Education Teaching Books

...outdated, very few useful ideas, centered around elementary education, and an absurd tone of cheerfulness mixed with condescension.

When I was a new teacher I really hoped this book would prepare me for running a smooth classroom but it just steered my thinking in the wrong direction and ultimately it probably did more harm than good.

This books "popularity" is simply due to the fact that it is a fad book within administrative circles. This is because Wong goes out of his way to argue that teachers who criticize inservice and professional development activities are just bad teachers.

Very eye-opening. A truly great read for any caring educator. Time-tested and researched techniques, procedures, and rules. Even a chapter on dressing the part. Well worth every penny. I have two copies.

I would purchase a product from this seller again. This came in a timely manner.

Thanks for the book. I've searched book stores for a while and they never had it in stock. It was nice to find a new book still in it's package cheaper than any book store.

It was shipped fast and was brand new in the plastic wrap like I ordered.

I am a first grade teacher and wanted to improve my literacy program by getting away from using worksheets during centers. This book offers great practical ideas including lessons and charts to use for "reading to self", "reading to someone" and "listening to reading" which I will implement in my classroom. I currently have a fairly successful Writer's Workshop and do a lot of making words activities but the book offers ideas in these areas as well. So many books just deal with concepts of literacy but this one breaks the teaching procedures into easily followed steps that I am excited about trying out with my next group of students. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is looking to create an authentic learning atmosphere in a classroom and get away from a "packaged" curriculum so every student can work at their reading/writing level independently.

Recieved item on time, right when we were told it would arrive. Book in very good condition.

The Sisters tell how their method evolved over the span of their teaching careers. Their method is practical, gives students responsiblity and keeps students involved in literacy activities. They give step by step procedures for implementing.

This book is a quick read with great charts and information in getting started using this approach. The daily five really streamlines the student activities/routines that are practiced during independent work as the teacher works with small groups. I plan to use this approach in my classroom next year. The best part is that it will work with any school system's standards.

WOW!!!...is all I can say. I am on my 14th day of "training." I can see a lot of pride in my students. THEY take the ownership of their learning with this fantastic program. I have found that I do, indeed, spend much less time maintaining those students that I am NOT currently working with. No "gentle reminders," "pulling cards," "deducting time from recess," etc. They are so proud of their ability to use stamina (a big word they really like to refer to)and build their mental memory.
This is my 13th year of teaching. I highly recommend using this. It is very successful with my first graders, even though others felt it wouldn't.

So far, this book has been helpful. I can't really fully review it until later after taking the test. I would recommend it.

I would highly recommend this book for preparing to take the GRE general test. The review material, exercises and sample question answer explanations were very helpful in relearning math I originally learned over 20 years ago (I'm heading to grad school at age 43). To get a baseline, I took one of the sample tests before reviewing. Then I went through each math chapter carefully (but only once) (a few evenings a week over about 6 weeks). After studying, my math score on the GRE was a 750 (up from 550 on the baseline sample test). (Math was always my strong subject so it really was RElearning it for me, but it obviously worked well). For the vocabulary and essay sections, I would say I mostly used the book to become familiar with the structure of the test, which is very important. The time pressure on the test is very tight...you don't want to have to waste time during the actual test just trying to figure out logistics. The book does provide alot of information to learn how to derive the meaning of words you don't know, etc., but I honestly didn't focus on those. My degree will be math -related so I focused on maximizing my math score. The book was also invaluable for its pointing out common pitfalls found on the test (for example, don't assume a geometry diagram is drawn to scale unless it specifically states that it is. They are sometimes exaggerated to be confusing).

I bought Kaplan books along with this, and the Kaplan books were such a waste. This book is truly the ONLY book you need. The word lists are amazing...learn them!! As for the math review, I am not an overly mathematical person. After going through the entire Kaplan math review, I still was not increasing my score. A few weeks before the exam I turned to the math review here, and it saved me. I got a 600 which for me was phenomenal! Others have mentioned that the CD tests are made to make you think you are doing better (I took them all at once and got very different scores). But, make sure to take the tests ETS provides on their site. This book helped me meet my goal not only on those ETS practice tests but also on the actual GRE. I took the test only once and got into the top two schools in the nation for my program. As I said before, this book is the ONLY one you need. Save your time and money and go with this book if you want a strong, comprehensive review of everything on the exam!

Larger word bank, glossary than other GRE preparation books. Thats a good thing. Includes CD, which I have not used yet. However, my initial review is that this book is worth buying.

I read the reviews when selecting a book to study for the GRE. Based on that information I choose to purchase two books, Barron's GRE and The Princeton Review's "Cracke the GRE." I used both books to study. The Barron's book confused me, not only was it unhelpful but the "assistance" with the math section scared me. I lost sleep due to this book. Save your money and invest in the Princton Review. Not only was the math section more helpful the essay section provided several great suggestions for creating an excellent essay.

These are great books for beginning readers. My 4 year old loves them because she can read them all by herself. All the words are three letters (or less) long which makes them very easy for kids to read. The stories are also silly and entertaining.

I thought about buying these same books in a large format from Costco, but I like the small size. They are just right for a kid.

My son is 5 and getting very interested in reading. His school had these books and he talked about them a lot. Now we have them at home and he loves to read the first three books. It is building his confidence because it is absolutely age appropriate as it introduces the sounds of letters in the form of short words. Highly recommended.

I don't know that I can recommend these books enough! I bought them for my daughter's 3rd birthday because she was very interested in reading, was writing her name, asking how to spell words, etc... At first I was concerned that it was just too early to expect her to read & that it would do more harm than good - Nope! We read them to her first, then had her repeat as we read & before we knew it she was reading them on her own. Once she could easily read every book included in Set 1, she asked when the next set would arrive!
I'm extemely happy I stumbled across these on amazon & that I bought them for her when she was ready - not according to the age range listed. Don't be afrid to introduce these early - they are nice & simple enough to build confidence in their skill right away.
I absolutely recommend these. There is nothing more heartwarming then to watch a child light up because they did it all by themself!

I used the Bob Books to teach my daughter how to read at age two. Really. Being able to read helped to give her a feeling of confidence when she entered school. She knew she could tackle anything the teachers threw her way. This love of reading has stayed with her. Now I am buying the Bob Books for my nephews so they can get that early confidence. As a teacher and mother I recommend Bob Books.

My daughter is one of the youngest kids in her class heading to kindergarten next year and my wife purchased this set of books. We have read to my daughter since before she was born and now she is reading to us! She is so excited and extremely proud of her new found ability.

I was skeptical at first, but I couldn't rate it higher at this point!

One of the co-authors of this book (Foster Cline, M.D.) is the psychiatrist whose "attachment therapy" resulted in deaths and torture of children. (See "Advocates for Children in Therapy" at http://www.childrenintherapy.org/.) My child -- now 20 and an honors student adored by family and friends -- had oppositional and destructive behavior with tantrums. My husband and I followed advice similar to that in this book, culminating when our son became suicidal at age 8. At that point my husband and I looked at each other with the simultaneous unspoken thought: "We can't keep treating him this way." We instead relied on our own sense of how far to go. Later, when I read, "The Explosive Child" by Ross Green, I said to myself, "This man has written a book describing how we decided to raise our son!" It was such a relief to read, "The Explosive Child." Our change in approach paid off -- and the medications finally were tweaked correctly, and guess what: his behavior changed overnight from awful to excellent. It wasn't that he didn't WANT to behave like others: it was that he COULDN'T. As soon as the medications allowed him to control his behavior and distorted perceptions, all the good parenting and modeling we had done kicked in immediately. "Love and Logic" is based on the belief that natural consequences are all that's needed -- but if your child has a brain disorder that causes a distorted view of what's happening, the consequences you would have to resort to would be torture.
It's MUCH MUCH better to understand the disorder and how it is distorting your child's thoughts and perceptions, and get it treated by a board-certified child psychiatrist. Also, read, "The Explosive Child." (By the way, our son has not taken any medications in three years. The medications bought him time to mature enough to be able to make use of cognitive-behavioral techniques to control his anxiety. I also think the medications may have allowed his brain to develop normally so that eventually he didn't need them.)

There are a ton of "parenting" books available but this one is helping me a great deal. Good illustrations and easy to read; the logic makes sense and the love is there.

This is a no nonsense approach to keeping your cool while
helping your kids listen and learn about life. Even though
it might not work with all kids this book is a must read
for any parent the earlier you read it the better.

My son just turned 2 and is at a very independant age. I wanted to write this review because of one that I read about this book. One thing is that no one can go by 1 book and take it as gospel (obviously) but there are a lot of great things that make you stop and reflect with this book. I can honestly say that I can now get my son to wear a jacket and let me change his diaper because I give him choices that still get me what I want. "do you want to wear your blue jacket or your red jacket" he is so consumed with what color he wants to wear that he forgets that he didn't want to wear a jacket in the first place at 55*. As simple as it seems, it works over 90% of the time with my son. I even got my husband on board because he saw the results.
As for the "spanking" most of this book I did agree with. I will not swat my son on the butt for throwing his food on the floor, but I will if he runs into the street! Not one time in this book does it suggest spanking as a solution to anything.
It is an easy read and worth every minute.

This a an outstanding book for parents to learn those parenting skills necessary to raise happy and healthy children. Another must-read for parents is Bully-Proofing Children: A Practical, Hands-On Guide to Stop Bullyingwhich is about raising empowering children who will never become victims or bullies.

I found this book to be a very good way to help my son learn to read. It is also an excellent way for a father to bond with his child. Both my son and I enjoyed the time together. One thing the author does not address is that all children learn at different speeds and that you shouldn't get frustrated if they do not learn as fast as the book says they can learn. We started the first time at the age of 4. My son did fine with the sounds, but was not able to do the writing. After about lesson 30 I was seriously frustrated with him on his writing and ultimately I forced him to give up. We put the book away for a year, and one day when he was 5 he brought the book back to me and said "daddy please teach me to read again." We were able to complete all 100 lessons before he turned 6 and I found a different way to teach him to write. My son is now 7 and just finished 1st grade in the top 3 readers of his class.

I loved this book. It's a great tool. It tells a little about how children are normally taught to read in school and spells out how to teach them to read step by step. I wish I'd known about this book before my children started school.

I loved teaching to read so much I wrote an essay about the "ah-ha" moment when it "clicked" with my 4-1/2 year-old niece. When you get to experience something like that you can't imagine letting someone else have that opportunity!

I have used this book to teach four different children (all girls). The ages at the start of the program were 2yrs 10 months (finished at 3-1/2), 4-1/2 years, 5-1/2 years and 5-1/2 years. That said, it is important to realize that every child is different. The main thing about the children I taught (individually and not during the same time period), is that they all WANTED to learn. I have recommended this book probably 1,000 times. People were so shocked that my 3-1/2 year old was reading on her own at a 2nd grade level (and comprehending it and even spelling), that I printed the title and authors on a business card to hand out - I really was stopped that often and questioned about my method. That said, please keep in mind that your child is unique, they will have good days and bad days and things may come a little slower for some than for others. After recommending this so many times, the only person I have ever heard to have trouble was a person trying to keep up with my child. It isn't a contest and it should be immensely pleasurable to both the parent and the child. I would sit on the couch and stretch out my arm and the child would come running for a snuggle and a lesson. Of course, you will want to incorporate TONS of praise. The first lesson begins with the sound "ahhh". Act astonished and say things like, "Wow! You just READ all by yourself! Wow! Do you think you can do that again?!" You know, kind of like potty-training. If there is anything that kids eat up, it is love and praise. So, don't be shy, just open your arms and heart and start lesson one!

If your child is tired, sick, cranky or antsy, cut the lesson short or skip it that day or try later. Because my daughter was so young when we started I did not do the written exercises. Manual dexterity comes a little later and you don't want to stress the child out. Mine eventually insisted on trying it anyway, but I didn't worry about it.

Good luck!

I had already been teaching my son to recognize sounds and had been introducing him to phonics. However, I began to ran into trouble when he questioned why one letter sounded different in two words; I did not know how to explain when to use long vowels, or short vowels.

The first few chapters were used as a review for my son, as he already knew the beginning sounds, but I found the chapters useful. The early chapters were great preparation for me, with regards to understanding the system.


I ran the concept by my mother, who is a retired school teacher and she said she used a similar program to teach her 1st graders to read.

We have had the book for about a month and we are on lesson 34. My goal is to the entire program completed before he heads back to school. He's really taken an interested in reading, sounds out words on signs, on passing buses and is excited about being able to read on his own. I think he's doing remarkably, considering he just turned 4.

Is this book for everyone? Perhaps not, but not every child learns the same way. The system also has to make sense to the parent, otherwise it will probably be a total waste. Like everything else, what works for one may not work for another, but we are having great success and I would recommend it to anyone interested in teaching their child to read.

I had this book once before for my oldest and then had sold it only to realize I still wanted to use it for my other children.
Excellent condition and showed up at our door in a timely manner.
Very happy!

A wonderful teaching resource for teaching reading comprehension strategies. A must read for all elementary teachers!

I absolutely love the lessons in this book. There are excellent modeling lessons and ideas to help your students increase their reading comprehension skills. You won't regret buying this book.

This is an AWESOME book. I had the opportunity to listen to Stephanie Harvey talk and she is amazing! This book makes such perfect common sense. We use the Comprehension toolkit in our school and this book goes right along with it. I actually want to expand and use this book more. It is great not only for the language arts classroom but for all content area classes. This is a must have for your professional library!!!!

A group of our teachers is doing a book study and are getting lots of great ideas from this book!

Most of the reviews mention what a great teaching tool this is so I thought why can't it work for me? I'm an adult that was looking for a book to help increase my reading comprehension. My thoughts were to to go back to the beginning. Though there were some good ideas, this book was by far elementary. It does cover the basic reading comprehension skills about making connections, questioning, visualizing, inferring, etc. However, the articles, examples, drawings are all written for and by children. I can 100% understand how elementary teachers and children could benefit from this book. But if you are an adult who struggles with reading comprehension this is NOT the book for you. My suggestion is to try "Read Better, Remember More" by Elizabeth Chesla. It is fantasic. It has exceptional practice exercises and skill building ideas that can help you become a good reader who interacts with the text.

This book is by far the best that I have seen on the market pertaining to 'Literacy Centers'. It gives alot of ideas on how to set up centers. A valuable resource for teachers.

I bought this over the summer to help the teachers in my building start centers. I loved it so much, I let someone borrow it, and they obviously loved it so much, they never gave it back. Debbie Diller gave practical ideas that are easy to implement in the classroom.

I purchased this by recommendation from a co-worker. This book is an excellent resource! The ideas for literacy centers work and I don't feel like I'm "wasting time" with centers that hold little meaning.

This is a great book if you are trying to set up centers in your classroom. I really like these literacy stations, because these stations can last the whole year. You don't have to keep changing them! There are so so many activities your students can do at each station. The sections about differentation were very helpful.

This book was packed with wonderful ideas to get a teacher started with learning stations.

As an individual who works with children in a variety of settings (club settings, classrooms, Youth Groups, etc), I picked up this book thinking it would provide me with some useful insights.

Two pages into it I was annoyed by a "hidden rule" she listed as applying to families who live in generational poverty. Half-way through I put it down in search of better resources.

I'm sure Dr. Payne's intentions are good and I suspect many of her offerings are useful. But close examination of the specific "hidden rules" as they apply to the supposed societal group who live in poverty (as though there was only one kind) reveals an author who needs to spend more time with people and less time writing books about them. It's so riddled with stereotypes it's difficult to take it seriously.

One for instance: Payne's first reference to one of the "hidden rules" of poverty is that households of this group are noisy--with televisions always on and everyone talking at once. I read it twice as I was sure I'd missed something. Surely someone with a Ph.D who'd done the proper research, would know better than to make a generalization of such ridiculous proportions, I thought.

'Guess not.

Personally, I come from a large middle-class loud German-Irish family with a television always on, music always playing (often live), and people talking all at once. The ability to tell a good joke or story was extremely important in our family, as was a sharp wit and the ability to defend one's point of view. This family produced three educators of which I am one. We're readers, thinkers, amatuer actors, singers, writers, and communicators. So for the life of me I can't quite grasp how on earth a noisy household is equated with class.

The idea that there are educators out there who are using this book as a basis to understand children who come from poor families concerns me. Apart from sparking discussion, I don't see this book as offering much of real value to educators and I would recommend those considering it to look past the hype and the slick marketing techniques and give this one a miss.

Book was exactly what I thought it would be. I ordered it for a class that I was taking this summer and it arrived promptly. I was impressed with how quickly it arrived and it was in excellent shape. I have no complaints at all!

Excellent book by Ruby Payne. She has changed the way educators teach to children living in poverty. The book provides tools that can help break the cycle of generational poverty. Should be required reading for all educators and social service professionals!

I have been reading "Bridges out of Poverty" for a social work class I am taking at The Ohio State University. I am a senior in psychology and sociology, and I find this book academically lacking and socially irresponsible. This text is classic culture of poverty--the theory that those in poverty are there because of character flaws and bad behavior. Payne never confronts the structural barriers which bar the poor from increasing their economic position. Education, full-time employment (at a living-wage), and inadequate social safety-nets are stronger correlates to poverty than language and perspective as Payne would suggest. Payne suggests, though never directly, that the family is the primary socializing force in the development of an individual. Schools, and the staff and educators who operate them; neighborhoods and their relationship to the city as a whole; and the national and political culture, defused to homes through the media, are all prominent factors in the socialization of every individual.
Thus, when one receives messages of worthlessness and derogation from the whole of society, when your existence is viewed as a cause to herald and correct, when you are bombarded by a consumerist culture in which you cannot participate, the logical end is an attitude of hopelessness and dissociation. Instead of a steadfast defense of "middle-class ideals," I propose a more critical analysis of this society. A society with more wealth than any other nation in the world, but also with a poorly performing education system (which is blamed on the student and not the lack of funding), a service focused economy which will force us to sell to each other the products of distant lands, and an obsession with consumption which is destroying our planet.
When it is proposed that a critical look be taken toward a particular group, we must first look at ourselves. Before we espouse the lifestyle and ideology of one group onto another, we must first determine if that lifestyle is "correct." In my opinion, there is no certificate or qualification which a person can obtain that gives them the power to do that. It is hypocritical to ask of the poor what we would not ask of ourselves. Ruby Payne, and "academics" like her, have become unable to see the forest for the trees.

Ever wonder why people who win the lottery often end up in worse shape after they win than before?

It's often because our lives are governed by the way we perceive the world and think. Our social networks, entertainment, perception of resources, and so on shape our interactions with others and with the world. There is literally a different culture in generational poverty than in the "middle class" or among the wealthy. And moving across cultural strata is not so simple as just having or not having money.

I've often wondered why (in my experience) it can be so hard to help those in need - specifically, those who seem to be living in generational poverty. Sure, I can give a few dollars to help with an urgent situation such as getting the electricity turned back on but I have often felt powerless to help bring real, lasting change to people in need. Ruby Payne addresses these issues in a powerful way. Her research and understanding make hear a well-qualified leader and her suggestions have helped shape my ability to be more effective.

I've found this book to be so good that I have recommended this book to many of my friends and colleagues. In fact, I have loaned out copies.

-- Bryan Entzminger

I bought this book because I needed to learn about UbD's for my new district this year. I thought that the book was well laid out and gave you a great framework for the UbD's but there was so much flab in between. There were a lot of pages that I felt like I could skip through. I do not know if that is because I graduated with an Education degree and therefore I knew most of the things they said in this book or if it because it repeats itself a lot. Overall I think this book is great for college students just starting in the profession.

We used this book in a condensed class and it was very useful although i would prefer to have had more of a variety of examples of the actual application of the theories.

I used this book as part of a graduate level class. The book is quite informative and gives great ideas on how to teach for results instead of just covering necessary material. Basically, it tells teachers to start with goals, then work backward to the introduction and teaching of the material. There are other similar strategies out there, but this is very specific as to curriculum design. It gets repetitive, but it is useful overall.

This was a required text book for a graduate class. It is one of the most poorly written text books I have ever had to read!

Whether the human mind is capable of understanding the process of understanding is a philosophical conundrum that has occupied the time of great thinkers from the pre-Socratics to the modern-day exponents of the theory of the mind. It is against this background that McTighe and Wiggins, respected American education researchers and theorists, attempt to say important things about understanding to teachers hoping to improve their lessons and their lesson planning.

Their book sets out to do this largely by attempting to clarify some pragmatic trivia in a well ploughed field. Unfortunately, the reader is soon furnished with ample evidence that McTighe and Wiggins are patently out of their depth in this field. Their definition of understanding is an extremely poor one - "that a student has something more than just textbook knowledge and skill - that a student really `gets it.' " - although, to be fair, their definitions of assessment and curriculum are much sharper and better considered, and remain useful even outside the context of this book.

What the two researchers can achieve is the definition of a series of facets that they themselves create - the Six Facets of Understanding. One is immediately reminded of Bloom's taxonomy here, but McTighe and Wiggins claim that their research supports the notion that this rubric is valuable for teachers seeking to deepen the understanding of students in their classes.

Typically, for this type of book it is the anecdotal evidence they cite which remains in the mind. There is a tradition of made up anecdotal evidence being perfectly acceptable in American education research - as long as it describes patterns of behaviour that are empirically evident in schools. I have strong reservations about the validity of making up classroom scenarios, but it is possible that this fictional anecdotal approach can occasionally be useful in clarifying areas of learning that are hazy. My problem with this book is that if McTighe and Wiggins are relying upon empirical data to persuade the reader to accept their facets of understanding rubric, then they themselves are recognizing only one of many possible definitions of what understanding is.

In my view, the six facets allow the teacher or assessor to assert that the participator in a lesson influenced by Understanding by Design has been advanced further along an arbitrary linear spectrum called "Understanding" than might otherwise have been the case. No more and no less.

The book is, therefore, mainly an explanatory footnote to the six facets rubric. It's a useful rubric for accomplishing some pragmatic classroom tasks, but it has nothing new to say about understanding.

If you plan lessons that may broadly be described as

* open ended
* based on standards
* containing clear criteria for student success
* include different ways to ensure student enthusiasm
* flexible enough to accommodate the "teachable moment"
* accessing the higher echelons of Bloom's taxonomy
* integrating skills

then the likelihood is you won't learn anything new from reading Understanding by Design. If you don't already do the above, Understanding by Design may be a useful tool towards self-improvement as a teacher.