Nonfiction rules! When you walk into a classroom awash in nonfiction, you know it - no quiet kids sitting at desks here. Instead we see them chattering a mile a minute over a photograph of the jaws of a great white shark or brimming with questions while poring over books about the underground railroad. Join Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis, authors of Strategies that work, in Barb Smith's reading workshop as her students begin to explore the wild and wooly world of nonfiction where merely getting the facts isn't enough. Nonfiction readers need to merge their thinking with the information to learn, understand, and remember it. In Think nonfiction!, the focus is on comprehension strategies for gaining information - specifically noticing new learning, asking questions, and determining importance. We watch Stephanie and Anne teach alongside Barb as she launches a nonfiction study and helps kids learn how to read for information, choose a topic, and do research. Stephanie does a mini-lesson to model how she stops and thinks when she encounters new information as she reads. Anne and Barb demonstrate how they read as partners and respond to new information. Then Barb, Anne, and Stephanie move about the room conferring with kids as they read a nonfiction article and use these strategies to enhance their understanding. The video culminates in a conversation among the three of them as they think through nonfiction instruction that supports kids as they read to learn and engage in independent research. Barb models her own research process and shares her kids' unique ways of organizing their thinking and bringing learning to life. About the author: Anne Goudvis has been a classroom teacher, staff developer, and adjunct professor of reading and social studies. For the past ten years, she has worked at the Denver-based Public Education and Business Coalition as a staff developer and co-director of the Library Power project, a national initiative to improve teaching and learning in libraries and classrooms. Stephanie Harvey has spent the past thirty years teaching and learning about reading and writing. She received her B.A. from the University of Denver and her M.A. from the University of Colorado. After fifteen years of regular elementary and special education teaching in the Jefferson County Schools in Lakewood, Colorado, Stephanie became a staff developer for the Denver-based Public Education and Business Coalition (PEBC), a partnership of leaders from education and business who support innovation in public schools. In that role, she has worked with educators throughout Colorado coordinating literacy projects, leading workshops, and conducting classroom demonstrations. Recently, Stephanie and Anne have released a number of videos on reading comprehension, including a single video called Read write and talk with a focus on active literacy, a three-video series for English language learners called Reading the world, and Strategic thinking, a comprehension series aimed at middle-grade readers.

Journey with Tony Stead as he explores many amazing ways to make nonfiction reading and writing come alive in the classroom. This four-part video series takes you inside two classrooms at The Manhattan New School where Tony works with first-grade teacher Lauren Benjamin and third-grade teacher Lisa Elias Moynihan. Watch how literacy centers literally come alive in the classroom and see some of the original ways students respond to their nonfiction reading. Learn how to organize a nonfiction classroom library and to support children as they select appropriate texts. From learning about frogs, crows, and static electricity, to debating whether zoos should exist, you'll enjoy watching the whole-class mini-lessons that successfully integrate the content areas with language process. About the author: Tony Stead became a teacher because he wanted to make a difference in children's lives. And he is certainly doing that through his publications, teaching, and work with teachers all over the world. A native of Melbourne, Australia, Tony earned his master of education degree from the University of Melbourne and worked for fourteen years as a K-6 teacher in five different school settings in Melbourne. He believes that professional development should be "hands-on, relevant, reflective, engaging, empowering." He encourages teachers to "take off the teacher hat and replace it with that of the learner," and to celebrate success, no matter how small. Tony is the author of Reality checks, Is that a fact? and the videos Bridges to independence and Time for nonfiction.