Teaching Challenging Texts: Fiction, Non-fiction, and Multimedia [Paperback]

Teaching Challenging Texts shows how to increase reading comprehension and enhance student engagement, even with the most challenging texts. Every chapter features ready-to-use, research-based lessons, replete with explicit instructions, handouts, Common Core correlations, and assessments.
Exploring the Future features fiction by George Orwell, Suzanne Collins, and William
Golding; nonfiction by Philip Zimbardo, Stephen Pinker, Abraham Lincoln, Jared Diamond, Dan Ariely, and Ray Kurzweil; images from several films, an old television commercial; and classical and contemporary music.
Understanding the Power of One features fiction by Victor Hugo and Lori Halse Anderson; nonfiction by Phillis Wheatley, Sojourner Truth, and Edith Hamilton; a young adult book on archaeology, an animated film from Walt Disney, and an episode from Saturday Night Live.
An extensive list of free resources and correlations to the Common Core allow teachers to teach on the cheap. Teaching Difficult Texts brimswith relevant and robust lessons for a new generation.

Lawrence A. Baines is chair of instructional leadership and academic curriculum at The University of Oklahoma and former teacher of English, reading and social studies.

Jane E. Fisher is a teacher of eighth grade language arts at Whittier Middle School in Norman, Oklahoma. Jane enjoys writing and collecting vinyl records.

Teaching Challenging Texts takes on an nearly insurmountable goal, seeking to blend a powerful commitment to adolescent-centered teaching with the demands of standards-based accountability and the needs of pragmatic educators. This book succeeds in its goal and should provide thoughtful educators with an invaluable resource as they build classrooms where students and texts matter. Paul Thomas

Adolescents deserve to have their teachers read Teaching Challenging Texts. It's filled with practical ideas for middle and high school teachers as they consider the ways in wl³?