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The Classroom Essentials Series Book List

April 9, 2026

The Classroom Essentials Series was created to provide pre-service and veteran teachers alike with a fresh new look at foundational, student-centered practices. Each book in the series focuses on one essential practice, along with all the information you need to get started trying it – or refining it – in your own classroom right away. With highly visual designs, classroom videos, online resources, teacher tips and more, Classroom Essentials books offer a uniquely engaging and contemporary reading experience for today’s busy teachers.

Below is a complete listing of Classroom Essentials books, each priced at $21.00.

A Teacher’s Guide to Interactive Writing by Matt Halpern

A Teacher’s Guide to Interactive Writing shares the principles, routines, and strategies of interactive writing in the PreK-2 classroom. You’ll watch how the magic happens, across the day and across subject areas, in 23 classroom videos with teacher Matt Halpern. Abundant teaching tips help you seamlessly weave interactive writing into your daily practice—no matter your curriculum or instructional approach. Give your students the confidence to become “writers” even from the very beginning, with interactive writing.

A Teacher's Guide to Getting Started with Beginning Writers by Katie Wood Ray & Lisa Cleaveland

How can I help my youngest students become writers? How can I establish a routine for writing in my classroom? Why is making books developmentally appropriate? If you’re a new teacher or new to writing workshop, A Teacher’s Guide to Getting Started with Beginning Writers will show you in clear and simple terms what to do to establish a routine for writing in your classroom, offering you vision, insight, and practical support. If you’re an experienced workshop teacher, Katie and Lisa will help you imagine new possibilities.

A Teacher's Guide to Mentor Texts, K-5 by Carl Anderson

In this step-by-step guide, Carl Anderson shows you how to put teaching with mentor texts at the center of the way you teach writing in your elementary classroom. You’ll learn how to find just-right mentor texts for your students, analyze them for multiple craft and convention teaching points, and teach with mentor texts with your whole class, in small group lessons, and in writing conferences.

A Teacher's Guide to Reading Conferences by Jennifer Serravallo

In this book, you'll read about the different types of student conferences. The book is organized in the order you’re most likely to use the conference types as you get started. Why are reading conferences so important? What do effective reading conferences look and sound like? How do I fit reading conferences into my literacy block? Jen Serravallo presents conferences for six specific instructional situations: assessing, goal-setting, strategy lessons, and more.

A Teacher's Guide to Writing Conferences by Carl Anderson

Helping students become better writers is what writing conferences are all about. How can I get started with conferring or improve my conferences? How can I fit conferences into my busy writing workshop schedule? How can conferences help me meet the diverse needs of student writers? In A Teacher’s Guide to Writing Conferences, Carl Anderson explains the underlying principles and reasons for conferring with students, and how to make writing conferences a part of your daily routine. With clear and accessible language, Carl guides you through the three main parts of a writing conference, and shows you the teaching moves and intentional language that can be used in each one.

A Teacher's Guide to Writing Workshop Essentials: Time, Choice, Response by Katherine Bomer & Corinne Arens

If your teaching has become more complicated and more focused on curriculum than on the writers sitting in front of you, if you’re not sure what your students really need to support them as writers, or if you’re just not sure how to get started with Writing Workshop, this guide is for you. In this foundational guide, Katherine Bomer and Corinne Arens describe the elegant simplicity of a Writing Workshop focused on just three essentials—time, choice, and response. Based on the research-based belief that children learn to write best when we provide a predictable, daily structure for writing, Katherine and Corinne introduce teachers to the rituals and routines of writing workshop and suggest ways to take small, incremental steps toward implementing them.

A Teacher's Guide to Writing Workshop Minilessons by Lisa Eickholdt & Patricia Vitale-Reilly

In writing workshop, the minilesson allows teachers to connect a lesson—often one that is mandated by a set of standards, a district curriculum, or a grade-level unit plan—to the specific objectives you have, as well as to the cultural knowledge and experiences of your students. Lisa Eickholdt and Patricia Vitale-Reilly explain the four-part structure of minilessons and share methodologies and tools, including charts, visuals, and materials that you can use to make your minilessons efficient and engaging for all students.

A Teacher’s Guide to Math Workshop by Nicki Newton, Alison Mello, & Janet Nuzzie

A Teacher’s Guide to Math Workshop shares a step-by-step process for implementing a math workshop in any classroom and with any math curriculum. Grounded in research-based best practices in math education, this introduction to math workshop is enhanced with classroom videos that bring the content to life. You’ll see students engaged in standards-based, differentiated, academically rich mathematics tasks and activities that help them see the value of math and make connections to math in their everyday lives. Vivid pictures, artifacts, classroom video, and writing from three expert educators show you the daily rituals and routines of math workshop: whole group instruction, small, guided math groups, and purposeful partner and individual math workstations.

A Teacher’s Guide to Vocabulary Development Across the Day by Tanya Wright

Young children love to learn and use new words; the key is to tap into their natural curiosity and excitement. You probably know that having young children memorize new words or relegating vocabulary instruction to one time of day is not the way to go, but you may not know what else to do to support students’ vocabulary development. In this guide, Tanya Wright shows you how to make word learning more meaningful and engaging as you incorporate teaching about words across the day.

A Teacher’s Guide to Mentor Texts, 6-12 by Allison Marchetti & Rebekah O'Dell

Using mentor texts from a range of high-interest sources and diverse authors can be a real game changer in secondary writing classrooms. Students learn to read like writers, deepening their understanding of quality writing and inspiring them in their own drafting and revision. In this foundational guide, you’ll learn the what, why, and how of teaching with mentor texts in small ways as well as large—and discover the power of mentor texts to serve as “writing teachers” alongside you. Allison and Rebekah provide a multitude of annotated examples from professional writers, alongside student samples, to illustrate how mentor texts can teach specific writing skills.

For more booklists, check out the Not This But That Series book list and 12 Must-Read Teaching Books.