Welcome To Edwriter.com
Welcome!
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. I look forward to hearing from you, and thank you for visiting edwriter.com.
Katherine Scraper
P. S. I also invite you to visit Pillows A-la-mode, my new crafting blog.
Featured Books
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.
It's Game Time!
(80 pages)includes over 100 large-group, small-group, and individual games for early childhood classrooms that reinforce social skills, develop listening and memory skills, foster oral language development, and strengthen fine and gross motor coordination. The games are further categorized by concept--colors, letters and words, numbers, shapes, time, and "just for fun"--and include easy-to-follow preparation and play instructions and reproducible patterns. Based on the belief that games are play and play is a child's work, It's Game Time! is available from Carson-Dellosa Publishing Co..
Search and Sort: Discovering Patterns in Sounds, Letters, and Words
(315 pages)is a reproducible, hands-on activity book in which pictures, letters, words, and phrases are categorized and grouped according to specific characteristics. Students from pre-kindergarten through middle school can compare and contrast features, make matches, and explain their choices on skills such as letter recognition and sounds, syllables, rhymes, high-frequency words, letter patterns, onsets and rimes, digraphs and blends, compound words, contractions, nouns and verbs, plurals, adjectives, prefixes and suffixes, root and base words, synonyms and antonyms, homophones, categories, clipped words, abbreviations, similes, and proverbs. Search and Sort: Discovering Patterns in Sounds, Letters, and Words is available from Educators Publishing Service, Inc..
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.
Early Readers and Writers
(128 pages)offers developmentally appropriate reading and writing activities for diverse preschool and kindergarten classrooms, as well as reproducible take-home activities to encourage reading and writing outside of school and information and case studies to promote a better understanding of early childhood literacy development. Early Readers and Writers supports the research-based joint position statement of the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) and the International Reading Association (IRA) and is available from Carson-Dellosa Publishing Co..