Publications

We understand and synthesize literacy research, allowing teachers to translate the research into successful practices in the classroom.

Latest Book ~

Latest Book ~

The Literacy Studio. Tools to re-think your workshop structure and strategically plan for integrating reading and writing. Isn’t it time?

  • Mosaic of Thought (1st ed.) became a runaway best seller as the first book to explicitly describe the use and benefits of strategy-based comprehension instruction. Since then, comprehension strategy instruction has exploded, leading to numerous inspiring variations on Mosaic’s instructional principles, as well as a widening of the comprehension research base. Now the second edition offers up-to-the-minute insight for classroom teachers, literacy coaches, and school leaders everywhere, and reminds everyone of precisely what effective, long-lasting comprehension learning looks like.

  • Literacy workshop teachers struggle with time—building in two teaching sessions, one for reading another for writing and finding enough time for students to read and write independently. Welcome to the Literacy Studio, an alternative workshop model that combines reading and writing. That integration makes much more sense to kids and leads to more time for independent reading and writing, small group work, and conferring.

  • What motivates us to learn? We all want to promote student engagement, but we often struggle with getting our students excited about and responsible for their own learning. In Engaging Children, we explore the question: What can we do to encourage motivation for students or, better yet, their engagement? And, news to readers of Engaging Children! Ellin is working on a new conceptualization of the four pillars that will address childrens’ engagement based on their social and emotional needs post Covid.

  • A collection of texts collaboratively written by authors representing research and practice. By the end of each book, you will understand both what not to do, and what to do, to improve student learning.

  • This book is about bringing the education we want for our own children to all. It is focused on a set of strongly held beliefs that drive the actions of educators every day.  Each chapter of the book is focused on a single belief and invites readers to consider what they can do to help children attend schools based on the true, authentic expressions of their teachers’ beliefs. Contributions include essays by many prominent educators including Sir Ken Robinson, Deborah Meier, Matt Glover, and Thomas Newkirk.

  • Speaking and listening, important components of each state’s literacy standards are often placed on the back burner as teachers scramble to address more high profile standards? In Talk About Understanding, we discuss ways in which teachers can facilitate classroom talk that leads to deeper understanding of texts and concepts? Talk About Understanding has the guiding principles, the teaching suggestions, and the carefully described outcomes to help you teach your students how to deepen comprehension through their oral language interactions with you and with their peers.

  • In Comprehension Going Forward, you’ll meet up with 17 leading practitioners and researchers for an energetic, personal, and frequently irreverent conversation on what great comprehension instruction looks like, what an amazing range of applications it has for all students, and what we can do better. Not only do figures such as Stephanie Harvey, Anne Goudvis, Cris Tovani, Debbie Miller, and P. David Pearson include their own chapters, but, like any exciting conversation, they point out their favorite parts of one another’s chapters—highlighting discussion topics for teacher study groups along the way.

  • To Understand is designed to help classroom teachers and literacy specialists find new ways to draw out the innate intellectual interest in every student and spark dramatic improvements in literacy learning and comprehension. You’ll see that by rethinking what it means to understand—by teaching children the Outcomes and Dimensions of understanding—you can help students exceed expectations while broadening your vision of their abilities, their capacity, and their energy for learning.

  • Ellin has updated the original edition of ACTS and now offers it as a free resource for educators who visit mosaicliteracy.com. Please use this link to find a greatly expanded and more flexible tool you can use to assess students’ comprehension in fiction and non-fiction texts.