Learning for Real ─ Teaching Content and Literacy Across the Curriculum

"In this book," writes Heidi Mills, "you'll learn how to plan for inquiry in a way that promotes literacy throughout the day and across the content areas." With Learning for Real, you'll find a rich array of resources for truly integrating a balanced literacy approach into every corner of the curriculum.

"We all know how exhilarating it is to learn something new," writes Heidi, "to develop expertise around a passion." She and her colleagues invite students into that experience, while developing five habits necessary for the content learning inside and outside of the classroom:

• carefully observing the world by using the tools and strategies of a discipline
• posing questions and investigating problems from numerous perspectives
• drawing information and evidence from primary and secondary sources, both nonfiction and narrative
• using the language of inquiry while reflecting on and sharing new learning effectively with others
• employing reflection and self-evaluation to grow and change.

To help you adapt instruction to your curricular and standards-based goals, Heidi includes planning guidelines, classroom-tested units of study, and from-the-field video clips of exemplar inquiry-driven teaching.
"Provide students with experiences that help them grow into strategic readers, writers, mathematicians, scientists, and social scientists," writes Heidi Mills. "Devote as much time to teaching children how to learn as what to learn." Link literacy and content with Learning for Real and discover that when students know how to learn, they exceed our expectations, and show what's possible in genuine inquiry-based classrooms.

Heidi Mills is the author of the Heinemann title Learning for Real. She is an endowed professor in the Department of Instruction and Teacher Education at the University of South Carolina. As John C. Hungerpiller Professor, she also serves as the Curriculum, Research, and Development Specialist at the Center for Inquiry (CFI), a university-public school partnership with Richland School District Two. Heidi supports ongoing professional development at CFI by leading weekly curricular conversations and engaging in collaborative research along-side teachers. As one of the founding members of the school, Heidi has been nurturing and investigating literacy and inquiry-based instruction within and across classrooms at CFI for eighteen years. Additionally, Heidi supports the work of classroom teachers across the state and country as a school-based consultant. Heidi and her husband (and CFI faculty member) Tim O'Keefe were named NCTE's 2014 Outstanding Educators in the English Language Arts.