Education Teaching Books

This is our second order of the book. It is used by our Tablet Users Group faculty members. We have had Thomas Angelo as a speaker at Rose-Hulman and were very pleased by him and his work. We would highly recommend Classroom Assessment Techniques: A Handbook for College Teachers. The book has been very well received and helpful teaching, evaluating & assessing classroom techniques.

The book arrived in perfect condition, even though it was listed as used. Arrived on time.

This book is a handbook-style text that elaborates on the concept of "Classroom Assessment Techniques," a term used by the authors to refer to alternative methods of evaluating or assessing student learning. The book is a handbook because each "CAT" is listed in terms of how to prepare, use, and evaluate results; the authors also present rather subjective indicants of the amount of time required for each technique.

The techniques range from the laughably simple (such as "muddiest point") to the more involved (such as student learning portfolios); the handbook is arranged in terms of types of assessment that may be conducted with each group of techniques. The book provides a wide variety of techniques, and the user should be able to find several applicable techniques for a particular educational situation.

However, I would strongly suggest that anyone using these techniques NOT rely on this text as the sole source of how and why to do educational assessment and evaluation -- the field is too complex and the implications are too important.

Excellent book! Angelo was very clear and concise in guiding teachers through the assessment process.

The text was used in a course through UW Stout and it is a very good resource for methods that can be used to assess learners progress towards a goal. Great tool to have on the bookshelf!

There are lots of fresh ideas for independent reading response, by this time of year most of us have used up most of our good ideas, this supplies a few fresh ones. Can't go wrong with this series, I have a few of them in the series, teacher recommended and created...can't beat that.

This is a great resource for teachers. It has lots of reproducibles to help with reading. Nice format.

I taught a 6 day workshop for K-5 teachers and this is one of the books we used. Great material for immediate use.
SH in FL

I love this book. Its a great tool for visual learners. Its just what the title said it was "INSTANT" independent reading response activities. They were easy for the students to understand, but not too easy, They actually had to think about what they read.

Wonderful complement to your reading program. Enough activities to keep several different levels of readers engaged.

What a great book! It was amazing how quick it works. It really is magic!

The book I ordered is in excellent condition and I received it quickly. Thank you!

This book was fabulous. It clearly sets up a classroom management plan and it goes through step by step how to set it up in the classroom. Even if you decide not use their counting system, one can still benefit from the practice in identifying, setting, and following through on limits.

This is a great book! My entire team purchased a copy. It was easy to read and understand, and it makes so much sense! We're all looking forward to using the techniques. We know other teachers that say this really works.

I teach Kindergarten and have 5 very difficult boys. I read the book Monday and started Tuesday. By Thursday I was amazed.

This text book was required for a graduate course that I took towards obtaining my special education license. It uses racist sterotypes, unfounded statements, and shows why ignorance continues to permeate American schools. Much of the information is repeated throughout the book and I find it a waste of time. I strongly suggest finding an alternative source of information.

The book has many resources, which would be the only reason I rate it two stars. The authors are too emotionally attached and are too personal. As a graduate psychology student, I would like my texts to be informative without any emotion, there are plenty of other reads for emotion.

This book is extremely informative and the information is organized well. My professor specifically picked this book because the content covered alot of the history of special education.

The book is great. Easy to read content about the introducation to teaching special education. The cd/dvd did not work on two bundles that I ordered. In my class 50% of the students also bought this book and the dvd didn't work at all.

Easy read, very informative, case studies idea for getting a better, overall understanding of subject(s). In depth info on legal issues are a plus. A must read for anyone in or considering a career in the special ed field.

I would pay triple for this book! It is one of the best teaching resources I own, and I promise you will use it over and over again.

Think of this: Does a coach repeatedly show his athletes how NOT to perform a play? Does he swing the bat incorrectly over and over before asking his players to show him a perfect swing? Of course not! So why do so many writing teachers (including me - before I knew better) do the same thing? Anderson believes that we cannot give our students "worksheets riddled with errors" and ask them to take out commas or to add in semicolons. Instead, we should teach editing like a sport. In this book, Anderson does just that. He invites students to notice well-written mentor texts before letting kids take a swing.

The first section of the book is Anderson's rationale (backed by research) for why kids should be taught editing skills. Part two contains actual lessons you can immediately use in your classroom - no matter what grade you teach. Each lesson is set up with a series of invitations. The first student invitation is to notice powerful writing - to truly look at master writers and learn why they used specific punctuation marks. Once the students truly understand the grammatical concept, Anderson invites them to imitate master writers by combining sentences, editing, and writing.

I don't consider myself to be the greatest teacher ever, but Anderson's book is helping me become much better. This book truly gets kids to want to learn and master grammatical concepts. His lessons are genius, creative, and down-right fun! Kids love them. The invitations are created so teachers can praise students for what they have done right, rather than nagging them for what they've done wrong. (If you were the student, wouldn't this praise make you feel better as a writer?)

As Anderson states in his first book Mechanically Inclined, we should "Teach grammar and mechanics as a creational facility rather than a correctional one." Anderson uses this same philosophy in Everyday Editing. You will find Anderson's books to be extremely valuable to both you and your students.

Jeff Anderson's book offers lots of practical ideas for tweaking your writer's workshop and making your students better writers. He devotes chapters to various skills and how to teach them (serial commas, appositives, participles, etc.). One of his basic tenets is selecting good examples of sentences from your own readings of YA books, then using them as teaching tools by asking kids what they notice (it might be how appositives are punctuated, or how the colon introduces a list). The sentences interest the kids because they are taken from high interest books, and instead of learning from BAD sentences that are riddled with mistakes for correction, students learn from models that are free of mistakes (novel thought -- "mentor" sentences instead of "mental" ones).

You can find plenty of sentences to use in your own readings, but if you don't have time, Anderson provides examples for you in this book. He also devises sentence combining activities by "deconstructing" good mentor sentences and asking students to put them together again (where's Humpty Dumpty when you need him?). Again, great idea. Studies have proven that sentence combining is an effective teaching tool.

I just used Anderson's idea for creating an Appositive Book with separate flaps for the subject, the appositive, and the verb parts of the sentences and my students loved it. By raising different flaps in the partitioned book, they were able to create some amusing (OK, silly) sentences using appositives. It's stuff like this that makes stuff like grammar (the Teflon of our teaching chores) stick!

Recommendation: Buy. Then use. Frequently.

This book arrived quickly and in an excellent condition. A wonderful and useful guide to teaching phonemic awareness to our youngest learners.

I am a new teacher and I am trying to build up a library of resources. I bought this book hoping it would be helpful. I am so glad I purchased it. The activities are simple and concise, but they were developed with the children in mind. They will enrich your higher kids and strengthen your lower readers. Great for Kindergarten to intro basic phonics, super for first grade!! They will be fun to use in the classroom. The book is also FULL of information about phonics and linguistics. Do not hesitate purchasing this book.

If you are teaching kindergarten through second grade, you must have this and use it in your classroom. It has activities that covers every area of phonemic awareness. It gives you many activities for each section so your children will never get bored with your lessons. Uses all modalities. I can't say enough good things about this book.

This is a great book to use with prek students as well as kindergarten and first graders. The lesson plans are there to use as is or to be modified to fit the needs of your students.

I have found this book wonderful. It brings us tools to teach phonemic awareness to children that are struggling readers. It has a lot of activities they like and step by step are taking them to the beautiful world readers have.
This book is a must for every teacher!

Such an inspiring story for future educators. A must read for anyone thinking about the teaching profession!

I was assigned this memoir for a graduate Teaching in America course. Although I found the story touching and inspiring to a degree, I also found things missing from the book. The setting was in the 1990s (before No Child Left Behind), but were there others California standards? What happened to the rest of her students (other than those that have done appearances with Gruwell)? In any book such as this, you must not only pay attention to what is being said but what is not being said.

Many others have written detailed reviews. This is merely an attempt to throw mine in the ring. I will begin by saying that I do not believe this book was ever intended to be a "How To" manual, but rather it is Erin telling us her story. One reviewer's title stated it was "Difficult to Replicate." I would take that one further and state that it is IMPOSSIBLE to replicate (it is HER story!) and we would miss the point if we tried.

Her ability to take these kids to screenings, and meet screenwriters, and dine at the Marriott, and meet Miep Gies, and attend the Holocaust Museum was due in part to their geographical location. Granted, all of these resources were available to other teachers in the area -- but my understanding is that no one was taking "those kids." So her willingness to take these students to these places was a large part of what changed their lives. However, depending on where you live, some of these things just are not an option!

The bigger lesson is not to replicate (we would all try & fail!) -- but rather to figure out what is it that I can do, where I am, with the resources I have in front of me. Otherwise, we could excuse our inaction for lack of resources. For me this book served as a means of self-evaluation -- and I came away deciding that someone raised the bar, and it's time to step-up.

I've seen the movie, read the book. The Freedom Writers Diary, that is.

I found Erin Gruwell to be a touching and inspirational woman and have visited the Freedom Writers website to see what she and her students have been up to since the time of the book's publication. She ran for congress--and, sadly, lost. We'd have done well with someone like her in public office, someone with a love for and sincere concern for today's youth and education.

Since leaving the high school classroom, Gruwell has had her share of changes and obstacles and also, as one would expect, great successes. The book retreads a lot of the information gleaned from the book/movie, but I care about Erin now...I want good things for her. And her students. This was a way to catch up.

If you feel the same way, the book is worth your while, but if you are trying to learn more about educational techniques, this isn't the book you're looking for.

A very wonderful tale except the last bit of the book had little to do with teaching. I enjoyed and learned some new methods on gaining the respect and attention from students. however i learned nothing after she got that from her students except that it helps to know a rich ceo.

A fabulous book for teachers. Also highly recommended are two lovely pieces of children's literature with beautiful messages and invaluable 10-page teaching guidesLife's Little Lessons: An Inch-By-Inch Tale of Successand The Big Squeal: A Wild, True, and Twisted Tail with built in lessons, activities and comprehension questions.

Reading the Art of Teaching, it becomes clear that Calkins is not only a wonderful reading teacher but a thoughtful and skilled writer about reading. However, looking over the reviews here a reader will notice a divergence of opinion with many lavishly praising this book while others express extreme disappointment. In the end neither of them are really wrong.

Calkin's goal of the is simple to get students to "compose lives in which reading and writing matter", but obviously difficult to achieve. She is of the opinion, and offers research to support this opinion, that a Reading Workshop is the best way of achieving this goal. She explains the ingredients for success in virtually all aspects of a Reading Workshop through her 500 plus pages. Her emphasis is on what to do rather than what not to do and she offers examples, normally quite entertaining, to demonstrate the theory she is talking about.

So in this sense the book is a large success. Calkin clearly understands the Reader's Workshop and is going to be able to help any teacher craft a framework for such a workshop.

However, this speaks to the great short coming of the book. While Calkin presents the philosophy the hard work of implementing it falls largely on the shoulder of the reader. When she works with teachers in person this is no doubt for the best, as she is able to give feedback on how various teachers implement the program. However, no such dialogue can be had with a book and so the reader can easily finish the book understanding just how important the Reader's Workshop is, without the skills needed to actually implement one.

This book is an important piece of writing for the Reading Workshop teacher, however it serves as a poor introduction to the method. Upper elementary and middle school teachers would be better advised to start with Nancy Atwell's In the Middle: New Understanding About Writing, Reading, and Learning (Workshop Series), and her recent addendum to that work The Reading Zone: HOW TO HELP KIDS BECOME SKILLED, PASSIONATE, HABITUAL, CRITICAL READERS which while suffering from some of the same problems as Calkin has far more specific methods to use.

This book is helpful for anyone working with children's literacy. Ideas are very clearly expressed and explained.

I read the first page of this book sitting on the floor of a book store. The next thing I knew it was 30 minutes later, and I didn't want to put the book down. I knew it needed to go home with me.

Calkins takes Reading instruction, breaks it down into manageable parts that she used in her own classroom and shares with you realistic, artful and purposeful ideas for teaching reading. She speaks very openly and honestly with you as a teacher who believes in teaching reading not as a science, but rather as an art. It is an amazing book that will transform the way you think about reading instruction even in simple ways. You will love reading it and want to apply her teaching strategies immediately.

This book is very helpful to any elementary teacher that is looking for ways to improve your reading curriculum. Lucy Calkins gives plenty of ideas and new approaches to try in your classroom. I also appreciate how she writes the actual scenario she used in the classroom with real kids. It is so much easier to comprehend through real life experiences. Another book that is similar, very informative and full of GREAT ideas is Reading Essentials by Regie Routman. This is a must read as an educator.

Had to send book back because I didn't have to take this class. The seller admitted to recieving the book back and did not refund my money! Will never buy from this seller and will tell friends and family to beware. Have tried to contact seller with no response!

The books condition was bad, much worse then described. I also payed for express shipping and it took awhile to get to me.

This textbook is easy to read and follow. The explanations of mathematics, how to teach young children to use strategies, and examples of worksheets make this a great resource for future Elementary school teachers.

This excellent work is certainly a challenge, even for someone, like myself, who studied philosophy in college. It is, however, worth the effort. Combining the original 60-year old text with the deft editing (and entirely new material, particularly in the thought-experiment examples) by Marguerite McGlinn, this is a timeless work now available and accessible to new generations of readers.

on a personal note, editor Mrs. McGlinn passed away last week after battling pancreatic cancer. if you love this book as I do, it would be wonderful to honor her memory by donating to research into this terrible disease:

Marguerite Mulligan McGlinn memorial pancreas cancer research fund
c/o Dan Laheru MD
The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
The Sol Goldman Pancreatic Cancer Research Center
The Sidney Kimmel Compreshensive Cancer Center
Bunting-Blaustein CRB Room G89
1650 Orleans Street, Baltimore, MD 21231

This is one of my FAVOURITE books indeed. A wonderful and inviting summary of the Classical Education system known as the Trivium, you become aware of your own weaknesses as far as possessing the tools for advanced learning in the most scholarly fiends of learning.

Every single household should possess a copy of this book. Thank you so much for publishing with work.

If you are interested in a better understanding of 'Classic' approaches to literature, and are honestly willing to study and challenge your thinking aparatus, this is an excellent book on 'The Trivium.' It is very structured and didactic and Sister Miriam Joseph is very intentional and precise in presenting the information, but I suspect she did not suffer fools lightly when teaching. It does NOT fit into the current popular genre of 'The Trivium for Dummies.' I've never attended a Catholic School, but when I wasn't focused on what I was reading, I almost imagined I felt the Sister rapping across my knuckles with her Rule. However, if you are a disciplined reader and interested in learning this material, I would agree with the critics who rate this a 'Classic.'

I learned a lot from this book. I only wish I had been taught or understood these fundamentals at a much younger age. I can't say it was an easy read, it's more a journey. Well it was for me. If you want to get the fundamentals of logic, grammar and rhetoric presented in a thoughtful and thought provoking way then this may suit.

The Trivium is one of those impenetrable books that one hesitates to condemn, because one suspects that to do so is to make a fool of oneself. Nevertheless I feel that it may be useful to provide a counterpoint to the nearly universally glowing reviews this book has attracted.

Reading The Trivium is an exercise in adversity. Sister Miriam lays down statement after rule after axiom, one after another, like dealing cards, often without support. As a reader you can accept each assertion and continue, or you can consider each postulate critically. I tried the former course for a time, but this caused me to glance off the surface of following material. When I resorted to critical thinking, I fell quickly into a struggle for dominance with the Sister, and bogged down. This book may have some value providing a certain historical insight, but I can't see how anyone with a recent education would approach it hoping to improve his grasp on any of grammar, logic, or rhetoric.

Vocabulary

I approached this difficult book by beginning with Chapter 3, why not? Immediately I realized this approach would fail. The Trivium introduces vocabulary, and unusual meanings for words I thought I already knew. While reading it from the middle, I was never quite certain whether I had understood a given statement, or not at all. Yet to begin at the beginning is to be treated little better.

This reviewer is passing familiar with Greek philosophy, though he is no academic. From other reviews I had expected The Trivium to present, well, the subjects of Alcuin's venerable Trivium in a useful way, with a rigorous, old school flavor that classical Greeks might have recognized. With regard to the flavor, I am accustomed to professors approaching such material with a touch of equivocation. You know: "Empedocles is thought to have originated the concept that all matter is composed of the canonical four elements. I'm sure this was very clever in his day, but you should know that our current models are rather more successful." I noticed no such restraint in this book. To be fair, I penetrated only some twenty pages but please, from that short introduction alone I have cause for much dissatisfaction.

Even when properly approached from the beginning, this book is a series of confrontations with unusual uses of recognizable words, frequently followed by opportunities through continued use to hone what one might take to be their meaning in the given context. It's an interesting way to introduce terminology, but unnecessarily difficult, I think. Do these words represent Greek concepts? English words are being tortured into service to describe something, whatever its origin. Are these standard translations of Greek terms? I think that they are not, and in any case I have been led to believe that there is seldom an easy one-to-one correspondence between the vocabulary of Greek philosophy and that of modern English. None of this is evident from the content of (the beginning of) this book. I would like to be treated more gently!

Argument

I have other complaints about Sister Miriam's book. One is the ease with which its author reels off questionable claims as if they were unimpeachable. A very typical example of my own struggle with this material may be elucidating. The Trivium opens chapter 2 with stock brazenness:

"The function of language is threefold: to communicate thought, volition, and emotion."

Alright. That's pretty blanket. Is it meant to be taken literally? Is it some classical Greek assertion with which I am unfamiliar, submitted for my amusement? If it is, shouldn't it be identified as such? If not, is it necessarily true? Where are we going with this? Should I just accept it and continue? No, no, I should drop anchor for a moment, and consider ramifications... Very well. The statement feels flawed, but I must admit I can't categorically countermand it with any certainty. However for myself I believe I would not have broken it down quite that way, and I'm not sure that to do so gives us any useful organization. I would expect such a decree to be followed by a citation, or by an authoritative justification. Yet while I've been dallying, the Sister has forged ahead and built on the statement, without giving what I would consider a reason to accept the foundation of her subsequent arguments.

The book appears to be thickly strewn with such curious traps, so expect to spend five unpleasantly thought-provoking minutes reading each page. Struggling with the book feels like playing a card game with the author, and she has all the trumps. Well, not all the trumps. It feels like she thinks she has all the trumps, correspondingly claims each trick played, and brooks no argument about her interpretation of the rules. The game is a variant of Bridge, in case you don't play, but you get my point.

Another example from the same page may be useful:

"Pure spirits, such as angels, communicate thought, but their communication is not properly called language because it does not employ a physical medium."

Okey-doke. Will this important-sounding distinction be developed into some critical discovery as the book progresses? Interestingly this announcement was graced with a reference, though the content of that reference would seem to have little bearing on the subject of the claim. I suspect that I am not alone in wanting to see such doctrinal arrogance qualified, in a book that purports to be a learning tool.

Vocabulary and argument

Particularly distressing to me was Sister Miriam's cavalier treatment of the terms "species" and "genus." She spends considerable effort developing (somewhat) precise definitions for each. To what profit, I was never certain. I am aware of several working definitions for the term "species" as a biologist would understand it, and I believe that difficulties with definitions for such terms predated Sister Miriam's career. Yet the Sister seems quite at ease, swooping low and declaring her own simplified scheme by fiat, and then sweeping on to her next contentious declaration with little pause.

Of course I understand that the Sister is not interested in describing a working Linnaean classification system, suitable for biology research. She would be interested in a purely logical categorization hierarchy. In my opinion she would have served her readers better by choosing less overloaded terms. This example goes to my earlier point of vocabulary. While reading The Trivium, I found myself juggling up a mental dictionary of terms special-purposed to this book, to be kept in warm storage as I progressed. At the rate I was adding entries to this dictionary, I fear it would take a brain larger than mine to finish this book with any understanding.

I believe the game is not Bridge, but Fizzbin, a diversion that Star Trek fans will recognize as one in which the rules change to suit the dealer. Nominally Fizzbin is a card game, but in fact the object is to start a short fist fight with a sucker punch. Perhaps I do Sister Miriam a disservice in saying so, but I feel certain that she was one of those fabled nuns who met timid but reasonable dissent with a fierce yardstick to the knuckles.

Chauvinism

Sister Miriam's Catholic chauvinism shines through repeatedly. On page 12 she claims that only human beings are capable of the sort of mental processes that make possible such a thing as language. This claim is followed quickly enough by another: that sign language is not a real language like a spoken tongue. (Between the two claims were a couple of pages of more typical brow-furrowing, lower-level commentary, but these two were high points for me.) Sister Miriam uncharacteristically supports the first of these two claims with a reference. I would commend her for this. Nevertheless I believe that we now have good evidence to counter the pretension of that first statement, which seems irrelevant to a study of the book's purported subject matter, anyway. The second statement is simply ignorant, or merely careless if we are inclined to be charitable.

I gather that both claims were slated for development. Nevertheless, perhaps none of this is important to the book's operating thesis, and a reader would find it possible to extract useful content from the work by overlooking immaterial assertions. But how comfortable can one be in identifying and accepting the salient points, knowing that the book is laden with such coarse overburden?

Greek Giants

This reviewer has a more than passing interest in all three of the topics of logic, grammar, and rhetoric, but he soon became bored with this book, and concerned about the quality of the information being presented. I began skipping ahead, as well as I was able. Before I set the book down I began to notice a distinct flavor of what I believe was Aristotelianism. I'm certain it was intentional, though its applicability to a current treatment of the subjects of Alcuin's Trivium would seem to be a matter for historians before grammarians.

I have great respect for the man who by all accounts was a rare genius; a gargantuan polymath. Europe allowed Aristotle's dead hand to steer its course for centuries. Frankly I doubt he would have approved of all the adaptations that were made of his ideas. After a long false start, the West has made some good progress since his much extended day. A modern book that wishes to be relevant would do well to keep Aristotle's philosophy in perspective, however brilliant it was at the time.

Is Sister Miriam's book simply an Aristotelian homage? Is it a work of history? Is it an exploration of grammar and what-not as they are used today (or relatively recently)? Does it express a longing for the good and simpler days of yore? Whose yore? Is it a treatise for instilling a sympathetic understanding of our forefathers' fear and loathing of English class? Is it forensic evidence of some long-ago party I was never invited to? I don't think so. Maybe. I don't know. I do know that I don't want to learn logic from a teacher who is so cavalier with her premises. The Trivium is some mighty thick reading, and I think unwarrantably so. Perhaps I am a fool after all, but I'm certain the book deserves one dismissive review.