New Releases by Lester Laminack

How can we move children from simply talking about things to learning to take action – and feeling empowered to enact change? This book shows you exactly what this can look like in an elementary class setting. It details the structures and instructional strategies classroom teachers can adopt to help their children create positive outcomes for their communities while also building identities for themselves as real agents of change. Topics include building empathy and compassion, helping students become aware of issues within their communities, creating brave environments so students can engage in productive discussions around sensitive topics, engaging students in research that answers their needs and those of their community, and supporting students into action. Classroom examples, practical tools, and student voices are featured throughout. With this book by your side, you can debunk the false deficit-based assumptions that young people aren’t ready for activism, and you’ll see what is possible when we commit ourselves to integrating civic learning into our classroom literacy instruction.

This book presents an accessible lesson process to improve literacy using picture books, multimodal texts, and thoughtfully framed questions. Texts are then revisited to talk back to theme, symbols, central idea, or social, cultural, historical influences at work on author and audience.

A lyrical picture book memoir of one boy and his beloved grandmother, from award-winning author Lester L. Laminack. Every Saturday, a young boy rides his bicycle up and down country roads, past farms and a filling station, until he reaches his Mammaw's house. She is waiting for him. There, the young boy helps her. She picks tomatoes and he pushes the lawnmower through the dew-wet grass. But the best part of the day is helping his Mammaw make teacakes from scratch and eating the hot, sweet cakes fresh from the oven. Lester L. Laminack's richly detailed prose perfectly portrays the special relationship of a young boy and his grandmother. Award-winning illustrator Chris Soentpiet's remarkably detailed watercolor images beautifully capture the setting.

15 ready-to-use mini-lessons introduce students to techniques and literary elements they can use to craft their own writing. On the companion website, the author explains how writers work with both audible and visual craft.