Dr. Richard F. Elmore
Harvard Graduate School of Education

Michelle Karns and Charlotte Knox are announcing the release of their new book, Talking Walls: Building Classroom Environments to Support Student Achievement, just in time for the first quarter of school! Michelle and Charlotte are educational consultants using the Strategic Schooling model designed by their colleague, Dennis Parker. The team has had a great deal of success helping schools meet their growth targets, implementing science based strategies to increase student proficiency for all demographic groups and being released from Program Improvement sanctions.

Over the last few years, Charlotte has been keeping a pictorial record of the schools and classrooms using their recommendations and strategies. The pictures became the basis of the new book. They provide a visual venue to reinforce what some of the “right things to do” can be. The narrative provides a dialogue to support what you see.

Talking Walls is a great resource for teachers that want examples of want can be done inside the classroom to hook students into learning and support achievement gains. The entire book is built upon actual student work and teacher made products representing the interactions and processes that were generated from state adopted curricula. Data walls, effective writing programs, rigorous instruction focusing on intentional and meaningful work using academic language, and student engagement are all represented on the walls of this new book by Michelle Karns and Charlotte Knox. The pictorial presentation is well supported by a running dialogue explaining why the authors targeted these examples. A CD Toolkit of 40 strategies assembled from the best of these classrooms and the author’s work in schools is included with each book.