Understanding what students do when they read, and then helping them take the next step, can be easy for an informed teacher. For Sandra Wilde, the key is to focus on the strengths students bring to the process and build from there. With Miscue Analysis Made Easy, Wilde leads the way, offering a lucid, commonsense explanation of what exactly reading is and how it works. 
 Beginning with a series of lively, interactive exercises Miscue Analysis Made Easy leads us through the thinking processes and linguistic systems that readers use to build their understanding of text. Through a careful review of these systems, we then learn to assess what readers can do. An easy-to-use, step-by-step diagnostic procedure, including a thoughtful retelling guide, helps us to identify and then maximize the student's specific strengths. Wilde also offers ideas on how to help students develop the self-monitoring strategies they need to keep track of their own meaning-making process as they read.

Miscue Analysis Made Easy : Building on Student Strengths

Education & Teaching

Wilde, Sandra

Schools & Teaching

Heinemann

What's the difference between a norm-referenced and a criterion-referenced test? If newspapers say only 50% of kids are reading at grade level, should you be worried? When does getting kids ready to take tests cross the line into cheating? In today's educational climate, teachers have a lot of questions about where standards and tests come from, what they mean, and how they're used. Sandra Wilde packs this handy reference guide with clear and concise explanations of this convoluted, and increasingly important, world. She not only defines technical terms, she makes sense of the ethics and politics involved. What's more, Wilde provides the ammunition to challenge policies relating to testing and standards that aren't benefiting students. In a series of mini-essays on relevant topics, she gives you the information you need to: <ul>
<li>see if your state's standards and tests have been well developed</li> <li>know how passing scores for state tests are set</li> <li>determine whether schools are using unethical practices to raise test scores</li> <li>check whether your local newspaper describes test results accurately.</li> </ul>
Dip into Wilde's brief encyclopedia to demystify the lingo. Or read it straight through as a quick primer on the concepts and issues of testing and standards. Then understand why every educator and policy maker should be aware of their impact in real classrooms.

Testing and Standards: A Brief Encyclopedia

Research shows that for long-term retention and real-world application spelling instruction needs to be more than the memorization of word lists. Offering an alternative to the traditional word-list approach, Sandra Wilde's Spelling Strategies and Patterns brings joy and teaching to spelling instruction. Sandra's inquiry-based approach to spelling instruction engages children in exploring the spelling patterns they are already starting to internalize and developing the strategies that will help them fine-tune their spelling as they write. Spelling Strategies and Patterns has two components In the lesson book, Sandra offers 65 short lessons designed to help students become more proficient spellers. 
<ul>
<li>32 strategy lessons help children improve spelling as they go about the process of writing; many of them answer the question, "What should I do when I'm writing and don't know how to spell a word?'</li> <li>33 pattern lessons help children know what to do when it's not obvious what letters are in a word; many answer the question, "How do I know which letters to choose in order to spell the sounds I hear?"</li> </ul> An accompanying CD-ROM provides a wealth of resources to support your inquiry-based spelling instruction. <ul>
<li>Live-from-the-classroom video footage allows you to observe Sandra as she teaches strategy and pattern lessons. "Working with What Kids Give You" video clips show how to incorporate the unexpected events that invariably occur during the course of a spelling exploration.</li> <li>An up-close look at student writing samples with voice-over commentary from Sandra allows you to look over the authors shoulder as she analyzes student work.</li> <li>Printable lesson reproducibles and modifiable assessment forms offer practical day-to-day support.</li> </ul> "The reason we're thinking about different approaches to spelling these days is more like why medicine has changed than why fashion has changed: we know more than we used to. The two big things that we've learned about are how spelling develops and how the writing process works." -Sandra Wilde

Spelling Strategies and Patterns

Reference

Words, Language & Grammar

FirstHand

"By the time you finish reading this book, you'll have a solid plan for spending an appropriate amount of time on language topics that will move kids forward in their spoken and written expression, their ability to talk about language in technical ways using appropriate terminology, and their understanding of language in its social, cultural, and historical contexts." -Sandra Wilde Grammar-doesn't it seem so 19th century? In Funner Grammar, Sandra Wilde approaches language learning in ways that reflect contemporary usage, including respectful and celebratory treatment of American language diversity. Help your students learn about language for its own sake-without mind-numbing workbook exercises- with sample lessons and fresh ways of thinking about: <ul>
<li>mechanics-the conventions of written language</li> <li>traditional grammar instruction-simple and accurate ways to think about parts of speech, sentence types, and verb tenses</li> <li>usage-why some ways that people speak are considered "wrong," and how teachers can help kids understand and control their choices in spoken and written language</li> <li>language and social justice-how knowledge of language variation can help us treat all children fairly and support English language learners</li> <li>linguistics-how to explore language in interesting ways: its nature, history, and geography.</li> </ul>
With appendices that suggest topics and units of study for different grade-level ranges, connections to the Common Core State Standards, and lists of selected readings for teachers and kids, Funner Grammar provides the tools to help kids explore and understand the fascinating and ever-changing world of grammar. Read Funner Grammar and provide your students with knowledge that will serve them in meeting language and grammar expectations in school and the world outside the classroom.

Funner Grammar: Fresh Ways to Teach Usage, Language, and Writing Conventions, Grades 3-8

"The premise of this book is simple: that establishing the reading of books as the center of our literacy curriculum is the secret to academic achievement." -Sandra Wilde The research is unambiguous: when students read more, they read better, acquire more background knowledge, and do better on academic assessments. "Students need to read more books and to gradually move into harder books," writes Sandra Wilde in Quantity and Quality. "This isn't mere recreational reading, nor is it requiring them to read 'grade-level' books. It's getting kids reading, and making sure that readers are growing." Quantity and Quality is ideal for study groups and whole schools. It provides doable ways to add as much reading time to your curriculum as possible. Sandra presents the compelling rationale for putting more reading into the school day, answering questions like "How much time?" "How many books?" and "How hard should the books be?" Then she gets you going with details on: <ul>
<li>creating the time, space, and inspiration for more reading</li> <li>matching kids with increasingly complex books</li> <li>working with beginning readers, ELLs, struggling readers, and reluctant readers</li> <li>teaching reading skills and concepts</li> <li>documenting readers' progress.</li> </ul>
"If students are really reading more books and pushing into harder books," writes Sandra Wilde, "they'll master the standards, acquire cultural literacy, and pass standardized tests." Read Quantity and Quality, and discover why the solution for text complexity can be surprisingly simple. Read a sample chapter from Quantity and Quality.

Quantity and Quality: Increasing the Volume and Complexity of Students' Reading

Care in Education: Teaching with Understanding and Compassion (Routledge Research in Education)

This philosophical commentary explores the meaning and significance of care in education, demonstrating how teaching with care enriches the art and soul of pedagogy. Wilde draws upon Western and Eastern philosophies that envision an integrated image of care to illuminate the value of cultivating understanding in the form of awareness, and compassion leading to right action. Comments and stories from teachers' experiences demonstrate important aspects of care that are easily overlooked, such as present attention, listening and teacher well-being. Although it uncovers a tragic conflict between caring and aspects of contemporary schooling, this book offers hope for teachers. It shares a vision of practice that has the potential to re-enliven and strengthen care even in the midst of these difficulties. It also offers a contemplative approach to pedagogy that calls educators into intentional action, showing them how to renew their deep ethical connections to students, to subject matter and to the world.

Routledge

Children's books provide an authentic context for using mathematics. They celebrate mathematics as a language for describing and framing our world. And they are also a nonthreatening vehicle for investigating a variety of mathematical concepts and relationships. Read Any Good Math Lately? acquaints readers with some of the best children's literature containing a mathematical subtext, including fiction, nonfiction, poetry, books of games and puzzles, books that reflect different cultures. The titles are diverse, but they all address a range of mathematical topics: place value, estimation, large numbers, geometry, measurement, fractions, classification, addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Plus comprehensive bibliographies of books for all ages are provided for further exploration. Filled with children's work and numerous classroom scenarios, Read Any Good Math Lately? demonstrates the rich potential literature holds for engaging learners in a variety of mathematical investigations. It is an invitation to teachers, parents, and librarians to make the reading and sharing of good literature a natural part of mathematics teaching and learning.

Read Any Good Math Lately?: Children's Books for Mathematical Learning, K-6

Whitin, David

Children's Books

Stories are natural invitations for learners to explore the mathematics of their own lives and the lives of others. With all their rich, supportive details, they present powerful opportunities for students to think mathematically. In this follow-up to their enormously popular Read Any Good Math Lately? David Whitin and Sandra Wilde continue to explore the importance of children's literature in the teaching and learning of mathematics. They show how books help portray mathematics as it really is: a tool for making sense of our world. Using a wealth of books and frequent samples of children's work, Whitin and Wilde highlight the voices of children and teachers who use mathematically oriented children's books. They explain ways books have been used to explore mathematical concepts, the importance of children's spontaneous reactions, and the role of mathematical conversation. You also hear from two authors who create these books, how their ideas originated and what they were trying to accomplish. The second part of It's the Story That Counts focuses on the books themselves, exploring multicultural themes and images in books, books on the number system, statistics, and probability, and books for adults. The final chapter presents a series of mini-essays on the best of new books for young readers, culminating in a list of over three hundred new books arranged by category. Throughout It's the Story That Counts, you gain a greater understanding of the rich potential children's literature offers for mathematical investigations. Anyone interested in restoring the story to the world of mathematics will value what Whitin and Wilde have to say.

It's the Story that Counts: More Children's Books for Mathematical Learning, K-6

Science & Math

Mathematics

Elementary school teachers have begun to rethink how children learn about spelling and punctuation and what the role of the school should be in that process. You Kan Red This! is a comprehensive handbook for K-6 teachers that answers questions like these: <ul>
<li>How can I integrate spelling and punctuation into writing? </li> <li>How do I know if my students are learning and improving? </li> <li>Can (or should) I throw out the spelling books? </li> <li>How can I show that invented spelling works? </li> <li>When, if ever, should I tell kids how to spell words? </li> <li>Are there ways to focus on spelling and punctuation that won't be boring?</li> </ul>

You Kan Red This!: Spelling and Punctuation for Whole Language Classrooms, K-6

To many teachers who began their careers with basal readers, the schwa sound was part of what led them to whole language in the first place. If they didn't even understand linguistic terminology themselves, how could they be expected to teach it to kids? Yet many teachers still wonder about letters and sounds and phonics. What role does phonics play in learning to read? Does it still have a place in classrooms where children are becoming literate through rich experiences with literature and writing? Why have the debates about phonics continued and in some ways grown more heated? In What's a Schwa Sound Anyway? Sandra Wilde answers these and many other questions related to phonics and its relationship to learning to read and spell. She makes a forceful case that teachers who have a working knowledge about the English sound system are not only more powerful observers of students' reading and invented spelling, but also more informed participants in the current debates about the role of phonics in learning to read. The first part of the book is a lively exploration of the English sound system and its relation to written language for both reading and spelling. This mini-course in linguistics is reader friendly and accessible to even the most linguistics-phobic classroom teacher. Of special interest to those who work with diverse populations is a chapter-length discussion of language variation such as Black English and its role in learning to read and spell. The second part of the book helps readers apply their new knowledge about sounds, letters, and the relationship between them to the classroom. Chapter 5, "Skills and the Big Phonics Debate," applies theory, research, and common sense to debates about the role of phonics in learning to read and spell. The next two chapters take a close look at a number of writing samples and reading miscues, illuminating how a knowledgeable teacher can appreciate "error" as a reflection of children's developing understandings of written language. Sandra Wilde's work with invented spelling has helped us discover that the better we understand what children are doing, the more responsive and creative we can be as teachers. What's a Schwa Sound Anyway? continues this work by helping teachers deepen and extend their knowledge base about written language and the way children perceive it, always with the goal of helping children continue to grow and develop as readers and writers.

What's a Schwa Sound Anyway? A Holistic Guide to Phonetics, Phonics, and Spelling

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