Does anyone know any good professional development books on these topics? -Parent Communication _Identifying how individual students are struggling in reading/math and how to help?
Oh my goodness. I literally had books about all of these topics that were really good and I don't know if I have them anymore to check titles Some on reading are "The Reading Turnaround" and "Phonics they Use" Both provide strategies for identifying and correcting struggles students face in reading. The CAFE books and Daily 5 are also really good, and they both come with excellent resources (conference forms, tracking sheets, etc.), as well as anything by Fountas and Pinnell. Math: "Visible Thinking in the K-8 Mathematics Classroom" is the only one I can think of off the top of my head -- it's really good for identifying common math misconceptions and teaching students to make their mathematical thinking visible to the teacher (pictures, verbalizing thought processes, etc. This is especially relevant for common core, as that's the part I think a lot of teachers miss while teaching math from the new standards). As far as the other one... I'll have to see if I can find the book I had. It had several chapters on how to contact parents and ways to incorporate parents in the classroom and get them involved in their child's learning.
