Education Teaching Books

I think this book is a gem! It's clearly written in a step-by-step way that is extremely helpful in this course. I really appreciate the sample research proposals and the examples. This book helped me prepare for my own research project.

As a graduate student with no formal training in statistics, the authors jump head-long into discussions of educational statistics beyond the pervue of the course for which this book was intended. Some good descriptions, but other texts are more appropriate.

I have used this book for three years to instruct individuals in a masters degree program. The book is clear, easy to read, and easy to understand - quite a feat for a book about research and statistics! Most educators are intimidated by texts on educational research, but this book is readable and makes sense!

I was very disappointed with this textbook. The opening chapter is misleading as it only presents the quantitative view of research (even though the book does include a later chapter on ethnography). And too many errors! The statistics sections are unreliable and not useful to students; the appendix, in particular, contains errors and misleading information.
In my personal opinion, I caution people from relying on the information in the textbook.

Learning by Doing should be the consummate staff development guide for all schools. Creating a common language, the right language, about PLC's is what needs to happen to get all of the arrows going in the right direction in any educational environment on any initiative. I look forward to implementing it with my new school!

Professional Learning Communities are the big buzz currently. Does your school district have professional learning communities? Have you wondered where to start? Have you wondered how your professional learning communities are doing? If you've wondered about any of those, then this is the book for you.

Learning by Doing is a great handbook for administrators and teachers to use as they implement professional learning communities in their school. This handbook gives an overview of the different components of the professional learning community process. As schools implement the professional learning community process this handbook is also a useful tool to assist in self reflection and evaluation.

As a school is developing professional learning communities, this handbook is a great resource to use through the process. It begins by giving advice on how to clarify the purpose of professional learning communities, how to build collaborative teams, and how to establish team norms. The collaborative foundation is essential to the success of the professional learning communities. The professional learning communities must collaborate in order to increase student achievement.

The handbook also shares information about how to collect data, how to use the data to improve results, and how to implement interventions in order to improve student achievement. These components help the professional learning community develop strategies to help each individual learner in their classroom. Schools must develop and support a pyramid of interventions in order to meet the students' needs.

This handbook includes many useful reproducible handouts and continuums which help analyze the progress of each professional learning community. The continuums are great conversation starters for the professional learning communities to use to evaluate their progress. This handbook can help your school improve the PLC process through self reflection and evaluation.

If you are looking for tools to help your Professional Learning Communities improve, this book is for you.

If you want to learn an entirely new set of buzz words, this is the book for you! It is not enough that we have RTI's, IEP's, IDEA, SLP's and the beloved NEA. We need PLC's as well! And we also need to (drumroll please) LEARN BY DOING! That's a new one, I always thought that teachers were supposed to learn by not doing!

What was most remarkable about this book was the utter lack of usable content. While it does an excellent imitation of Charlie Brown's teacher (indecipherable blah, blah, blahs), it says absolutely nothing new. It is uncanny, the book is utterly devoid of originality or new information. Just a plodding restatement of old ideas wrapped in new jargon.

Yet when another reviewer pointed out the obvious, that the emperor was in fact stark naked, he was immediately attacked by the true believers. I in no way wish to deny those who love fads and jargons from their periodic "fix" of meaningless initials and empty slogans. But could you please stop forcing it onto your fellow educators?

This book is a must read for any administrator or potential administrator that is looking for new ways to improve their schools. Very practical and flexible with many scenarios and worksheets that can help you to determine where your school is and how to get it where you want it to go.

Excellent Book!! Extremely valuable resource for schools that are working toward a true Professional Learning Community. Easy to read and very practical.

This book was suggested by fellow teachers. It's a great book for teachers that already have a handle on reading strategies. It gives great and easy to duplicate ideas.

This book provides teachers with a way to introduce the comprehension strategies. It has very orginal ways to get the kids thinking about thinking as they read. My third graders responded well to the langauge and activities provided in the book. It was a quick read, but described strategies I can use throuhgout the year in my classroom. I would recommend it to anyone teaching Harvey's and Keene's comprehension strategies.

I am an elementary teacher currently using Tanny's book to inform my small group reading instruction. It didn't take me long to realize what a goldmine of information she provides; and it all makes sense. Reading this book is what I'd imagine sitting down with the author at Starbucks to be like. She will begin your own inner conversation about the myriad ways to strengthen your students' comprehension skills, using concrete items for object lessons, wordless texts, art, music lyrics, and quotes. The examples of anchor charts Tanny shares are first-rate. If you don't own this book; get it :). You'll have it finished in less time than it took to arrive at your doorstep!

Great resource for all primary elementary teachers. Great ideas to develop schema for various comprehension strategies!

This book meets the big areas of comprehension with concrete and engaging activities that will introduce strategies to your students and provide a gradual release of responsibility!

As a homeschooler, I felt I need a book to help guide me to make sure I wasn't leaving anything out of my kids education. This book covers a lot for each grade level. It's a great source of guidance and referrences. But, just because the book SAYS your child should know a certain thing by a certain grade, doesn't mean you HAVE to teach that. Overall, I like the book and continue to use it for reference but I don't live by it.

I am new to homeschooling and this seemed to be a good starting point for establishing what I need my child to cover in the school year. It does not tell you exactly what curriculum to choose for your child's learning style but it does guide you over all the areas children should be knowledgeable in. There are several out of print books that are recommended as well as websites that are not available. It also has some very good information in the appendixes. Overall, I would recommend this book as a great tool.

The main reason that I bought this book was that I am moving more and more toward the mindset of frugal homeschooling. However, using a library can be daunting, when one is not sure which skills and content areas need to be taught. However, with this book and a library card, you can pretty much teach your child for free. She does recommend math programs, but the ones she recommends range from 10.00 per year to expensive 110.00 programs. I believe she has made an excellent balance of skills that need to be covered, and general content areas, as well as a few curriculum tips. She is also open to the needs of different people. While she never taught her children spelling, she also recommends 3 or 4 different spelling programs. She also includes literature and fun books to teach content and skill areas, and in the end, how to prepare for college. This book is better than the Core Knowledge series for me because it's less expensive, goes all the way to 12th grade, and is written specifically for homeschoolers. However I still hope to purchase the What your __Needs to Know Series to use alongside this book.

Homeschooling is much more affordable, efficient and fun when one avoids curriculum, and this book is an excellent tool to make sure you are prepared, organized, and not missing anything important.

I think this book could be helpful for those who have been homeschooling since day one, or are starting at day one, but I can't imagine it helping those who are removing their child from public school, as I am with my daughter. My daughter is half way through her 3rd grade year. I read through the 3rd grade chapter and was completely overwhelmed with everything my daughter did *not* know/had not been taught. And I couldn't believe some of the things the author said should be learned- in 3rd grade? So, for reference I went back to the 2nd grade chapter- almost as bad! And then I started to go to the 1st grade chapter but gave up. The fact is that this book will *not* tell you what children are learning in public schools, although the author does give links for that. It seems to me, from what I know, that this is the "Classical" approach to homeschool (this is never mentioned in the book description, and only very briefly mentioned in the introduction)- which is not what we're doing. I would think that any person pulling their child out of public school would feel as I did- completely overwhelmed & hopeless - there is just too much to "catch up" on! Each year builds upon knowledge from the previous year, and I would think that most private schools don't even measure up to the standards put forth in this book. I do give it two stars because it lists resources for teaching- books and websites mainly, and some curriculum, relating to topics listed. That is all the use this book will be of to me.

Do you want a parent-friendly guide to realistic educational goals for your child at each grade level? This is it. This is another must-have book for me in my venture through homeschooling. How do I know if what my child is learning is typical for their grade? Look it up in here. I did many searches online and kept coming up with grand pages written in dense "teacher-ese" about abstract geometry and linguistic comprehension... for kindergarteners. I need the easy to understand, quick version and this is presicely what I was looking for. There are also excellent resource suggestions listed in here.

This text is difficult to read. It may be great for speech pathologists, but not great for teachers.

I found this to be an excellent resource helping me to understand principles for teaching reading to my students.

I am a primary teacher and I found this book enjoyable and easy to read, yet packed with interesting and relevant information. Highly recommended as a beginning text on the phonetics, phonology, morphology and orthography of the English language.

...well, at least it's not near as bad as we have been lead to believe the last few decades, no thanks to the "Whole Language," or in my opinion, the "Half Language," and it's proponents (i.e. Hillary?). It's sad that this book, which in all honesty, just simply lays out the basics of English language structure is so fascinating and "new" to most teachers in public education, especially of K-3. It is now becoming all but required reading for most grad programs and school districts smart and motivated enough to implement Reading First grants. However, Moats has only scratched the surface of education with her work; Keep going!

I bought this book a few years ago after attending the International Dyslexia Association Conference and seeing Louisa Moats speak. She gave the audience of Denver teachers the "language survey" to see what we all knew about language. I stumbled on quite a few of the questions and thought "why would this be important?" but knew in my heart that the reason I was asking was because I didn't know the answer.

This book is a wealth of information and I too think it should be required text in reading courses and it is in California. But, I have realized that although I am exceedingly passionate about the knowledge it can give to all teachers K-12, it can be a difficult read. I realized this when I gave it to some colleagues I and they told me it was dense at times, hard to read and hard to digest without someone to talk about it with who understood the concepts, even though they whole heartedly wanted to gain the knowledge.

Regardless of where you are at as a learner, this book has something to offer you if you want to learn more about the language essentials behind reading instruction that all of us should know, but may not have been taught. This book even deserves to be used in a book study professional development group, college class or for the reader who wants to learn more about language and it's impacts on reading.

I have recommended that the students in my class keep this textbook for future use. It is chock full of strategies, research to back up those strategies, book lists and classroom examples. The author gives step by step instruction on how to set up the four classroom strategies for teaching the language arts. This information is invaluable and even the most inexperienced teacher could use the book to set up a viable language arts classroom. The DVD that comes with the book allows us to see inside the classrooms of "exemplary" teachers and watch how the strategies work in the real world. Well worth the money.

Finally, I was required to a buy a book that I will actually use again. Both pre-student and veteren teachers will enjoy this book. It contains a wealth of strategies for teaching kids how to write. Although there is a a lot of great information however, if your like me you don't have tons of time for reading through all the historical and case study information. Each section is clearly explained so it's great to just pick and choose what you are looking for.

I have bought all these books through 6th grade. I love them. My kids love the stories in the literature section. I read the poetry to them and the stories. These help give them a little extra education that they don't get in school.

We purchased this book because we wanted to make sure our child was learning everything he needed to be learning at his grade level. It is very user friendly; it is written in such a way that it can be read by the child independently or jointly with a parent or caregiver. Our child actually looks forward to the time each day when we sit down and look at it together, and it has helped supplement and reinforce what he has learned in class. Highly recommend this series. (We have a kindergartner who also insists that we read from the book written for his grade level daily.)

This series of books is fabulous. My husband and I even enjoy reading them. We bought three books in this series ( fourth grade, second and Kindergarten) and all of them are wonderful. The kids really enjoy reading them and they are packed full of information. Every parent should purchase these books for their kids/grandkids.

This book is very good to my kid. It covers not only literature and math, but science, art, history, etc as well. Both my kid and I like it.

Consider E.D. Hirsch's book a cultural multi-vitamin. That is, you might eat well, but to be on the safe side a wide-spectrum tablet will fill in any undiagnosed nutritional gaps. Similarly, E.D. Hirsch has written a series of indispensable books that will supplement a youngster's curricular deficiencies. Every parent, every teacher should purchase, "What Your 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th Grader (and so on) Needs to Know."

This is one book from the set "What Your Xth Grader Needs to Know" (X = K through 6) edited by Hirsch Jr. I initially purchased the "Second Grader" one for my 7 year old daughter and recently purchased the complete set (since my son will start kindergarten soon). Each book contains American literature, stories/tales from other countries, American and world history, and other knowledge. My daughter enjoys reading from this set of books before her bed time, and I also learnd quite a bit. I highly recommend this set to parents and elementary school teachers.

This is a wonderful book, not only for your children, but for adults as well. I am currently going for my early childhood education degree and I will be taking the GACE exam and this book was recommended to me to help me study. I also have the 1st grade and 2nd grade version of this book...they are also wonderful!!

I found this book to be very informative not only for young students, but also as a refresher for adults. As a future instructor, I find this book helpful not only for information, but also for "short and interesting" presentational information. It is short and to the point. I recommend the series (all grades) to everyone involved with students regardless of age. I have obtained four of the series for the age groups that I am working with currently.

I learned about this book from the reference list in Beestar Social Studies program (www.beestar.org). Due to the vast differences among schools and teachers in teaching Social Studies, students often received a rather unbalanced treatment of the subject. This book comes as a rescue of the situation. It tells you clearly what your child should know as a fifth grader. My child picked up several important chapters from this book that somehow were never taught by his teacher. And yes the knowledge has been very useful in state tests. I'm very glad that we had this book.

I'm a big proponent of Core Knowledge schools since an organized curriculum that sequentially goes from grade to grade is sorely lacking in many public schools today. Too many elementary classrooms are guided simply by what a given teacher is interested in and there is often no consistency even within grade levels in a single school. Core Knowledge maps out a curriculum of what students should be taught during each elementary grade so they have the skills and knowledge educated people commonly possess. The What Your____________ Grader Needs To Know book series by E.D. Hirsch Jr. is the general outline for what is taught in each grade in Core Knowledge. The fifth grade book is very readable for a student of that age but also interesting enough for the parent to be genuinely engaged with the material. Poems and other samples from literature are included along with the math, science, social studies, art and language sections. This can be a useful supplemental book to a child following any curriculum but every parent whose child is in a core knowledge school will want to have access to this book.

Even though THE DEVELOPING CHILD (by Bee & Roberts Boyd) or Roz Charlesworth's CHILD DEVELOPMENT may off a little more thoroughness espeically in the infant/toddler area, Trawick-Smith's book will give you plenty of insight on Erikson, Piaget, Vygotsky, and the other big names of early child development.

It doubles pretty well as a learning theories book aimed squarely at early childhood professionals, but I found myself wanting a little more explanation for each theory. He covers all of the concepts, but he somewhat rushes through them too much as if he can't overstep a certain page limit.

It's good, though. Get if you really need it, however.

I was required to read this book for a child development practicum course, and I was surprised that the text book was so easy to read and actually interesting. I usually borrow books and have no interest to hold on to them after I am done with the required work, but this book was worth buying. It presents information in an organized fashion and gives a personal anecdote with every chapter. I would recommend it as an addition to anyone's child development library, but then again, I did buy it with my parents money, being the poor college student that I am... anyhow; it's worth reading if you enjoy learning about child development (especially from a multicultural point of view.)

I am studying at University of Phoenix online at doctoral level. I found this book to be very useful and fruitful. The language being used is easy. The author talked about all learning theories. I think all educators, teachers, school administrators should know what the learning theories are about.

Dr. Schunk's book pulls out all the stops for teaching theory. Any topic you need from social cognitive theory to classical conditioning to the more cognitively oriented perspectives can be found here. It possesses the best index that I have yet to see in a textbook of this caliber. You can find ANYTHING that you need!

I used this book in my master's training, and it is the perfect compliment for the ETS PRAXIS Test-Prep books for the PLT.

Get It:)