Books published by publisher Severn House Publishers

In this new edition of their groundbreaking book Strategies That Work, Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis share the work and thinking they’ve done since the second edition came out a decade ago and offer new perspectives on how to explicitly teach thinking strategies so that students become engaged, thoughtful, independent readers. Thirty new lessons and new and revised chapters shine a light on children’s thinking, curiosity, and questions. Steph and Anne tackle close reading, close listening, text complexity, and critical thinking in a new chapter on building knowledge through thinking-intensive reading and learning. Other fully revised chapters focus on digital reading, strategies for integrating comprehension and technology, and comprehension across the curriculum. The new edition is organized around three sections: Part I provides readers with a solid introduction to reading comprehension instruction, including the principles that guide practice, suggestions for text selection, and a review of recent research that underlies comprehension instruction. Part II contains lessons to put these principles into practice for all areas of reading comprehension. Part III shows you how to integrate comprehension instruction across the curriculum and the school day, particularly in science and social studies. Updated bibliographies, including the popular “Great Books for Teaching Content,” are accessible online. Since the first publication of Strategies That Work, more than a million teachers have benefited from Steph and Anne’s practical advice on creating classrooms that are incubators for deep thought. This third edition is a must-have resource for a generation of new teachers—and a welcome refresher for those with dog-eared copies of this timeless guide to teaching comprehension.

Introducing Ishmael Jones - a detective with a difference - in this compelling murder mystery.Ishmael Jones is someone who can’t afford to be noticed, someone who lives under the radar, who drives on the dark side of the road. He’s employed to search out secrets, investigate mysteries and shine a light in dark places. Sometimes he kills people.Invited by his employer, the enigmatic Colonel, to join him and his family for Christmas, Ishmael arrives at the grand but isolated Belcourt Manor in the midst of a blizzard to find that the Colonel has mysteriously disappeared. As he questions his fellow guests, Ishmael concludes that at least one of them – not least Ishmael himself - is harbouring a dangerous secret, and that beneath the veneer of festive cheer lurk passion, jealousy, resentment and betrayal.As a storm sets in, sealing off the Manor from the rest of the world, Ishmael must unmask a ruthless murderer before they strike again.

Reading and writing across content areas is emphasized in the standards and on high-stakes tests at the state and national level. As educators seek to incorporate content-area literacy into their teaching, they confront a maze of theories, instructional strategies, and acronyms like REAP and RAFT. Teachers who do work their way through the myriad content reading and writing strategies are discovering not all activities are appropriate for content instruction: only those with a strong research base meet the high standards expected in classrooms today.Janet Allen developed the ideal support for teachers who want to improve their reading instruction across the curriculum. Tools for Teaching Content Literacy is a compact tabbed flipchart designed as a ready reference for content reading and writing instruction. Each of the thirty-three strategies includes: a brief description and purpose for each strategy;a research base that documents the origin and effectiveness of the strategy; graphic organizers to support the lesson;classroom vignettes from different grade levels and content areas to illustrate the strategy in use. The perfect size to slip into a plan book, Tools highlights effective instructional strategies and innovative ideas to help you design lessons that meet your students’ academic needs as well as content standards. The definitions, descriptions, and research sources also provide a quick reference when implementing state and national standards, designing assessments, writing grants, or evaluating resources for literacy instruction.

Introducing maverick Chicago private investigator Sam Kelson in the first of a hardhitting new crime noir series. Sam Kelson is a PI like no other. As a consequence of being shot in the head while working undercover as a Chicago cop, he suffers from disinhibition: he cannot keep silent or tell lies when questioned. But truth be told - and Kelson always tells the truth - he still feels compelled to investigate and, despite the odds, he's good at his job. Hired by Trina Felbanks to investigate her pharmacist brother, whom she suspects is dealing drugs, Kelson arrives at Felbanks' home to make a shocking discovery. Arrested on suspicion of murder, he makes an even more startling discovery concerning his client's identity. Kelson would appear to have been set up ... but by whom, and why?< br> As events spiral out of control and the body count rises, Kelson realizes he's made a dangerously powerful enemy. Will he survive long enough to discover who has targeted him - and what it is they want?

Introducing museum curator and amateur sleuth Miss Evie Barnum in the first of a deliciously quirky new historical mystery series. Evie Barnum is in charge of her brother’s museum, a place teeming with scientific specimens and “human prodigies” including a bearded woman and the lizard man. In this weird and whacky workplace, Evie hopes she can bury her secrets.But when an old friend shows up and begs for her help, she does all she can to stay away. The next time she sees him, he is dead in front of the exhibit of the Feejee Mermaid. Suspicion for the murder falls on Jeffrey, known as the Lizard Man, but Evie knows it isn’t possible.When Jeffrey also goes missing, Evie becomes determined to solve the mystery of her friend’s murder, even if it brings her face to face with her past…

Sleuthing monk Brother Athelstan discovers that past crimes can cause new murder in the latest intriguing medieval mysteryJune, 1381. The rebel armies are massed outside London, determined to overturn both Crown and Church. The Regent, John of Gaunt, has headed north, leaving his nephew, the boy-king Richard II, unprotected.Brother Athelstan meanwhile has been summoned to the monastery at Blackfriars, tasked with solving the murder of his fellow priest, Brother Alberic, found stabbed to death in his locked chamber. Athelstan would rather be protecting his parishioners at St Erconwald’s. Instead, he finds himself investigating a royal murder that took place fifty-four years earlier whilst the rebel leaders plot the present king’s destruction.What does the fate of the king’s great-grandfather, Edward II, have to do with the murder of Brother Alberic more than fifty years later? When he finds his own life under threat, Athelstan discovers that exposing past secrets can lead to present danger.

Teacher research is an extension of good teaching, observing students closely, analyzing their needs, and adjusting the curriculum to fit the needs of all. In this completely updated second edition of their definitive work, Ruth Shagoury and Brenda Miller Power present a framework for teacher research along with an extensive collection of narratives from teachers engaged in the process of designing and carrying out research projects to inform their instruction.This edition includes a greater variety of short contributions from a wide range of teacher-researchers -- novices and veterans from all backgrounds and parts of the country -- who speak to the growing diversity in today's classrooms. Threaded throughout the chapters and narratives is a discussion of the emergence of digital tools and their effect on both teaching and the research process, along with an expanded number of research designs.The book has three primary components: 1.Chapters written by the authors explaining key elements of the research process: finding questions, designing projects, data collection and analysis, and more 2.Research activities that enable readers to try out the featured strategies and techniques 3.Teacher-researcher essays in which teachers share details of completed projects and discuss the impact they have had in their classrooms.Living the Questions, Second Edition: A Guide for Teacher-Researchers will take you step-by-step through the process of designing, implementing, and publishing your research. Along the way, it will introduce you to dozens of kindred spirits who are finding new passion for teaching by "living the questions" every day in their classrooms. You will be reminded of why you became a teacher yourself.

In their follow-up to Reading Wellness, Jan Burkins and Kim Yaris explore how some traditional scaffolding practices may actually rob students of important learning opportunities and independence. Who’s Doing the Work? suggests ways to make small but powerful adjustments to instruction that hold students accountable for their own learning. Educators everywhere are concerned about students whose reading development inexplicably plateaus, as well as those who face challenging texts without applying the strategies they’ve been taught. When such problems arise, our instinct is to do more. But when we summarize text before reading or guide students when they encounter difficult words, are we leading them to depend on our support? If we want students to use strategies independently, Jan and Kim believe that we must question the ways our scaffolding is getting in the way. Next generation reading instruction is responsive to students’ needs, and it develops readers who can integrate reading strategies without prompting from instructors. In Who’s Doing The Work?, Jan and Kim examine how instructional mainstays such as read-aloud, shared reading, guided reading, and independent reading look in classrooms where students do more of the work. Classroom snapshots at the end of each chapter help translate the ideas in the book into practice. Who’s Doing the Work? offers a vision for adjusting reading instruction to better align with the goal of creating independent, proficient, and joyful readers.

As Chaucer’s pilgrims shelter for the night, it’s the physician’s turn to enthral his fellow travellers with a terrifying tale. When Brother Anselm and his novice Stephen are summoned to the Church of St Michael’s, Candlewick, to perform an exorcism, the demons that plague the church appear to have been summoned by an infamous sorcerer known as the Midnight Man. But what has he unwittingly unleashed – and why? Is there any link to the disappearance of young women in the area? Before Anselm can get to the truth, he must first uncover the identity of the mysterious Midnight Man.

If you want to learn how to shoot a basketball, you begin by carefully observing someone who knows how to shoot a basketball. If you want to be a writer, you begin by carefully observing the work of accomplished writers. Recognizing the importance that modeling plays in the learning process, high school English teacher Kelly Gallagher shares how he gets his students to stand next to and pay close attention to model writers, and how doing so elevates his students' writing abilities. Write Like This is built around a central premise: if students are to grow as writers, they need to read good writing, they need to study good writing, and, most important, they need to emulate good writers.In Write Like This, Kelly emphasizes real-world writing purposes, the kind of writing he wants his students to be doing twenty years from now. Each chapter focuses on a specific discourse: express and reflect, inform and explain, evaluate and judge, inquire and explore, analyze and interpret, and take a stand/propose a solution. In teaching these lessons, Kelly provides mentor texts (professional samples as well as models he has written in front of his students), student writing samples, and numerous assignments and strategies proven to elevate student writing.By helping teachers bring effective modeling practices into their classrooms, Write Like This enables students to become better adolescent writers. More important, the practices found in this book will help our students develop the writing skills they will need to become adult writers in the real world.

I Read It, but I Don't Get It is a practical, engaging account of how teachers can help adolescents develop new reading comprehension skills. Cris Tovani is an accomplished teacher and staff developer who writes with verve and humor about the challenges of working with students at all levels of achievement—from those who have mastered the art of "fake reading" to college-bound juniors and seniors who struggle with the different demands of content-area textbooks and novels.Enter Cris' classroom, a place where students are continually learning new strategies for tackling difficult text. You will be taken step-by-step through practical, theory-based reading instruction that can be adapted for use in any subject area. The book features:anecdotes in each chapter about real kids with real universal problems. You will identify with these adolescents and will see how these problems can be solved;a thoughtful explanation of current theories of comprehension instruction and how they might be adapted for use with adolescents;a What Works section in each of the last seven chapters that offers simple ideas you can immediately employ in your classroom. The suggestions can be used in a variety of content areas and grade levels(6-12);teaching tips and ideas that benefit struggling readers as well as proficient and advanced readers;appendixes with reproducible materials that you can use in your classroom, including coding sheets, double entry diaries, and comprehension constructors.In a time when students need increasingly sophisticated reading skills, this book will provide support for teachers who want to incorporate comprehension instruction into their daily lesson plans without sacrificing content knowledge.