During this time How To Align Literacy Instruction, Assessment, and Standards is an important reminder of what's truly essential in creating a school wide literate community. Using the standards as her foundation, Nancy Akhavan teaches us not only how to triumph with the standards but how to transform a faltering school into a thriving reading and writing community. This book is much more than a "how-to" book on implementing the standards in the classroom; instead it's really about the art of teaching reading and writing.
—Georgia Heard, Author of Writing Toward Home, Awakening the Heart, and The Revision Toolbox
How To Align Literacy Instruction, Assessment, and Standards is a precise blend of research and practice. Nancy Akhavan has created practical hands-on ideas using a real school, real kids, and real life situations. This text is an invaluable guidebook to help you create an environment where learning for understanding becomes the norm for children and adults.
—Jan Duke, Ed.D., BER National Presenter, Milken Educator, California Teacher of the Year
Nancy Akhavan provides a brilliant demonstration of the power of classroom teachers to turn an under-achieving school into one of the best public education has to offer.
—Lucy Calkins, Author of The Art of Teaching Writing
In this book, Nancy Akhavan details the stories and strategies that enabled her school to move from "under-performing" status to one in which students achieve and teachers have a whole new understanding of targeted instruction, sensitive assessment, and meaningful curriculum. There is much to appreciate in what she says, from her attention to "thinking small" and understanding the power of the details, her emphasis on planning and goal-setting, to the seriousness with which she takes the standards and incorporates them into the life of the classroom.
Drawing on the work of the best in the business, Lucy Calkins, David and Yvonne Freeman, and Tony Alvarado, Akhavan made professional development the heartbeat of her school as she helped her faculty understand that their work begins and ends with continuous assessment of their students. Now she helps readers of her book learn:
- how child-centered assessment leads to strategic instruction
- how to best support multilingual learners
- how to organize for yearlong learning
- how to think through precise workshop instruction in minilessons
- how to develop meaningful curriculum around units of study
- how to create a vibrant school community where standards and accountability stem from regular assessment and examination of instructional practices.
Akhavan provides immediately useful information for any elementary teacher, principal, or curriculum developer. Read her book and understand how to use standards as a way to connect meaningful instruction to students, not as a bar that students have to reach or a barrier to real teaching and learning.
