Language Arts

Strategies That Work: Teaching Comprehension for Understanding and Engagement

Vocabulary Workshop: Level E

Vocabulary Workshop: Level F (Vocabulary Workshop)

A Writer's Notebook: Unlocking the Writer within You

Ages 8-12. Fans of Harriet the Spy who want to try keeping their own writer's notebook will appreciate this inspiring handbook. Written in a direct, non-condescending style, writer-to-writer, it offers realistic, experienced advice on how to keep notes and use them to create stories and poems. Fletcher, author of the ALA Notable children's book Fig Pudding, fleshes the book out with numerous examples from his own notebooks and from those of other writers, child and adult.

Writers are like other people, except for at least one important difference. Other people have daily thoughts and feelings, notice this sky or that smell, but they don't do much about it.

Not writers. Writers react. And writers need a place to record those reactions. That's what a writer's notebook is for. It gives you a place to write down what makes you angry or sad or amazed, to write down what you noticed and don't want to forget . . . .

When Kids Can't Read: What Teachers Can Do: A Guide for Teachers 6-12

For Kylene Beers, the question of what to do when kids can't read surfaced abruptly in 1979 when she began teaching. That year, she discovered that some of the students in her seventh-grade language arts classes could pronounce all the words, but couldn't make any sense of the text.

Vocabulary Workshop: Level G (Vocabulary Workshop)

Painless Grammar (Painless Series)

This very approachable text combines instruction in parts of speech and sentence structure with down-to-earth examples, funny illustrations, and examination of some of the more amusing and peculiar words in the English language. A chapter on clear e-mail communication and etiquette is brand new in this edition, as are many of the author’s challenging “Brain Ticklers.” Her helpful chapter on how to edit a school paper has also been heavily revised and updated.

Barron’s popular Painless Series of study guides for middle school and high school students offer a lighthearted, often humorous approach to their subjects, transforming details that might once have seemed boring or difficult into a series of interesting and mentally challenging ideas. Most titles in the series feature many fun-to-solve “Brain Tickler” problems with answers at the end of each chapter.

Vocabulary Workshop: Level D (Vocabulary Workshop)

The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation: An Easy-to-Use Guide with Clear Rules, Real-World Examples, and Reproducible Quizzes

The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation is filled with easy-to-understand rules,real-world examples, dozens of reproducible exercises, and pre- and post-tests.

This handy workbook is ideal for teachers, students in middle school through college, ESL students, homeschoolers, and professionals. Valuable for anyone who takes tests or writes reports, letters, Web pages, e-mails, or blogs, The Blue Book offers instant answers to everyday English usage questions.

Vocabulary Cartoons: SAT Word Power