Mindsets and Moves

What if you could have an owner’s manual on reading ownership? What if there really were a framework for building students’ agency and independence?

There’s no “what if?” about it. When it comes to teaching reading, Gravity Goldberg declares there is a structure, one that works with your current curriculum, to help readers take charge. The way forward Gravity says lies in admiring, studying, and really getting to know your students.

Consider Mindsets & Moves your guide. Here, Gravity describes how to let go of our default roles of assigner, monitor, and manager and instead shift to a growth mindset. Easily replicable in any setting, any time, her 4 Ms framework ultimately lightens your load because they allow students to monitor and direct their reading lives.

1. Miner: Uncovering Students’ Reading Processes (Focus: Assessment)
2. Mirror: Giving Feedback That Reinforces a Growth Mindset (Focus: Feedback)
3. Model: Showing Readers What We Do (Focus: Demonstration]
4. Mentor: Guiding Students to Try New Ways of Reading (Focus: Guided Practice and Coaching)

Get started on the 4Ms tomorrow! Gravity has loaded the book with practical examples, lessons, reading process and strategy lists, and a 35-page photo tour of exemplary reading classrooms with captions that distill best practices. All figures, student work and photographs are provided in vibrant, full color.

We are in the midst of an ownership crisis, and readers of every ability and in every grade are more often compliant than fully engaged. Use Mindsets & Moves as that rare resource that
makes something highly complex suddenly clear and inspiring for you.


GRAVITY GOLDBERG is coauthor of Conferring with Readers: Supporting Each Students’ Growth and Independence (Heinemann, 2007) and author of many articles about reading, writing, and professional development. She holds a doctorate in education from Teachers College, Columbia University. She is a former staff developer at Teachers College Reading and Writing Project and an assistant professor at Iona College’s graduate education program. She leads a team of literacy consultants in the New York/New Jersey region.

“Mindsets and Moves addresses, in a very engaging way, the most important aspects of classroom literacy instruction. It shows how to think about and interact with children around literacy. Thoroughly grounded in current theories, which are clearly explained and illustrated with stories and examples, the book is absolutely practical with excellent examples of lessons, anchor charts and all of the necessary details.” — Peter Johnston, Author of Choice Words and Opening Minds

Mindsets and Moves applies important research on effective instruction and motivation from Hattie, Dweck, Ducksworth, and others to infuse today’s reading classrooms with a fresh breath of student independence. With Clarity and Insight, Gravity Goldberg helps educators see how even the best intentioned reading workshop practices can go awry, and keep students from ever truly owning the work of reading on their own. She then delivers a process for teachers and students that helps them shift their roles, defining it as the 4 Ms:

Be a Miner: Uncovering Students’ Reading Processes

Be a Mirror: Giving Feedback That Reinforces a Growth Mindset

Be a Model: Showing Readers What We Do

Be a Mentor: Guiding Students to Try New Ways of Reading

Other Practical Features Include:

A Photo Tour of a Reading Classroom, including 40+ images and captions that show teachers can-do detail of routines and classroom space

Lessons and Actions That Bring About Agency

Key Aspects of the Reading Process to Model and Monitor

Classroom Examples of Independent-Minded Whole Class, Small Group, and One-on-One Instruction

Lists of Teacher Language that Promotes Learning