kane about my work
This book explains how analyzing textual elements that aren’t part of the text but connected to it can be used with K–16 students to improve comprehension, engagement, critical thinking, and media literacy. More info here.