Charlotte Knox and Michelle Karns are educational consultants using the Strategic Schools modeldesigned by our colleague, Dennis Parker. The team has had a great deal of success helping schools meet their growth targets and develop strategies to increase student proficiency. Over the last few years, Charlotte has been keeping a pictorial record of the schools and classrooms using our recommendations and strategies. The pictures became the basis of our new book and gave us another venue to reinforce what some of the right things to do can be.

Talking Wallsis a great resource for teachers that want examples of want can be done inside the classroom to hook students into learning and support achievement gains. The entire book is built upon actual student work and teacher made products representing the interactions and processes that were generated from state adopted curricula. Data walls, effective writing programs, rigorous instruction focusing on intentional and meaningful work using academic language, and student engagement are all represented on the walls of this new book by Michelle Karns and Charlotte Knox. The pictorial presentation is well supported by a running dialogue explaining why the authors targeted these examples. A CD  Toolkit of 40 strategies assembled from the best of these classrooms and the author’s work in schools is included with each book.

What You Get with the Book:

• Over 100 full color pages of valuable proven strategies and illustrated examples of classroom methodology that support student achievement, including:
  • Creating a safe and productive classroom environment.
  • Increasing student engagement and collaboration.
  • Facilitating classroom management and establishing classroom rules and responsibilities.
  • Setting up a classroom library and helping students choose the best books for them to read.
  • Increasing reading comprehension and a love of reading.
  • Increasing writing ability and creating effective displays for student work.
  • Incorporating state standards in every aspect of learning, with special student-friendly explanations of the standards for them to use every day.
  • Utilizing the new (2001) Bloom’s Taxonomy to facilitate critical thinking and increase the use of academic language and vocabulary.
  • Assisting the testing process and enabling students to be more effective and have more fun with testing.
  • Encouraging future-oriented thinking about college education, technical training, and career planning beginning early in elementary school.
• Another 100 pages of the more than 40 hands-on tools referred to in the book.
• A CD with the over 40 tools referred to in the book on disk for you to use at your school site including:
  • Several examples of test chat forms, accelerating vocabulary forms, data management forms, reading strategies and tools, classroom rules and student creed, writing checklists, etc. for use on classroom walls and in student packets.
  • “Kidified” standards K-6 (designed directly from the actual state standards) for reading/language arts and math to help students understand and utilize the state standards in their daily work.
  •  89 full color word cards for helping all students, especially new readers, slow decoders, and English learners to better comprehend testing language.
  • 45 full color word cards for all students to use in discussing college education, technical training, and career planning.