Obviously, students’ knowledge of words is critical to their success as readers, writers, and speakers. But vocabulary affects much more than communication. The truth is, teaching vocabulary directly to our students is one of the most important instructional decisions we can make. In fact, research suggests that vocabulary instruction focused on key academic terms can lead to gains as high as 33 percentile points on subject area tests.

Word Works: Cracking Vocabulary’s CODE gives teachers a simple but powerful way to plan and teach instructional units while helping students develop the skills essential to learning new vocabulary. At the center of this approach is a four-phase teaching and learning framework known as CODE. By building lessons and units using CODE, you can help your students

Connect, or “grab onto” new words and terms.
Organize new terms into meaningful frameworks that clarify important relationships within the content.
Deep process the most important words to ensure they find their way into long-term memory.
Exercise new words by using them in writing and speech.

Questions are at the heart of teaching and learning, In fact, teachers may spend as much as 60% of their instructional time asking questions, listening to answers, and providing feedback. Countless studies over the last three decades have shown that effective questioning practices lead to higher achievement in every setting.

Questioning Styles and Strategies is designed to help you “up your game” when it comes to classroom questioning. More specifically, it shows you how to

• Assess your current questioning practices and identify “best bets” for raising student achievement.
• Use different styles of questions to increase engagement and reach all learners.
• Implement classroom-ready questioning tools to vary your questioning practices and meet a wide variety of instructional purposes.
• Use questions to design lessons and units that motivate students.

Making good notes is essential to academic success. Unfortunately, in too many classrooms, notes involve little more than copying what the teacher writes or says. We call this note taking. Notemaking is something else entirely. It is an active process that requires students to identify important details, analyze big ideas, raise questions, explore personal reactions and feelings, and make connections to their prior knowledge and experiences.

From Note Taking to Notemaking will help you change your students’ perceptions of notes while empowering them to master one of the most vital academic skills. Learn how to

• Get students excited about making notes.
• Make teaching and learning more active and engaging by integrating simple notemaking tools into your everyday practice.
• Use notes to improve students’ study skills, reading comprehension, planning and decision- making capacities, and writing skills.