Laura Robb has spent years writing to improve the literate lives of children. Now, as a natural extension of that work, she turns her attention toward improving the professional lives of educators. In Redefining Staff Development, Robb advocates for meaningful change-change that takes into account the culture of the school community and the diversity among its members. She eschews the traditional, top-down model for one that allows participants time to inquire and reflect, listen and respond, rise and stumble. And although it can be more challenging, the payoff is considerable: teachers and administrators alike grow into professionals who can alter the lives of children in astounding ways. Robb demonstrates how to start, maintain, and assess with a menu of ongoing strategies-study groups, coaching, and peer mentoring and evaluation. All of them are adaptable, and none requires the budget for traditional inservice because they rely on activities that all educators should be engaged in-reading, self-evaluating, conversing, kid and colleague watching, and collaborating on investigations. They can be done with or without the help of a hired outside educator. It is a model that is within financial reach of most schools, if leaders choose to embrace it. As practical as it is thought provoking, the book contains anecdotes from Robb's own experience as a teacher, staff developer, and curriculum coordinator in schools throughout Virginia. It also features transcripts from interviews, teacher conversations, and student conferences, as well as an appendix of reproducible forms for self-evaluation, study-group documentation, and one-on-one conferences that can be used as is or modified.

Redefining Staff Development: A Collaborative Model for Teachers and Administrators

Education & Teaching

Robb, Laura

Schools & Teaching

Heinemann

When young children have been deprived of literacy-building experiences, is it fair for them to start school being taught the same way as those with a rich reading and writing background? No, it's NOT fair, says reading expert Laura Robb. That's why she helped develop Literacy Links, a highly successful early intervention program, and why she wrote this book. Dedicated to young children with little exposure to literacy activities at home, the program provides the background knowledge these children need to succeed. The book explains exactly how this works. Thoroughly comprehensive and practical, Literacy Links offers strategy after strategy to help literacy-deprived young learners. Robb has found that giving students the opportunity to experience family storybook reading at school works best. She offers four ways to reconstruct that experience and develop emergent literacy by 
<ul>
<li>organizing small separate kindergarten classes that respond to the children's needs and progress</li> <li>training adults to conduct family storybook reading within a regular school day</li> <li>building the literacy knowledge of small groups through a balanced read-aloud program and writing workshop</li> <li>setting up a summer school program for children who would benefit from more reading and writing.</li> </ul> These techniques, in fact, will benefit all children, regardless of background. Enhanced by plentiful student work, reproducibles, and photographs, Literacy Links is just the book needed by classroom teachers, Title I Directors, and any administrator who's serious about developing emergent literacy in every child.

Literacy Links: Practical Strategies to Develop the Emergent Literacy At-Risk Children Need

"My whole goal with this book was to come at teaching writing from the angle that matters most: students' perspective. They taught me what I needed to know to make this book live up to their passion for writing." Laura Robb Adolescents have robust and rewarding writing lives outside of school that involve journals, emails, text messages, blogs, and an astounding array of genres. Unlike their personal reading lives that teachers frequently tap into, their personal writings typically exist under the curricular radar-that is until now. While grounded in the common schedule constraints and curriculum demands of middle school, Laura Robb's Teaching Middle School Writers offers teachers lessons and routines that are uncommonly attuned to adolescents' developmental and social needs. As she taps into the energy and enthusiasm of adolescents' personal writing lives, Laura presents: <ul>
<li>writing plans that support first drafts</li> <li>strategies for crafting leads that grab and endings that satisfy</li> <li>grammar lessons that address writing conventions</li> <li>editing lessons that have students revise their writing before the teacher reads it</li> <li>guidelines for grading and responding to student work. </li> </ul>
Straight-from-the-classroom writing samples and videos give teachers the opportunity to see how Laura uses compelling questions and powerful mentor texts to teach writing, support struggling writers, and weave twenty-first century literacies into the writing curriculum. Throughout, teachers learn ways of connecting to students' lives in order to bring out their best writing, their best self. Watch a video overview.

Teaching Middle School Writers: What Every English Teacher Needs to Know

Reference

Words, Language & Grammar

Boynton/Cook

"They aren't going to read A Tale of Two Cities no matter how many times we assign it. Put Dickens away for a bit and try some books that will turn your students into real readers." Joan Schroeder Kindig What do we ultimately want from our students as readers? More than just becoming readers, we want them to want to read. Drawing on her personal experiences as a professor of reading education and a children's literature specialist, Joan Schroeder Kindig shares the secrets of how to turn your reading program into one that allows for student choice, entices children with books that are relevant to their lives, and turns kids into real readers. This conversational text has everything you need to jump-start kids reading by harnessing their social life and providing meaningful texts, including: <ul>
<li>dynamite book lists, organized by topic, that will spark all readers interests </li> <li>15 easy steps on how to become a children's literature expert along with guiding principles for identifying books kids will read </li> <li>quick and easy assessments, including the running record and five-finger rule, to identify each student's independent, instructional, and frustration reading levels. </li> </ul>
PLUS! Essays on student choice and relevance from eight of the hottest young adult authors. Reading is a choice. Motivate your students to read by connecting them to books they can relate to.

Choosing to Read: Connecting Middle Schoolers to Books

Politics & Social Sciences

Kindig, Joan Schroeder

Social Sciences

Tap into adolescents' personal writing and reading lives and save with the Teaching Middle School Writers and Readers Bundle. SAVE $7.50 This bundle combines two books written for middle school teachers by two middle school teachers, Laura Robb's Teaching Middle School Writers and Nancy Allison's Middle School Readers. Click on the respective titles for sample chapters, reviews, and more information.

Teaching Middle School Writers and Readers Bundle

Allison, Nancy

“Having powerful reasons to write and a teacher who motivates— a teacher who’s tuned into the emotional and academic needs of young adolescents—is a tough order. But it can be done and it makes all of the difference to middle school writers.” —Laura Robb In her groundbreaking Teaching Middle School Writers Laura Robbshowed teachers how to use adolescents’ interests and motivations to enliven and personalize their academic writing. Robb’s new Smart Writing series builds on this foundation offering practical writing units that are uncommonly attuned to middle school writers’ social and developmental needs. Providing the language and lessons she has honed over 45 years in the classroom, Robb’s eight units of study will help you craft writing instruction that: • taps into adolescents’ desire for responsibility, relationships, and choice • guides students step by step through the writing of memoirs; short, short stories; and persuasive, analytical, informative, and compare/contrast essays and free choice writing • aligns with the Common Core’s writing genres • includes engaging, age-appropriate mentor texts • is assessment driven and incorporates self and peer evaluations. Smart Writing components: • The Teacher’s Guide offers practical tips for using mentor texts; shows how the units fit into a variety of schedules; and explains the benefits of developing writing criteria for teachers and students. • Each of the 8 units of study (5 books) lays out 4 to 6 weeks of instruction and provides the lessons, mentor texts, tools, and grade-specific writing criteria needed to teach the full writing process. • The Resources CD-ROM offers print and video resources including mentor texts, criteria charts, evaluation forms, and student handouts. • The compact Smart Writing Handbook reinforces important lessons and offers tips, rules, and guidelines for students writing on their own.

Smart Writing: Practicle Units for Teaching Middle School Writers (Smart Writing Series)

FirstHand

"Students need elbow room to make decisions about what to write, revise, and publish. Adolescents crave responsibility. This handbook supports students by showing them how to assume greater responsibility and independence with writing assignments." Laura Robb The Smart Writing Handbook reinforces important lessons from Smart Writing's units of study, summarizes key points, and offers tips, rules, and guidelines for when students are writing on their own. Designed as a compact, easy-to-carry writing guide, the student handbook: <ul>
<li>offers strategic support through the entire writing process</li> <li>reviews minilessons that students may have missed or forgotten</li> <li>helps students address expected writing conventions including a "Crash Course in Commas."</li> </ul>
Save when you order a pack of 10 or a pack of 30. The Smart Writing series includes: <ul>
<li>Smart Writing: Practical Units for Teaching Middle School Writers</li> <li>Smart Writing Handbook</li> <li>Smart Writing Staff Development DVD</li> </ul>

The Smart Writing Handbook (Smart Writing Series)

Teaching Middle School Writers (Print eBook Bundle): What Every English Teacher Needs to Know

10 to 15-Minute Mini-Lessons and Reproducible Activities That Sharpen Students' Writing Skills One-page mini lessons—perfect for chart paper or overhead lessons—and companion reproducible writing activities, zero in on improving key writing skills. Covers sentence combining, improving leads, using strong verbs, getting rid of clutter, and more.

Brighten Up Boring Beginnings and Other Quick Writing Lessons

Scholastic Teaching Resources

Engaging, explicit lessons using mini-excerpts from books and students’ writing show you how to teach grammar strategically. Zero in on the common grammar glitches, and model for students how to use nouns, verbs, and adjectives effectively, catch mismatched pronoun references; make prose lively with clauses and phrases, use the active voice, and more. From learning the parts of speech to the skill of paragraphing, this book covers it, and gives you what you need to teach grammar in the context of reading and writing. For use with Grades 4-8.

Grammar Lessons And Strategies That Strengthen Students Writing

Teaching Resources

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