Welcome To Edwriter.com
Welcome!
Please use the sticky-note links to navigate the site, and click on the web addresses in blue to visit the schools, organizations, and educational publishing companies with whom I'm privileged to work. Thank you for visiting edwriter.com! Best, Katherine Scraper
Featured Books
Benchmark Writer's Workshop
(300 pages)2013 Teacher's Choice Award Winner! Benchmark Writer’s Workshop provides gradual-release instruction for the process, craft, and conventions of writing, including informational, opinion/argument, and narrative texts. Each K-6 Teacher Resource System includes 150 explicit mini-lessons with responsive conferring prompts and differentiated strategies to support both struggling and advanced writers. Program authors are Steve W. Dunn and Tammy Jones, and the K-1 lesson author is Katherine Scraper.
Everyday Comprehension Intervention Activities
(108 pages)provides teachers with reading comprehension strategy intervention targeted to students' needs. Each one-week unit in this K-5 series addresses a specific standards-based strategy with five reproducible practice and assessment activities and a consistent research-based instructional approach. Each book also includes a whiteboard-ready click-and-print CD with bonus pre- and post-assessments. Everyday Comprehension Intervention Activities is available from Newmark Learning.
Using Shared Reading Fiction to Teach Essential Skills
(48 pages)provides teachers with a solid foundation in the methodology of shared reading, including the "gradual release" approach, how to organize a classroom for shared reading, and tips for selecting shared-reading texts. The book also includes practical advice for implementing a dynamic shared reading program in any classroom as well as 35 explicit, modeled mini-lessons that use shared reading to develop phonological awareness, phonics, vocabulary, comprehension, and fluency. Using Shared Reading Fiction to Teach Essential Skills is available from Benchmark Education Company.
Using Genre Models to Teach Writing
(160 pages)introduces students to 11 fiction and nonfiction genres that appear on state standards: fables, fairy tales, pourquoi tales, tall tales, trickster tales, historical fiction, realistic fiction, biographies, book reviews, personal narratives, and persuasive texts. The book includes 21 additional language arts and word study mini-lessons that cross genres and apply to all content areas, as well as checklists, rubrics, assessments, graphic organizers, and lists of mentor texts for lower elementary through middle school. Using Genre Models to Teach Writing is available from Benchmark Education Company.
Show Me! Graphic Organizers for Reading Comprehension across the Curriculum
(208 pages)features explicit instruction in 32 fiction, nonfiction, and word-study reading strategies tied to national and state standards. Each six-page unit offers a lesson plan, brief original fiction or nonfiction reading selection, filled-in model graphic organizer, blackline master, suggested writing assignment, cross-curricular extension activities, and assessment component. Targeted toward intermediate students, the materials can easily be adapted for primary or middle-school classrooms using the instructions and tips included in the book's introduction. Show Me! Graphic Organizers for Reading Comprehension across the Curriculum is available from Good Year Books.
Horsing Around: Making Sense of Everyday Idioms
(63 pages)features common idioms and figures of speech in the English language. Through context and humorous illustrations, students learn to interpret and use figurative wordplay as they build success in oral language development, reading comprehension, and creative writing. Ideal for grades 3-6 and second language learners of all ages, Horsing Around: Making Sense of Everyday Idioms is available from Good Year Books.