Mosaic of Thought; The Power of Comprehension Strategy Instruction, 2Nd Edition

Ellin Oliver Keene has been a classroom teacher, staff developer, non-profit director and adjunct professor of reading and writing.  For sixteen years she directed staff development initiatives at the Denver-based Public Education & Business Coalition.  She served as Deputy Director and Director of Literacy and Staff Development for the Cornerstone Project at the University of Pennsylvania for 4 years. Ellin works with schools and districts throughout the country and abroad.  Her emphasis is long-term, school-based professional development and strategic planning for literacy learning.

Ellin recently published The Literacy Studio: Redesigning the Workshop for Readers and Writers which is focused on an up-to-date conceptualization of Readers/Writers’ workshop. She is the author of Engaging Children: Igniting the Drive for Deeper Learning (2018), is co-editor and co-author of The Teacher You Want to Be: Essays about Children, Learning, and Teaching (Heinemann, 2015); co-editor of the Not This, but That series (Heinemann, 2013 - 2018); author of Talk About Understanding: Rethinking Classroom Talk to Enhance Understanding (Heinemann, 2012), To Understand: New Horizons in Reading Comprehension (Heinemann, 2008), co-author of Comprehension Going Forward (Heinemann, 2011), co-author of Mosaic of Thought: The Power of Comprehension Strategy Instruction, 2^nd edition (Heinemann, 2007, 1^st edition, 1997) and author of Assessing Comprehension Thinking Strategies (Shell Educational Books, 2006) as well as numerous chapters for professional books and journals on the teaching of reading as well as education policy journals. 

An internationally-known speaker, workshop leader, and consultant, Susan Zimmermann is coauthor of educational bestsellers Mosaic of Thought (1997 and 2007 2nd edition), 7 Keys to Comprehension, and Comprehension Going Forward (2011), books that are changing the way reading is taught in classrooms throughout America. She cofounded and served as the Executive Director of the Denver-based Public Education and Business Coalition, an organization that has spearheaded ground-breaking comprehension work. During her time there, she initiated numerous programs to improve the quality of public schools, including the Reading Project, which provides many of the examples in Mosaic of Thought and 7 Keys.

Susan is also the author of Keeping Katherine; Writing to Heal the Soul, winner of the Colorado Book Award; and Grief Dancers, finalist for the Colorado Book Award and winner of the Exceptional Parent symbol of excellence for its "profound contribution to human understanding and dignity." These wise and inspiring books grew out of Susan's personal experience raising her profoundly handicapped daughter Katherine who had Rett syndrome.

Currently a full-time speaker, writer, and education consultant, Susan has given hundreds of workshops, keynotes, and summer institutes in nearly every state and throughout Canada. She has worked with international schools in Mexico, the Philippines, Romania, Japan, Vietnam, and Indonesia. Visit her Heinemann Speakers page for more information.

A lover of the wilderness and believer in the transformative power of the outdoors, she has been a trustee of the Colorado Outward Bound School and served as the board chair of The Women's Wilderness Institute, an organization that provides wilderness learning experiences for adolescent girls and women. Susan is a graduate of Yale Law School and mother of four. She lives in the foothills west of Denver.

For more information on Susan Zimmermann visit her Web site at www.susanzimmermann.com.

Donald H. Graves was a pioneer in literacy education who ultimately revolutionized the way that writing is taught in the United States and around the world.  The research study he began in the 1970s at the Atkins Academy, a rural New Hampshire elementary school, would transform writing instruction and launch a new kind of resource: professional books for educators.  His bestselling book, Writing: Teachers and Children at Work, challenged teachers to let children’s needs and interests, not mandates, guide instruction.  For the first time, young children became engaged as writers—not just students learning to write. As they were guided to make the decisions writers make in an authentic writing process, they raised our beliefs about what young writers were capable of.

Don Graves was a teacher, principal, Education Director, and Co-Director of an urban teacher preparation program. He was Professor Emeritus at the University of New Hampshire .

Heinemann proudly published Don’s many other titles including A Fresh Look at Writing; A Sea of Faces; The Energy to Teach; Teaching Day By Day; and Inside Writing (coauthored with Penny Kittle).  Children Want to Write: Don Graves and the Revolution in Children’s Writing, edited by Thomas Newkirk and Penny Kittle, pairs Don’s most important writings with recovered video from his classrooms, creating a vivid and surprising portrait of the man still referred to as “the Don.”

NCTE’s Donald H. Graves Award for Excellence in the Teaching of Writing is given annually to deserving educators who have shown exemplary understanding and insight on student improvement in writing.

For additional information about Don Graves, see:

• Where It All Started by Tom Newkirk
• A True Friend & a Good Writer by Nancie Atwell
• The Teacher as Learner: The Research of Donald Graves by Mary Ellen Giacobbe