---
product_id: 1210509
title: "FOCUS: Elevating the Essentials to Radically Improve Student Learning"
price: "MX$380"
currency: MXN
in_stock: true
reviews_count: 8
url: https://www.desertcart.mx/products/1210509-focus-elevating-the-essentials-to-radically-improve-student-learning
store_origin: MX
region: Mexico
---

# FOCUS: Elevating the Essentials to Radically Improve Student Learning

**Price:** MX$380
**Availability:** ✅ In Stock

## Quick Answers

- **What is this?** FOCUS: Elevating the Essentials to Radically Improve Student Learning
- **How much does it cost?** MX$380 with free shipping
- **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship
- **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.mx](https://www.desertcart.mx/products/1210509-focus-elevating-the-essentials-to-radically-improve-student-learning)

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## Description

Bestselling author Mike Schmoker describes a plan for radically improving student learning that is built on three core elements: a focused and coherent curriculum (what we teach); clear, prioritized lessons (how we teach); and purposeful reading and writing, or authentic literacy. With this "less is more" philosophy, educators can help students learn content at a deeper level, develop greater critical thinking skills, and discover more clearly how content-area concepts affect their lives and the world around them. Both a call to action and a blueprint for creating more effective classrooms, Focus: Elevating the Essentials for Radically Improved Student Learning will challenge your assumptions about schooling and show how educators who have embraced this approach quickly achieved spectacular results.

Review: Just What I Was Looking For! - First, a brief review of what I was looking to get out of this text when I purchased it: I am currently a 5th grade teacher heavily involved with the school improvement process and developing an evaluation model for our district. This past school year I was sent up to 5th grade due to 80% of the district's fifth grade teachers retiring. I found the year to be chaotic due to the demands of not only adjusting to the grade level, but mentoring and the other long list of extra curricular activities that I enjoy supporting. Overall I have an excellent attitude and am a nationally recognized teacher. In a nutshell, my summer goal was to refocus on my classroom instruction and keep the chaos at bay for my students in this next school year. So how did this book do such an extraordinary job of meeting my goal? The school improvement goal for my building is focused heavily on incorporating writing across the disciplines and increasing the proficiency of informational text reading by our students. The book focuses on exactly this. The author explains with extreme clarity what needs to be focused on in order to significantly improve reading and writing. The simplicity of his recommendations is what struck me to the core- it is something that may easily be digested and implemented. I am particularly fond of the Discussion Rubric he outlined- a few simple points that even my fifth graders can understand and that I already have posted on my wall ready for next year. His advice is straight forward- read text daily closely, model how to read closely for students, have students practice reading closely daily. (Ok, my redundancy in that last sentence was intentional, as it mirrors the book's redundancy.)He further outlines how important it is for students to discuss the texts read and formulate and support in writing an opinion. Again he offers clear guidelines on what this looks like. Beautiful! I also sympathize with other reviews that point out the redundancy in the text. It is true that the meat of the book is clearly outlined in the first three chapters, then he recycles these ideas over and over during the rest of the text. And this is a bit irritating as I read through it. I felt, however, that a teacher that struggles in the classroom would be more likely to implement his suggestions as a result of pounding the key ideas through. He did sprinkle in a few resources that he particularly likes, of which I purchased and completely agree that the text is worthwhile. (Specifically the book "They say, I say" by Graff. This text outlines how to write opinion pieces with tremendous efficiency. Not so keen on his recommendation of the magazine The Week.) Other objections to the book lament that it is an old school type approach and that the redundancy in the teaching method will bore the students. Personally, I agree with the author that IF a student is highly engaged in a spirited debate then the student will not tire of the intellectually stimulating reading, writing, and discussions. The pitfall would be if the teacher only used this method, but failed to properly facilitate discussions that led to the spirited debates. Choose your text wisely and facilitate carefully. Develop the deeply thought provoking questions that he refers to, don't skip this step! My one true objection to his beliefs is that he writes that whole group instruction is the way to go and that small group work results in one small group working and all others talking quietly or otherwise engaged in superficial learning. Although this may be true of a teacher who does not effectively know how to manage small groups, Mr. Schmoker's view smacks of a high school English teacher that simply does not feel the need to differentiate instruction. I advocate balance. I found it ironic that he cited the work of Richard Allington throughout the book. If you read Mr. Allington's book on RTI he explains the critical importance of matching the reading level to the reader. Yep, small groups. For any practicing teacher it is obvious in any classroom that reading levels range several grade levels in any given year. I tend to run first grade through high school reading levels each year in my class, and the idea that I could effectively reach ALL of my students in only a whole group delivery of instruction is flawed. Balance is the key! The one truth that Schmoker points out is that throughout the school day there is an abysmal amount of time actually spent reading and writing. I couldn't agree more. And when he recommends that students read 20 books or more per year in class, I also concur. My peers perhaps would not think this possible, but I am able to say with out a doubt that it is possible and my student achievement levels also support how effective it is. Students who read a lot are going to get better at reading, and students who do not read much will not get much better in reading. It is what it is. Get the book. It is ok to stop after the 3rd chapter if you are not a huge reader- you will get the gist of it by then. It is worth finishing though, and truly worth considering implementing his ideas in the classroom. The book was so good I purchased his title Results Now. Both of his texts are guiding my in my current development of a unit that I will implement for next year. I am refocused! Update: I am about half way through the new school year now and thought that I would let you know how the implementation is going. I love it!! Our school uses Nwea testing for growth, and my informational text reading sub score has jumped significantly. My 5th grade group started out the year at a mid 4th grade level and this sub score is now nearly at the end of the fifth grade level and that test was administered in January. Thus far this year I use the close reading method with this type of text predominantly, incorporated opinion pieces (think Common Core here), and now will be working on doing more of this with the narrative text. This will take a bit more effort, as informational pieces are easy to come by for copies allowing students to mark them up. Now, I plan on start pulling a page from a novel and going from there. The discussion rubric is still of interest, but I need to work on this more consistently. The students do a nice job of acknowledging the previous speaker now and posing a counter argument, but more progress needs to be made. The principal also had the entire staff read the first three chapters, and they cheered (literally) when he spoke about focusing in on standards. The staff has pared down the CCS, but we shall see how that works out long term. This is probably the part that feels the riskiest to me, as I am very careful to cover standards.
Review: Research base for education improvement - Using this book for a graduate course I’m teaching on school improvement. The students love the common sense, simple instruction descriptions that are all based on years of research.

## Technical Specifications

| Specification | Value |
|---------------|-------|
| Best Sellers Rank | #1,764,931 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #721 in Instruction Methods #1,589 in Lesson Planning for Educators #114,318 in Reference (Books) |
| Customer Reviews | 4.6 out of 5 stars 459 Reviews |

## Images

![FOCUS: Elevating the Essentials to Radically Improve Student Learning - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81yYB4vl1JL.jpg)

## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Just What I Was Looking For!
*by I***2 on June 21, 2011*

First, a brief review of what I was looking to get out of this text when I purchased it: I am currently a 5th grade teacher heavily involved with the school improvement process and developing an evaluation model for our district. This past school year I was sent up to 5th grade due to 80% of the district's fifth grade teachers retiring. I found the year to be chaotic due to the demands of not only adjusting to the grade level, but mentoring and the other long list of extra curricular activities that I enjoy supporting. Overall I have an excellent attitude and am a nationally recognized teacher. In a nutshell, my summer goal was to refocus on my classroom instruction and keep the chaos at bay for my students in this next school year. So how did this book do such an extraordinary job of meeting my goal? The school improvement goal for my building is focused heavily on incorporating writing across the disciplines and increasing the proficiency of informational text reading by our students. The book focuses on exactly this. The author explains with extreme clarity what needs to be focused on in order to significantly improve reading and writing. The simplicity of his recommendations is what struck me to the core- it is something that may easily be digested and implemented. I am particularly fond of the Discussion Rubric he outlined- a few simple points that even my fifth graders can understand and that I already have posted on my wall ready for next year. His advice is straight forward- read text daily closely, model how to read closely for students, have students practice reading closely daily. (Ok, my redundancy in that last sentence was intentional, as it mirrors the book's redundancy.)He further outlines how important it is for students to discuss the texts read and formulate and support in writing an opinion. Again he offers clear guidelines on what this looks like. Beautiful! I also sympathize with other reviews that point out the redundancy in the text. It is true that the meat of the book is clearly outlined in the first three chapters, then he recycles these ideas over and over during the rest of the text. And this is a bit irritating as I read through it. I felt, however, that a teacher that struggles in the classroom would be more likely to implement his suggestions as a result of pounding the key ideas through. He did sprinkle in a few resources that he particularly likes, of which I purchased and completely agree that the text is worthwhile. (Specifically the book "They say, I say" by Graff. This text outlines how to write opinion pieces with tremendous efficiency. Not so keen on his recommendation of the magazine The Week.) Other objections to the book lament that it is an old school type approach and that the redundancy in the teaching method will bore the students. Personally, I agree with the author that IF a student is highly engaged in a spirited debate then the student will not tire of the intellectually stimulating reading, writing, and discussions. The pitfall would be if the teacher only used this method, but failed to properly facilitate discussions that led to the spirited debates. Choose your text wisely and facilitate carefully. Develop the deeply thought provoking questions that he refers to, don't skip this step! My one true objection to his beliefs is that he writes that whole group instruction is the way to go and that small group work results in one small group working and all others talking quietly or otherwise engaged in superficial learning. Although this may be true of a teacher who does not effectively know how to manage small groups, Mr. Schmoker's view smacks of a high school English teacher that simply does not feel the need to differentiate instruction. I advocate balance. I found it ironic that he cited the work of Richard Allington throughout the book. If you read Mr. Allington's book on RTI he explains the critical importance of matching the reading level to the reader. Yep, small groups. For any practicing teacher it is obvious in any classroom that reading levels range several grade levels in any given year. I tend to run first grade through high school reading levels each year in my class, and the idea that I could effectively reach ALL of my students in only a whole group delivery of instruction is flawed. Balance is the key! The one truth that Schmoker points out is that throughout the school day there is an abysmal amount of time actually spent reading and writing. I couldn't agree more. And when he recommends that students read 20 books or more per year in class, I also concur. My peers perhaps would not think this possible, but I am able to say with out a doubt that it is possible and my student achievement levels also support how effective it is. Students who read a lot are going to get better at reading, and students who do not read much will not get much better in reading. It is what it is. Get the book. It is ok to stop after the 3rd chapter if you are not a huge reader- you will get the gist of it by then. It is worth finishing though, and truly worth considering implementing his ideas in the classroom. The book was so good I purchased his title Results Now. Both of his texts are guiding my in my current development of a unit that I will implement for next year. I am refocused! Update: I am about half way through the new school year now and thought that I would let you know how the implementation is going. I love it!! Our school uses Nwea testing for growth, and my informational text reading sub score has jumped significantly. My 5th grade group started out the year at a mid 4th grade level and this sub score is now nearly at the end of the fifth grade level and that test was administered in January. Thus far this year I use the close reading method with this type of text predominantly, incorporated opinion pieces (think Common Core here), and now will be working on doing more of this with the narrative text. This will take a bit more effort, as informational pieces are easy to come by for copies allowing students to mark them up. Now, I plan on start pulling a page from a novel and going from there. The discussion rubric is still of interest, but I need to work on this more consistently. The students do a nice job of acknowledging the previous speaker now and posing a counter argument, but more progress needs to be made. The principal also had the entire staff read the first three chapters, and they cheered (literally) when he spoke about focusing in on standards. The staff has pared down the CCS, but we shall see how that works out long term. This is probably the part that feels the riskiest to me, as I am very careful to cover standards.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Research base for education improvement
*by J***Y on September 9, 2025*

Using this book for a graduate course I’m teaching on school improvement. The students love the common sense, simple instruction descriptions that are all based on years of research.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Important Read for Those Involved in Education
*by K***D on July 15, 2011*

At some points, the book seems a bit repetitive, but Schmoker drives home the point that as a nation we cannot hope to succeed in providing our kids with a quality education if we don't begin to focus on literacy which is key to ALL academic success. He provides numerous examples from the world of school where this has proven true and a few examples where strong focus has been the key to success in the business world. He quotes numerous experts from the field of education. In my opinion, ALL administrators and the politicians making decisions about education policy/reform should read this book.

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*Last updated: 2026-06-04*