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1) What Every Middle School Teacher Needs to Know About Reading Tests

How can you empower your students to do well on standardized reading tests without sacrificing quality instruction?

In his new book, What Every Middle School Teacher Needs to Know About Reading Tests, Charles Fuhrken shares his behind-the-scenes insights as a test writer, demystifying tests and saving you valuable time.

Following the same format as his previous book, What Every Elementary Teacher Needs to Know About Reading Tests, Charles provides a host of strategies and activities for mastering test items across all of the commonly assessed reading standards. He demonstrates how students can learn the language of tests and apply their knowledge on test day.

This is a resource that you'll turn to again and again as you integrate test prep into everyday reading work, enhancing your teaching of vocabulary development, literary techniques, interpretation, comprehension, and more. It's available now, and you can preview the whole book online:

http://www.stenhouse.com/0885.asp?r=n234w

What Every Middle School Teacher Needs to Know About Reading Tests (From Someone Who Has Written Them)
Charles Fuhrken • 248 pp • $24.00 • Available now
Order by January 15 with coupon code NLAR and we'll waive the shipping charge (a $5 value)!
http://www.stenhouse.com/0885.asp?r=n234w

And you can save $7 by purchasing both elementary and middle-level books by Charles Fuhrken as a package:

http://www.stenhouse.com/shop/pc/viewprd.asp?idProduct=9548&r=n234w

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2) Resolve to read more: 5 ways to do it

Author Teri Lesesne (Naked Reading, Making the Match) rings in the new year with a guest post on the Stenhouse Blog, where she offers 5 practical ways to squeeze more reading and writing into your busy schedule:

http://www.stenhouse.com/rdtl.htm?r=n234w


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3) PD Corner: Bring history alive with photographs

Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.
—Dorothea Lange

Bring the Great Depression alive with photos such as Dorothea Lange's "Migrant Mother," travel the West, or examine ordinary faces from history in these photos posted on Flickr by the Library of Congress:

http://www.stenhouse.com/rdLOCFlickr.htm?r=n234w

Imagine writing historical narratives with your students. Mine BYU's stacks for historical photographs that will spark ideas for characters and scenes:

http://lib.byu.edu/digital/historic_photos/

Browse timelines created with photographs from LIFE's archives. Use examples to teach students about visual timelines or create your own:

http://www.life.com/timeline

Send students into photographs. Guide their analysis by adapting Sarah Cooper's artifact analysis activity from Chapter 2 of Making History Mine—using photographs as the primary sources:

http://www.stenhouse.com/0765.asp?r=n234w
(Click on the Table of Contents tab to find the Chapter 2 link.)

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4) Exploring text structures with newspapers

The Learning Network blog from the New York Times recently posted some great examples of how text structures can help convey complex information, with a shout-out to Stephanie Harvey's Nonfiction Matters. You'll find downloadable graphic organizers and "signal words" that cue readers to structures such as cause and effect, compare and contrast, and problem-solution:

http://www.stenhouse.com/rdNYTLearning.htm?r=n234w

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