"I know in the classroom that good things happen when my students have meaningful discussions. I know as a teacher myself that my craft sharpens when I am given the opportunity to have meaningful discussions with my peers. And let's have a laugh or two while we are at it." – Kelly Gallagher
Since 2002 Stenhouse Publishers has been publishing books by Kelly Gallagher, and to this day we are inspired by his work. Gallagher has been teaching at the high school level for over 30 years and he believes "there is no greater pleasure than teaching someone something."
Kelly Gallagher is the author of six Stenhouse books, including Readicide and Deeper Reading. Have you read all his books? Keep scrolling to check out the full collection!
In the Best Interest of Students: Staying True to What Works in the ELA Classroom
What is in the best interest of our students? Is it teaching to the newest standards movement, like the Common Core? Teaching that prepares students to take a test? Or is it something more meaningful and authentic?
In the Best Interest of Students, Kelly Gallagher notes that there are real strengths in the Common Core standards, and there are significant weaknesses as well. He takes the long view, reminding us that standards come and go but what remains constant is the need to stay true to what we know works in the teaching of reading, writing, speaking, and listening.
Write Like This: Teaching Real-World Writing Through Modeling and Mentor Texts
If you want to learn how to shoot a basketball, you begin by carefully observing someone who knows how to shoot a basketball. If you want to be a writer, you begin by carefully observing the work of accomplished writers. Recognizing the importance that modeling plays in the learning process, high school English teacher Kelly Gallagher shares how he gets his students to stand next to and pay close attention to model writers, and how doing so elevates his students' writing abilities. Write Like This is built around a central premise: if students are to grow as writers, they need to read good writing, they need to study good writing, and, most important, they need to emulate good writers.
Readicide: How Schools Are Killing Reading and What You Can Do About It
Read-i-cide n: The systematic killing of the love of reading, often exacerbated by the inane, mind-numbing practices found in schools.
Reading is dying in our schools. Educators are familiar with many of the factors that have contributed to the decline—poverty, second-language issues, and the ever-expanding choices of electronic entertainment. In this provocative book, Kelly Gallagher suggests, however, that it is time to recognize a new and significant contributor to the death of reading: our schools.
Teaching Adolescent Writers
In an increasingly demanding world of literacy, it has become critical that students know how to write effectively. From the requirements of standardized tests to those of the wired workplace, the ability to write well, once a luxury, has become a necessity. Many students are leaving school without the necessary writing practice and skills needed to compete in a complex and fast-moving Information Age. Unless we teach them how to run with it, they are in danger of being run over by a stampede—a literacy stampede.
Deeper Reading: Comprehending Challenging Texts, 4-12
Do your students often struggle with difficult novels and other challenging texts? Do they think one reading of a work is more than enough? Do they primarily comprehend at a surface-level, and are they frequently unwilling or unable to discover the deeper meaning found in multi-layered works? Do you feel that you are doing more work teaching the novel than they are reading it?
Building on twenty years of teaching language arts, Kelly Gallagher shows how students can be taught to successfully read a broad range of challenging and difficult texts with deeper levels of comprehension.
Reading Reasons: Motivational Mini-Lessons for Middle and High School
In Reading Reasons, Kelly Gallagher offers a series of mini-lessons, ranging from five to twenty minutes in length, specifically tailored to motivate middle and high school students to read and, in doing so, to help them understand the importance and relevance reading will take in their lives. This book introduces and explains in detail nine specific "real-world" reasons why students should be readers.
The book contains forty practical, classroom-tested and reproducible mini-lessons that get to the heart of reading motivation and that can be used immediately in English (as well as other content-area) classrooms. These easy-to-use motivational lessons serve as weekly reading "boostershots" that help maintain reading enthusiasm in your classroom from September through June.
About Kelly Gallagher
Kelly Gallagher believes that "there is no greater pleasure than teaching someone something." Teaching is "artistic, it matters a great deal, and I can never get the job down perfectly."
He thinks that professional development should treat teachers as such — professionals. "I know in the classroom that good things happen when my students have meaningful discussions. I know as a teacher myself that my craft sharpens when I am given the opportunity to have meaningful discussions with my peers. And let's have a laugh or two while we are at it."
Writing his six books for Stenhouse was a solitary experience. "Though I have written outlines prior to each of my books, I have yet to follow any of them step-by-step. That is why I find writing rewarding — because the act of writing itself generates new thinking, and new thinking is always exciting."
