Benson's Best Books

As we begin to approach the holiday season and hope to have a bit more time to read just for fun, it's time to share some of my favorite recent reads - a tradition I learned from Bonnie Campbell Hill and offer in her honor with this post :)

Children's Literature

Word After Word After Word by Patricia Maclaclan

Falling Down the Page by Georgia Heard

Sara Holbrook poetry collections

Miss Brooks Loves Books

Mirror, Mirror

The Dreamer; Interrupting Chicken

A Fruit is a Suitcase for Seeds

How Rocket Learned to Read

Life-Size Zoo

The Quiet Book

Orange Pear Apple Bear

Born to Read

Miss Little's Gift by Douglas Wood

LMNOPeas

Sit In

14 Cows for America (Thank you, Seamus Marriott!)

Those Shoes (Thank you, Carol Wilcox!)

Terrible Underpants

Busing Brewster

It's a Book by Lane Smith

Guys Read: Funny Business

The Best Place to Read

Read to Tiger

Everything I Need to Know I Learned From Children's Books (Thank you, Beth Hower!)

Novels

Cutting for Stone (Thanks so much, Bonnie Campbell Hill!)

The Help (Thank you so much, Brenna Issacs!)

Five Smooth Stones (Still reading but love it -Thank you, Aunt Susan and Brenna Issacs!)

Swedish mysteries by Stieg Larson and others by Henning Mankell (which are much less graphically intense than Larson's)

Little Bee by Cleave (although incredibly sad - Thank you, Jean Kottke!)

Marriage and Other Acts of Charity by Kate Braestrup (Thank you, Mary Denman!) [nonfiction]

PROFESSIONAL LITERATURE

Clockwatchers: Six Steps to Motivating and Engaging Disengaged Students Across Content Areas by Quate and McDermott

Mind in the Making by Ellen Galinsky

Resonate by Nancy Durate

Conferring by Patrick Allen

Motion Leadership by Michael Fullan

The Six Secrets of Change by Michael Fullan

The Flat World and Education by Linda Darling-Hammond

Making Learning Whole by Perkins

Rigorous Curriculum Development by Larry Ainsworth

Visible Learning by John Hattie

Instructional Rounds in Education by City, Elmore, Fiarman, & Teitel

Compelling Conversations by Thommie Piercy

The Collaborative Teacher and The Collaborative Principal edited by Guskey (Thank you, Ainsley Rose!) Checking for Understanding by Fisher & Frey

Differentiated Instructional Strategy: One Size Doesn't Fit All by Gregory and Chapman

How Student Writing Teaches Us by Mark Overmeyer

Brain Rules; Creating a Learner-Centered Classroomby Kath Murdoch and Jeni Wilson

Formative assessments books by Susan Brookhart and others by Shirley Clarke

...and my two of my most favorites books are The Next Step Guide to Enhancing Writing Instruction and The Next Step Guide to Enriching Classroom Environments by treasured friends and colleagues Bonnie Campbell Hill and Carrie Ekey

More titles to come (I know I have forgotten several really incredible texts here!)...

Hope-Joy to You All!