Nancy N. Boyles

This book was written for use at the elementary level, but this is also good resource for any English teacher, special education teacher or ESL teacher even at the high school level. I like the focus on Language Arts skills and the various suggested texts. I think that some of these texts may even work in the high school for an ESL or SPED classroom that is reading below grade level. They also might provide a nice introduction for high school students when modeling how to analyze more complex literature. I also think the simplicity of some of the language arts concepts such as theme may be a good place to start for teaching students in a regular education setting and then building more depth. I love the various graphic organizers the author provides to help students process text and evaluate why a particular text is "good" literature. Many of the writing prompts could easily be modified to use with older students. If all elementary teachers were using this type of pedagogy, reading skills at the high school level would be much more sophisticated. An excellant resource to have!… (meer)

I teach Language Arts at the middle school level and found this book to be very applicable to direct classroom instruction. Often, I read material that is “pie in the sky” and does not share direct and explicit ideas that can be immediately used. I found the availability of the information to be applied directly to my current classroom lessons to be my favorite part of the book. The other parts of the book I found to be positive are:

- The explicit examples as mentioned above are by far the best part of the text and need to be reiterated.

- The gradual release model of instruction was applied in the examples. This is something my principal is always asking us to incorporate.

- An explanation as to why the new common core standards are important to the field of teaching.

-Rubrics for selecting picture book and other literature. This is important as a simple list of texts is ever changing.

-I liked that there was an emphasis on reading. Being a Language Arts teacher I feel that often, other subject areas such as History, Science, and yes, even Math need reading skills. This text was applicable to all subject areas. The open-ended question style could be applied to a passage from any subject area.

I received a review copy in Adobe format so I did not get the chance to use the CD that is included with the book so I cannot comment on it. I did find the text to be a valuable tool and would recommend that others teachers use it to come up with new ideas in their classroom.… (meer)