New Publication: Thinking Tools for Young Readers & Writers

In her new book, Thinking Tools for Young Readers & Writers: Strategies to Promote Higher Literacy in Grades 2-8, bestselling author and professional developer Carol Booth Olson and colleagues offer a rich array of research-based teaching strategies to show teachers how to help young readers and writers construct meaning from and with texts. 

Focusing on the “thinking tools” employed by experienced readers and writers, Professor Olson and her team provide strategies for drawing on the natural connections between reading and writing, and demonstrate how cognitive strategies can be embedded into the teaching of narrative, informational, and argumentative texts. By including artifacts and written work produced by students across the grade levels, the authors connect the cognitive and affective domains for full student engagement.

Thinking Tools for Young Readers & Writers is designed to:

• Help students develop critical thinking skills to meet the CCSS and other state standards.
• Facilitate planning and setting goals for literacy instruction.
• Supplement existing English language arts curricula with teacher-tested strategies, activities, and lessons.
• Help teachers design and implement engaging instruction.
• Develop a community of learners by creating safe classroom spaces in which all students are encouraged to “think big.”

 
Thinking Tools for Young Readers & Writers features:

• Web links throughout the text connect readers to student samples, color versions of resources, anchor charts, videos, and extended lesson plans.
• Lessons and activities for embedding cognitive strategy instruction seamlessly into the classroom.
• A detailed look at the genres of narrative, information, and argument, including how to teach them from both a reading and a writing perspective.
• Classroom vignettes with National Writing Project teachers who are conversant with the current research literature.

​Olson, C. B., Balius, A., McCourtney, E., Widtmann, M., & Langer, J. A. (2018). Thinking tools for young readers and writers: Strategies to promote higher literacy in grades 2–8. New York: Columbia University Teachers College Press.
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