Powerful Understanding: Helping Students Explore, Question, and Transform Their Thinking About Themselves and the World Around Them

In these challenging times, teaching children to think critically and reflectively AND be compassionate, responsible and caring citizens at the same time is a tall order. Powerful Understanding explores effective ways to build social emotional skills and help students make connections, question what they read, and reflect on their learning as they develop into stronger readers and learners. Strategic and critical thinking strategies revolve around core anchor books that help integrate thinking into everything you teach―from social responsibility, to immigration, to life cycles. This highly readable book includes a wealth of classroom examples and extensive hands-on activities designed to help students to think more deeply, learn more widely, and develop a more powerful understanding of what it means to be a responsible and compassionate person.

Adrienne Gear is a teacher, author, and workshop presenter. Adrienne has more than 25 years of elementary classroom experience and is passionate about literacy, learning, and children’s literature. The author of 7 professional books on Reading and Writing Power, Adrienne is an engaging speaker whose practical lessons and recommended book lists are used in classrooms across North America, China, the UK, and Sweden. She lives in British Columbia with her husband and their two sons.