Spotlight on Comprehension (eBook): Building a Literacy of Thoughtfulness

Spotlight on Comprehension presents a tapestry of short, highly practical essays loaded with ready to use strategies for teaching reading comprehension and assessing understanding. Hoyt and an All-Star ensemble of contributors—including Ellin Keene, Tony Stead, Nell Duke, Franki Sibberson, Mike Opitz, David and Yvonne Freeman, Adria Klein, Mary Lee Hahn and Gretchen Owocki—cover the spectrum of comprehension instruction, addressing topics like:

• implementing the latest research on reading comprehension into your instruction
• improving children's comprehension strategies, especially questioning, inferring, and summarizing
• helping emerging, developing, and second language readers improve their comprehension
• using writing to build reading comprehension
• tackling a range of texts and genres across the curriculum, including standardized tests
• building a robust vocabulary
• organizing instruction around guided reading, the read aloud, and independent reading.

Best yet, Hoyt and her expert contributors include handy tools like checklists, sample lesson plans, book lists, strategy lists, assessment rubrics, and learning extensions that will help you take their ideas and use them in your own classroom immediately. Each chapter even includes Key Questions designed to stimulate personal reflection and support professional conversations or book-study groups. Read Spotlight on Comprehension—in short segments, or all at once; by yourself, or with friends and colleagues—and gather a wealth of strategies for building a literacy of thoughtfulness which will empower your students to get the most meaning from the varied texts of our world.

When Linda Hoyt is asked what people should know about her professional career, she is often heard to say, “I’m a teacher. That will always be the heart of my professional work.” Though she spent many years as a classroom teacher, reading specialist, curriculum developer, staff developer, and Title I District Coordinator, Linda’s passion will always center around vigorous and engaging classrooms where teachers and children learn together.

This passion for vigorous and engaged learning has led Linda to create twenty-four professional books and video programs, plus numerous instructional resources for children. A few titles from her multidimensional list of Heinemann publications include Revisit, Reflect, Retell; Make It Real; Interactive Read-Alouds; Solutions for Reading Comprehension; and her newest resources, Explorations in Nonfiction Writing and Crafting Nonfiction. Three of her popular Heinemann video programs include Nonfiction Writing (one for primary and one for intermediate) and Navigating Informational Texts. Linda is a full-time author, consultant, and highly requested speaker at conferences throughout the United States, in Canada, and in Australia.

Linda and her husband, Steve, live in the mountains of central Oregon where they enjoy outdoor activities and the high-desert climate.

Read more from Linda's most recent blogs here:

• Just Do It!  Informational Writing in the Primary Grades
• Guided Writing, Part 1
• Guided Writing, Part 2
• Reading For Life by Laura Robb
• Strategies for Teaching Nonfiction Writing (Grades K–2 | 3–5)

 

Listen to an interview with Linda Hoyt on Education Talk Radio—11/09/2011 (35:58)

Writing

• Explorations in Nonfiction Writing
• Crafting Nonfiction - Primary and Intermediate
• Nonfiction writing DVDs, K-2, 3-5
• "plus pack" at each grade level

Reading

• Interactive Read Alouds - K-1, 2-3, 4-5

Professional Books:

• Make it Real
• Revisit, Reflect, Retell