Education Teaching Books

I have bought many books recently on literacy centers and this book is by far the best! It gives you background information on the purpose of centers but really focuses on making it work for you. It gives tons of easy to put together center activities and reproducible sheets. By far the most teacher friendly book on centers I now own.

I would highly recommend this book for anyone teaching primary grades, and integrating literacy centers in the classroom. It is perfect for managing reading groups, as well as a great time-management tool. Full of reproducibles, and helpful tips, it's one of the best teacher resources available. :)

I'm glad I purchased this book during summer break. It gives advice on how to prepare 30 different centers along with amusing management tips. It is a lot to digest and prepare but its "ready to copy" log sheets for student accountability, and the materials lists for each center, makes set up a snap. The centers work on skills that I have taught and practiced at different times during the school year. Those skills can now be reiforced on a regular basis during our reading block. Even the choice of materials adds an element of fun. I can't wait to test out these center ideas on my third graders!

This book may work if you are a new teacher with no resources and no ideas. If you are a veteran teacher, don't bother. The book is full of worksheets that you could quickly create and are probably already doing in your classroom. Don't waste your money.

After 12 years teaching middle school, I am now teaching second grade. This book has become one of my most treasured resources. This clearly and concisely explained the purpose and practical upkeep of 30 learning centers. I have used many of the activities as a springboard for countless other center activities. Don't walk, RUN to get this book.

This is a great overview of literacy instruction for any elementary classroom. The book is reader friendly and offers many different ideas that could be applied to the classroom the next day. Many primary ideas could easily be adapted for intermediate, however, overall the authors did a great job of presenting ideas that were usable in every grade! The vocabulary, reading, and writing lessons/activities are fun for students while continuing to challenge and develop their thinking. The practical nature of the book is ideal for any teacher!

I just got into this book in my class. What I have seen so far of it it is a good book. great for Methods classes for Education Majors.

This is a must have book for elementary school teachers. It gives great insight and ideas for teaching children how to read and write.

This is a must read for all elementary classroom teachers. It offers research based lessons to implement a balanced literacy program. It's an easy read. I highly recommend it!

Classrooms That Work has a multitude of ideas that actually work in the classroom to help students become better readers and writers.

Failure Is Not An Option: Six Principles That Guide Student Achievement In High-performing Schools is an impressive introduction to enhancing student performance which directly addresses transforming theory into practice and illustrating diverse applications with case studies and vignettes. Failure Is Not An Option develops six guiding principles for creating and sustaining high-performing schools. Also available in a hardcover edition, Failure Is Not An Option is especially commended to the attention of administrators and faculty responsible for providing primary leadership in developing curriculum and policies for meeting enhanced federal and state standards for individual school and school district criteria under the "no child left behind" education standards for student academic performance levels.

Speaks to you as if the author were sitting down for a chat. Excellent text for a Leadership Class. Quick Read!!!

same ideals I have read time and time again,. nothing new and it cost to much.

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.

Excellent practical application book of concepts in the English language. The emphasis is on sentence structure and word usage (like verb agreement, capitalization, punctuation, etc.), and the analogies are good in terms of reinforcing word meanings. The only thing missing for me is the instructions for the concepts covered. For instance, explaining the use of quotation marks would have been helpful (my son is more of a visual learner than auditory - so having instructions written out helps him understand the concepts better than a lecture from me). In spite of this, my son likes this book almost as much as I do!

What I LOVE about it is the daily practice and review. I am a firm believer in small doses of practice everyday - makes a real difference in holding onto a concept. My only regret is that I didn't find this kind of book 2 years ago! You won't be disappointed!!

This book keeps my students current with the information they need to build and improve their grammar skills. They look forward to the daily exercises and participate willingly each morning. I have shared this book with other teachers and they have all since bought their own. I would highly recommend this book to any educator.

Very informative, this manual requires some time to complete all exercises but is extremely beneficial for any student. I would definitely recommend using this manual to assist you in your educational endeavors.

This A&P lab book is well written and easy to follow. The pictures are diagrams are accurate and clear. It's a great tool to visit before you dive into the textbook for the A&P class. I would recommend this lab book to any student!

If a book is going to ask questions it should easily offer the answers to these questions in the reading before the questions. This book does not do that. I find this very frusterating. I do appreciate the colorful images though.

Not sure what the other reader was talking about. I am an agnostic so I am pretty aware when people try and slip God in to the equation. I was also a teacher. Not only does Love and Logic work in the classroom but it does amazing things with my kids. I have 2 toddlers and I think the Love and Logic books and videos are an indespensible resource. It seems to me that the previous reviewer was just looking for a forum to rant about something totally unrelated to these books. He also wasn't reviewing this book - I guess some people will actually mislead people to try and get their voice heard. Charles Fay and Foster Cline (founders of Love and Logic) are from Evergreen, Colorado - not Colorado Springs and have nothing to do with the whole "family first" thing. There is no affiliation whatsoever. Again, not sure what the other reviewer was talking about - but it is a shame that he may turn people away from a resource that is the most effective tool I have come across to raise children who are responsible, able to make choices effectively, have great self-esteem, and to avoid all the arguments and power struggles that come with parenting.

As a new resource teacher for my school this was one of the better books I found to help me with real life solutions to teaching learning disabled children. This was a great book for explanations of various learning disabilities and set exercises to use in class for all age groups. I work mostly one on one, but found the activities and strategies easily adaptable for individual use.

I am a preservice teacher and am studying special education. I saw this book on Amazon and was intrigued by the low price. I was so surprised when I received it. It is a wonderful resource for anyone who works with students with LD. It covers the whole gambit from identification, to characteristics, to strategies. It really is a complete handbook and for the price you can't find a better deal. I have found this resource much more useful than my textbooks on LD that cost me upwards 70-80 dollars. I would wholeheartedly recommend this book!

I represent a private, non-profit organization that provides evaluation and tutoring services for children K-8. We strongly believe in professional development in order to maintain a high level of competency in the field of education. When our teachers have an opening in their schedule, they select books like this to review, to reflect and to write a summary, which is submitted to me for review and professional credit. Our entire teaching staff has found this book to be a good resource.

I found this book to be useful and very informative concerning special education. It covered testing, laws, terms and definitions. I've been using it to study for the Praxis Special Ed exams and feel that I will be well prepared.

Very informative. Very good reference for those taking the alternative route to teaching certification. Contains practical scenarios on how theories in education are applied.

As a Spanish teacher and native speaker I wouldn't recommend this book to my worst student. I had the "pleasure" to teach this book for 3 years (formerly named "Bienvenidos", "A bordo" and "Buen Viaje")and I didn't like it the least. The publishers came up with a new format this year but although it looks more attractive you can still find many of the SAME old activities and many of the old pictures. The vocabulary section at the end of each chapter don't have the English translation what makes it quite difficult for the student when reviewing vocabulary. They have improved the culture sections,though; but still it is not good enough. If you learn Spanish using this book, please THANK your teacher, he/she has a lot of work to do when using this book. Buena suerte!

The odering process was easy and came in a timely fashion. I am very satisfied

I ordered this crappy book for my spanish class (im a student) and not only is it boring and confusing but it came to me in the worst condition you could ever imagine. It was TRASHED. But worst of all it came to me with drawings of penises and female nudity and almost any vulgar image you could imagine on almost EVERY PAGE!!! Now I have to explain to everyone when they see senior lopez on page 50 with a **** in his mouth that it came to me that way! DO. NOT. ORDER. USED.

This book has good info. Not only Spanish words, but a LOT of cultural history, maps, photos, etc. They have really good, clear, explanations. I used this book for my Spanish class. But, the book alone won't get you to speak fluent Spanish. Of course, my teacher played a HUGE role in teaching me, but theis book is great. Who knows, maybe if we finished the whole book, I'd be fluent, but it IS worth it. Trust me.

I bought this book for Master's level class on Children's Literature, and it's a great book. It's easy to read, and jam-packed with useful information. This is a book I will keep & not sell back.

required for course but never used...did see some good resources in it though.

The preface of this title describes it as "a children's literature textbook for people who don't like children's literature textbooks" (p. v) which sets the tone for the rest of the text. Tunnell and Jacobs, both instructors of children's literature from Brigham Young University, offer an introduction to children's literature that is entertaining and educational.

The book is divided into three parts: "The Magic of Books;" "The Books Themselves;" and "Books in the Classroom." The first section discusses the value of reading, why children don't read, how to distinguish between literary quality and personal taste, and how to recognize books that are well-written and well-illustrated. The second section tackles the history of children's literature as well as organization of children's books into nine separate genres: picture books, poetry, traditional fantasy, modern fantasy, contemporary realistic fiction, historical fiction, biography, informational books, and multicultural and international books. The third section describes controversial books and the most effective way to deal with challenges, how to motivate students to read, and teaching with children's books. The aim of the book is to provide "an overview to shed light on children's literature and its use with young readers" (p. v).

Throughout the text, many examples of quality children's literature are used to illustrate particular points the authors want to make. All book references are included at the end of each chapter and each genre's chapter features a list of "books we like," compiled by the authors, which provides bibliographic information as well as a brief summary of the work. Included with the book is a children's literature database CD which contains a listing of 20,000 children's books which can be sorted by title, genre, grade level, topics, author, illustrator, year, or publisher. Instructions on how to use the CD-ROM are located in the back of the book at the end of the last chapter and they include color graphics to illustrate what the database's interface looks like as well as the tools used to sort books into categories.

One of this book's greatest strengths is that it is written with humor, reads like a dialogue, and is organized in a logical way. The authors draw readers into the realm of children's literature with teasers excerpted from various titles, descriptions of interesting books, and providing interesting facts about children, their literature, and its history. Appended at the end of the book are "Guidelines for Building a Classroom Library;" book selection aids, a list of magazines for children, awards in children's literature, and information for anyone interested in publishing a children's book. The awards section and books selection section are particularly useful to anyone starting out in collection development (or those who have been doing it for a while) as well as those interested in finding award-winning books for children.

While this text is not an exhaustive look into the world of children's literature, it is not intended to be. It does, however, provide a stellar introduction to the subject and provides readers with enough information to distinguish quality literature from poor, to understand genre differences, and to be able to motivate children to read, which is the most important lesson of all.

This was used as a textbook in my children's literature class and I'm glad it was! It really gets away from the conventional textbook by having the info relaying in an easy-going context.

The best way to study children's literature is to read actual children's books, not to study textbooks about them!

The authors of this text are among the few that recognize this truth. Consequently the chapters are purposefully (and generally) short and to the point. Each chapter includes authors' recommendations as well as qualities to avoid in each genre. Appendices are informative (see the information about Awards for children's and young adult lit).

The 4th edition (2007) is even better: the CD database includes over *20,000* children's book titles that you can search (by title, author, genre, format etc), build lists, and customize information for your own purposes. (One small annoyance within the database is the lack of a "back" button - hopefully future editions will improve on this.)

In my 14+ years of college textbook studying, this is one of the better texts to hold my interest and give me information I needed. It is well-written, well-designed, and very helpful. I'll use this (and the database) as a resource on a regular basis in my work with young children and their reading.