Education Teaching Books

I have been able to immediately put this book to use. Being a second grade teacher, I am always looking for additional activities to use with my students.

This book offered a lot of information about teaching beginning conversation skills to individuals with autism. The authors cited a few research articles that they wrote themselves related to scripts and script fading. This book was not exactly what I was hoping for, however. The methods described appeared to be better suited for use with individuals that have very little verbalization. I was looking for methods that taught higher functioning, verbal individuals the skills to have a conversation. I would recommend this book for those who are working with individuals that are lower functioning and that have very little conversation skills.

This well-written book provides clear theory and method for teaching ASD children conversation using scripts and script fading. Includes many ideas for activities as well as recording-keeping forms.

I was pleased to receive this book in a timely matter. It was in good condition when I received it.

Did not use in my assignments - other texts were necessary. I believe it will be a good reference for first year teaching.

Finally... I found an author and educator who states the obvious. In order to be a successful teacher, one has to first understand oneself as a person - the positive and negative aspects of our personality and identity that impact our instruction. Only by understanding these issues are teachers freed to "move the learner to the center".

Borich does an outstanding job utilizing a friendly, conversational manner of writing that easily engages the reader. Research seems to be placed in a better context when Borich "keeps it real" for the reader.

I especially appreciate his chapter on questioning strategies, a blatent area of weakness for many beginning and veteran teachers alike. He even extends questions techniques into promoting thinking and problem solving.

Finally, Borich successfully articulates the value of group collaboration often overlooked by teachers hooked on cooperative learning. One cannot exist without the other or student accountablily will drop and student frustration will prevail.

This is a must read book for any teacher trainer in search of research to support effective teaching methods.

I have read many methods books over the past 4 years. This book was the initial text required in a methods class. I found it to be very poor in detail (especially for the preservice teacher). I finished the book wondering, "where are the specific how to's?" I felt that I wasn't prepared to go into a classroom to teach a lesson. We were all struggling in class.
So, I decided to go to another college bookstore and found "Methods for Effective Teaching" by Paul Burden. This book answered all my questions and went into great detail. It is based on the INTASC Standards and PLT of the Praxis.

Very pleased with the book, its content, and usefulness. Also, pleased with delivery and timing.

Thank you to the authors of Using Moodle! This comprehensive introduction to Moodle is exactly what we needed in my school district. I recommend it to anyone charged with Moodle-related staff development.

Well-done, Fellow Moodlers.

An excellent introduction to Moodle -- a course management system I'm teaching myself. Yes, much of the information is available online at the Moodle site, but I'm a person who would rather look through a book as opposed to clicking links online and printing what I require.

This is an excellent book for a teacher who would like to know a little bit more about Moodle. The teacher does not need to know much about course management software. This book gives a great overview, with examples, while not getting caught up in the technical details.

For example the Lesson module section starts off with non-Moodle classroom story told by Jason. Then the chapter gives a short overview and talks about the different features of Lesson. There are a couple of inserts on tips and examples of how a feature could be used. Plus a few screen shots.

If you are looking for examples of GIFT or XML formats, then this is not the book for you. On the other hand, after reading the Lesson and Quiz chapters, the potential teacher will know that these are a few of the question formats that can be imported into Moodle.

Moodle documentation and on-line forums are great resources but are not designed for the non-user or really new user. This book will help a teacher ask or find more information about what they want to do in their course. It is "Moodle 101 : An Introduction to teaching with Moodle."

I started out muddled over Moodle. I knew I wanted to do some of what this LMS could do, but fairly ignorant and hesitant to jump into the Moodle community to ask the most basic of questions. This book seems to do the job.

I usually teach in Title I schools, so that might be part of it, but this series is really challenging. I've used the third and fifth grade ones, and the kids I teach usually can't start on this book until halfway through the year. Also, all the problems are pretty complex, so they don't focus on one particular skill. For example, if the problem is testing averages, it may be in a pictograph format with extra information thrown in to distract the student. I guess it's good that the problems are so chock full of teachable moments, but bad that it can take way too much time out doing just one problem a day if the problems are too hard.

I love the format of this book! There is a word problem for each day of the week -- Monday through Thursday are half-sheets, and Friday is a whole sheet. I use this book for my morning work/opening -- I have each day's problem waiting for the students on their desks, and it's the first thing they do in the morning. It's a fantastic review and use of basic skills, especially since our math curriculum has strayed away from using ANY of the basics this year. I find it to be a great supplement!

P.S. I also have Daily Paragraph Editing, and it serves a similar function to our writing curriculum! *Ü*

Excellent review of evidence based medicine. Concise and to the point. Have used it multiple times during residency and fellowship.

Sackett's EBM is the Bible for anyone conducting systematic review. It is THE how-to guide for clinical medicine SR and a great starting point for thinking about SR in the social sciences. Thank you Dr. Sackett for bringing SR to the masses.

This book is well done from an educational perspective. You'll find nice diagrams, figures, a CD-ROM, and everything you need in order to assimilate it nicely. References are provided and well organized.

As usual when it comes to EBM (and paradoxically), it lacks a little bit in introspection, like for example when it claims that basically the only real limitation of EBM is that the physician needs to acquire new skills, while other criticisms (such as the "cookbook" approach or the fact that it might tend toward saving money against the benefit of the patients) are dismissed as "concerns" on how the method is (or will be) used. The authors genuinely sound like thinking EBM should always be applied everywhere to every problem, and that borders with black-vs-white thinking, which is dangerous in and of itself.

However, if you are interested in knowing EBM, how to apply it, where to find resources, etc, this book is most definitely for you.

As a physician-teacher of EBM to internal medicine residents, this is the best book I've run across for this purpose. We utilize the reader's guides, first published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal and later in JAMA, written by Guyatt, Sackett, and others, which are perfectly complemented by this volume. I recommend it to all of the residents and have purchased multiple copies for house staff use (although I can't seem to keep them on the shelf...) It makes learning EBM fun and highlights its usefulness and, most importantly for busy physicians, speed. Worth reading for every physician interested in practicing medicine based on only the best evidence.

This is an excellent "how to" manual for those who are serious about learning how to apply evidence based medicine principles. Lots of folks talk about "evidence based medicine" but few really know what it means. This is obviously intended as a teaching tool for residents but is equally useful for any physician who is interested in learning the principles required to do the best job for his/her patient. The size and summary cards are handy for carrying with you wherever you may need them! Easy to read but with great substance.

I just took the Praxis II Social Studies Content Knowledge test just the other day and I must admit - I am not particulary feeling very confident after using this book as a review/ study guide. Granted my degree is in history, but the book itself (which may I add took two weeks to get, receiving it three days before the test when they stated up to 4 business days) was virtually useless.

I found so many grammatical errors, misinformation, and down right wrong answers to the questions stated. The test had I believe maybe three questions from the Cliff Notes let alone majority of it was on gov't, behav sciences, and econ. The book in my opinion is not worth the money unless you want to use it as a quick reference but I would recommend using another form of study guide that has its information relative and up to date.

I bought this book thinking it was going to be a good review of all the topics, and as mentioned by other posters, it's full of typos and is not very thorough. While no book can adequately review all the content included in the Praxis, this one leaves out basics that should have been covered. However, it is good for a couple reasons... it has two practice tests. The practice tests seem to have the most typos. The best way I've found to study for these tests is to use a combination of things- old textbooks/lecture notes from college, cliffs notes of each individual section (econ, US history, etc.) and the actual prep book from ETS (which also had it's problems). Long story short... buy this book knowing it is extremely basic and incomplete, be aware of typos/mistakes, & practice using the tests in the back.

But then I got my scores. I got a 170 on Content Knowledge and 169 on Interpretation of Materials. After the test, I was sure I had failed. So was this book helpful? I guess yes and no. I studied what it told me to study, and I did the practice tests in the back. Not very much of what was in the book was on my test, but it must be somewhat helpful for me to get that score.
I would buy it, but realize that the test is incredibly hard and no book will completely prepare you. As for this book specifically, there were typos and confusing questions but all in all a good jumping off point.

I am in the process of studying for the Praxis Exam 0081. I purchased the ETS edition first then I purchased the cliff notes edition. The praxis edition gave me the actual subject topics that I will need to be sucessful at passing this test, but I had to reasearch every single topic. The cliff notes version gives you information about the topic. The summarys were very helpful and they were pretty close to the accurate research that I had done for different subject areas. The actual practice test is better in the ETS version because it is an old exam, but with both items and research, I should not have a problem passing this exam. The people that think that this study guide sucks do to the type-o's is paying to much attention to what isnt important. This book is a study guide. That means it gives you the directions that you need to study sucessfully, not the answers. Its your job to utilize the information as well as other sources (history books, economic books) to make sure that you have enough knowledge to pass this test. This books gives you a very good starting point. I wish I would have purchased it first.

I bought this book online without skimming through the actual volume in the bookstore, which was my mistake. It is a carelessly written and poorly executed preparation for PRAXIS II Social Studies Content Knowledge. There is very little in the way of familiarization or study skills for the test. The book does not give the reader any indication as to how the test is scored, therefore the reader cannot use the practice tests as an accurate gauge of his/her performance. The review section is shoddily written, with many spelling and typographical errors. It does not provide any kind of in-depth review, it merely states historical events without any kind of context to aid in understanding. It does not cover everything it purports to cover, although in fairness, this is difficult to do. The explanations for the answers are half-hearted and, at times, confusing. Overall, this book is a waste of time and money, and I was fortunate to have been an astute student of history all my life. Otherwise, I would have been out of luck.

Teaching in a high school with a large number of minority children can be challenging. After reading this book, recommended by the debate teacher, I feel that I am better prepared. This book is an excellent resource for those wanting to understand the student from a background different form their own. If you plan to work in public school, this book is a must-read. I borrowed a friend's book, and then decided I had to have a copy of my own.

Shirley Brice Heath's Ways with Words is an ethnographic study of two greatly differing groups, both racially and economically, in the South-Eastern United States during the 1970s, and the difficulties created for teachers, due to language and learning differences, when they come together in the school system. These are, respectively, the black textile-working community of `Trackton', and the white business-owning townspeople of `Roadville'.

The language usage of the Trackton children often causes problems later on in the townspeople's schools. Aside from the difficulty they have with such concepts as time-space scheduling and the function of certain toys for certain purposes, due to their different learning strategies at home, class assignments can become a hindered task. First of all, language barriers exist between the teachers of Roadville and the black students from Trackton. Often times their word usage does not parallel and misunderstandings become regularity, such as the Trackton usage of the word "ain't" for "didn't" and the teacher's misunderstanding of it as "doesn't". This explains the instance of confusion in a conversation between a teacher and young Lem: "A teacher asked one day: `where is Susan? Isn't she here today?' Lem answered: "She ain't ride de bus.' The teacher responded: `She doesn't ride the bus, Lem.' Lem answered: `She do be ridin' de bus.' The teacher frowned at Lem and turned away" (Heath 276). Such miscommunications were commonplace between these two groups.

Trackton children would also have trouble following what to the teacher were simple directions. For example, Trackton children made a distinction between putting toys "away" and putting them "where they belonged" (Heath 280). Teachers would become frustrated when they asked the prior and found toys scattered in places where they "didn't belong," however, if the latter was asked, the task was completed properly. Also, Trackton's differing notion of truth played a large role in the frustrations. When it was time for story telling, the Trackton children excelled at fanciful tales. However, when asked to give a truthful account, they still embellished with lies, for "inside the classroom, their language play, incorporation of commercial characters, and many of their themes" that are actually valued in their culture "are unacceptable. The close personal network which gives Trackton stories their context and their meaning at home has no counterpart in the school" (Heath 297).

Unfortunately, the teachers initially misjudged these differences between the townspeople, including the teachers, and the Trackton children. But soon many teachers began to find an effective means of teaching the children and advancing their skills by using the terms and rules of the Trackton children themselves. They began to realize that the Trackton children were interpreting things such as workbook activities not in the wrong way, necessarily, but in a different way contrary to what the author had in mind. For instance, seeing three fish in a fishbowl and counting only one, because there was only one group of fish in the fishbowl (Heath 291). They began to use more visuals that made more sense to the Trackton children, like household products, photographs, and shopping games to perpetuate a learning environment. Some even had the children record their own conversations and those of others, to later replay and notice the differences in language use. All of these attempts, by the way, were successful.

Shirley Brice Heath dives into meticulous (I repeat, meticulous) detail on how these successes were and can again be achieved. The work is dense with information, and is therefore not light reading, but her guidance on using ethnographic technique to improve the classroom is invaluable to teachers, especially those who contend with a local culture that is in many ways foreign to their own. The author Amy Tan once wrote of her Chinese mother that because she spoke "broken" English, people assumed her thoughts were "broken" as well. Ways with Words reveals just how much can be falsely assumed through miscommunication, and how those barriers can be breached.

Shirley Brice Heath's Ways with Words is an immersing ethnography of communication, detailing the language socialization practices of two working-class Piedmont South Carolina communities, Roadville and Trackton, and the effects of these practices on their children's success in school. The peculiar characteristics of these two communities lend themselves particularly well to Heath's presentation of them as gestalts: both are small, geographically limited and centralized, and community members spend most of their non-working time there. Heath's thorough ethnographic description allows her to critique the oversimplifications of other studies of education; in doing so, however, she overcompensates by neglecting issues of class. The greatest contribution that Ways with Words makes to the larger field of linguistic anthropology is its tacit focus on iconicity, which strongly suggests that the emphasis on indexicality to the exclusion of iconicity in contemporary linguistic anthropology is seriously counterproductive.

Language Socialization in Roadville and Trackton
The white working-class families of Roadville have had connections to local textile mills for four generations, their relatives having come from the Appalachian Mountains to work (28) . The black working-class families of Trackton, on the other hand, have only been working in the mills for the two decades since the advent of desegregation (29). Desegregation has had an effect on more than just work: in the 1970s, black and white children started attending the same schools with both black and white teachers, leading to major difficulties for educators
Roadville and Trackton are alike in many ways: both are somewhat isolated working-class communities, neither of which occupy more than a single block, within a larger town. Life of community members, excepting work, school, and church, centers on their respective communities. Although not everybody of working age works in the local textile mills, all families have some members who do. Moreover, both communities are positively oriented toward school, believing it critical for future success beyond the mills. Despite these similarities, children in the two communities are socialized into language quite differently.
In Roadville, babies are spoken to as potential conversational partners from the moment of birth (118). Their actions are assumed to be intentional and meaning-laden, and their utterances taken to be referential (120-2). As they grow older, children are told the labels for things, and adults expect to hear this appropriate label recited upon request (127). Roadville adults value this kind of `right' knowledge that can be memorized and routinely repeated precisely as told.
Trackton stands in sharp contrast; here, babies are not seen as potential interactional partners. They are spoken about rather than to (74-5). They are nevertheless surrounded at all times by multiple ongoing communications, as community life is centered on an open plaza between their houses in which can be heard the overlapping voices of adults, older children, and radios (73). In coming to be competent speakers, Trackton children are on the stage of the plaza where the artful embellishment of stories is highly valued. Whereas in Roadville the rote recitation of conventional scripts is positively evaluated, in Trackton verbal creativity receives the highest praise.
Both people in Roadville and in Trackton tell stories, but the content, context, and purposes of these stories are quite dissimilar. In Roadville, stories are purely truthful and end with a moral that is applicable to the faults of all present, thus building a mutual community identity. In Trackton, stories are fictions that blossom from an initial germ of truth in an attempt to extol one's virtues and gain attention on the plaza (183-4).
There are no books in Trackton except the Bible and lesson books from school, but reading is nevertheless an important aspect of children's lives. It serves functional purposes when interacting with the mailman, and especially when going to the store (191-2). Prices and product names must be read, but text is strongly rooted in its context and visual appearance: when `Kellogg's' is presented in small-capitals, in contrast to its usual looping script, children cannot recognize the word (193).
In contrast, Roadville residents highly value reading as an activity with intrinsic value, but talk about reading is rarely followed up with actual reading (220). Children are, however, read bedtime stories as preschoolers. During these stories, parents ask their children to label objects in the story or occasionally to connect what is seen in the story to real-world information (223-4). After the age of three, however, the active participation of children in reading stories subsides, and children are to sit and listen passively (225-6).
In her description of the oral and literate traditions of both Roadville and Trackton, Heath presents a critique of over-simplified classifications. Neither community can be reduced to a dichotomy of `oral' vs. `literate', as both communities engage in both types of practice. Moreover, the complex and multiple uses of both written and spoken text (only some of which are detailed above) proscribe grouping both all oral traditions and all literate traditions together as `essentially the same' (230). In characterizing these distinct and nuanced characteristics of the oral and literate practices in Roadville and Trackton, she sets the stage for explaining the different experiences and challenges of children from these communities in school.

Roadville and Trackton Children in School
In the early grades of primary school, Roadville children generally excel. They are seen as polite; understand the ties of single functions to single spaces (e.g. a place to keep puzzles, a place to play with sand, etc.) (273); and recall lessons, events, and stories verbatim (301). Trackton children, on the other hand, flounder on all of these counts. Instead, they behave as they would in Trackton, using stories to divert accusations of misconduct and approaching toys and spaces as bricoleurs. When expected to tell stories, both groups of children fail to meet the expectations of teachers, but in highly differentiated ways. Unlike in Roadville, in the classroom fictive stories with ongoing evaluations of events are valued. Instead of such stories, Roadville children tend to deliver chronological recapitulations of actual events (301). Trackton children neither tell entirely nonfictive stories, nor do they meet expectations of setting up the context for their fictive stories (296-7). In both cases, the children's understanding of `story' is conditioned by norms for story telling in their respective communities, which differ substantially from the mainstream values of their teachers (295).
When discussing mainstream townspeople, the community from which these teachers generally come, Heath unhelpfully skirts around the issue of class. Although she does not hesitate to label both Trackton and Roadville as `working-class', she only ever hints at the fact that these particular townspeople are middle class, despite labeling mainstreamers as so in general (12). This omission is likely part of her anti-simplification project, which encompasses not only class, but dichotomies of oral vs. literate traditions (as explained above), race (3), and other single-factor explanations for children's success or failure in school (344). In rejecting class and race and embracing complexity, Heath attempts to dismiss both race and class as simple determiners of school success, which she does successfully by connecting the specific ways Roadville and Trackton children struggle in school to specific practices of language socialization and use in their home communities. By entirely neglecting class and race, however, she impinges on her own ability to connect her ethnography with a larger discourse concerning the reproduction of class. She criticizes `critics of education' for `arguing that the preschool language socialization patterns of the middle class ensure their preparedness in the knowledge and skills of symbolic manipulation of language required for school success' `with more abstractions than linguistic or cultural data' (404, note 1), s. Although she does not describe the middle class aspect of the process of class reproduction, she elegantly elaborates with abundant `linguistic and cultural data' two instances of the working-class side of class reproduction by showing how `preschool language socialization patterns' in working-class Roadville and Trackton ensure the unpreparedness of their children `in the knowledge and skills of symbolic manipulation of language required for school success'.

A Tale of Latent Iconicity
Because Heath is writing in part for a non-specialist audience, she largely refrains from using specific linguistic anthropological terminology. Nevertheless, latent within Ways with Words is a tale of iconicity, which infuses the story Heath tells about the way people use language: iconicity undergirds the linguistic ideologies of Trackton, the language habits of Roadville, and the judgments of students by mainstream teachers. In exploring the ways in which iconicity pervades language in Ways with Words, I hope to demonstrate the necessity for an awareness of iconicity in the description of language practices in Roadville and Trackton and the problems children encounter in school, thereby showing that the focus on indexicality to the exclusion of iconicity in contemporary linguistic anthropological discussions of pragmatics and metapragmatics is seriously counterproductive.

Iconicity In Trackton
One aspect of language use about which Trackton residents have a metalinguistic discourse is the variability in the meaning of signs that are iconic of each other over different contexts and with different intonation. A Trackton woman comments on the importance of understanding context, not merely text, for interpretation: `"Ain't no use me tellin' `im: `Learn dis, learn dat, what's dis? what's dat?' He just gotta learn, gotta know; he see one thing one place one time, he know how it go, see sump'n like it again, maybe it be de same, maybe it won't"' (105, Heath's emphasis). Children must be able to recognize contexts, then, in order to understand language (or indeed any signs), and part of language socialization is encountering tokens of different types of contexts. Building a model of these types is an important part of language socialization as children `continually have to draw analogies from one situational context to another, and to determine how the situational context gives the form its particular meaning at that point' (105). These analogies themselves are diagrammatic icons: the similarities (or differences) in relations between elements in the current context and those in previous contexts encountered lead to similar (or different) understandings.
Moreover, analogy questions that call for the child to drawn on his or her experiences to deliver an open-ended response are the kind of question most frequently asked of preschoolers in Trackton (105). Imagic and metaphoric icons, both formulaic and otherwise, are common parts of adult discourse. For example (106, my emphasis outside of slashes):
Ted: I hear Doug got hisself a new car.
Cuz: Yea, he total his las' one.
Ted: What'd he git dis time.
Cuz: Ya know Robert's car? /looking at Ted/
//Ted gives an affirmative nod//
It's like dat, `cept red.

Children in Trackton are keenly aware of iconicity. Even `preverbal but mobile children, upon seeing a new object, often go and get another which is similar' (106). Older children spontaneously comment on things that are like others, pointing out `"Robert's car'" or `"'nother Hardee's'" while on drives (106).
The importance of context in Trackton, and the way meaning (or even what something is perceived as) is dependent on context, affects interpretation of written text, as briefly mentioned with the example of the transposition of `Kellogg's' above. Text that is presented in a typeface, location, or position other than that in which it is usually encountered inhibits interpretation. This context dependence prevents Trackton children from transferring skills and knowledge previously learned between contexts (192).
Although Heath does not describe it as such, she performs an informal neo-Whorfian experiment akin to those of John Lucy. On the functional level, which `concerns whether using language in a particular way (e.g. schooled) may influence thinking' (Lucy 1997: 292), her trial is essentially a test of how Trackton children perceive things to be iconic of each other. She asks the children to group together wooden blocks that are `alike', and the children invariably first separate out pieces with small amounts of glue on them. When asked to sort them further, they distinguish between darker or lighter grains for both the glued and non-glued pieces (Heath 1983: 107). Interestingly, they pay no attention to size and shape characteristics, counter to what might be expected from Lucy's comparative study on Yucatec and English (1992, cited in Foley 1997: 209-211).

Iconicity in Roadville
Iconic language use in Roadville varies greatly from that in Trackton. Whereas ideologies of iconicity in Trackton are focused on context, practices in Roadville are more text-centric. In summarizing how Roadville children's language use is like their parents', Heath lists three features, all of which are related to iconicity: Roadville children and parents `report exactly how something is said, maintain a single consistent label for items and events, and render stories in absolute chronological order with direct discourse' (165).
`Report exactly how something is said': all reported speech is to be delivered as an icon on two counts. Signs should be tokens of the same type (imagic iconicity) as those being reported, and those signs should be recounted in the same order as originally delivered (diagrammatic iconicity). `Maintain a single consistent label for items and events': a picture of a dog in a book is a `dog', not a `mutt' or `hound dog' or the name of a specific dog, like `Blackie', unless that label has previously been specified as the `right' one (227). In nursery school, children used to their teacher inviting them to `"work with playdough"' will correct a substitute teacher inviting them to `"play with clay"' (165). `Render stories in absolute chronological order with direct discourse': a story should essentially be a diagrammatic icon of a real-life event, with all its parts recounted in the proper order.
The kind of teaching Roadville children encounter in church is iconic of that in the home (and vice versa), reinforcing the same kinds of memorization and labeling patterns. The practices valued in church are the abilities to memorize and recite passages, books, characters, dates, and places from the Bible (140). This kind of fixed knowledge exhibited through exact repetition is precisely what is also valued in Roadville. Even the stories told in Roadville are iconic of Bible parables, sharing such features as moralizing summations, little emotional evaluation, and formulaic openings (154).

Iconicity in School
In school, teachers judge their students on the basis of implicit models for correct behavior and speech. When students deliver performances that are iconic of these models (i.e. tokens of these types), they are judged positively. As mentioned above, children from both Roadville and Trackton come to school with a repertoire different from that expected by the school, and their performances are often judged negatively. Heath focuses heavily on oral and written stories presented by students, and diagrams the features valued for both fictive and nonfictive stories in the school, and those for stories from Roadville (nonfictive only) and Trackton (`modified nonfictive'), in a chart (295).
In preschool, Roadville and Trackton children encounter many indirect questions from teachers that model their teachers' models for politeness, but not their own (279-80). Because they have never encountered questions comparable to these in their home settings, their lack of a type-level understanding makes it impossible for these children to follow the rules indirectly referred to by these questions. Although Roadville children are accustomed to time-delimited tasks such as they encounter in preschool, Trackton children are not. When they finish tasks early, or wish to continue them for a longer period of time, they become frustrated (275)
The difficulties Trackton children have with decontextualization and recontextualization make learning to read particularly challenging, but one first-grade teacher, Mrs. Gardner, uses Heath's ethnographic data to build lessons that work with these children's strengths. Instead of beginning to teach reading based on sounding out elements, she emphasizes the shape of words (286), drawing on the strength of Trackton children's visual acuity (106). Heath details other such teaching strategies that emphasize the strengths students bring to the classroom and that make learning activities relevant to the contexts of their lives in the last chapter of her ethnography, which inspire hope that creative and innovative teachers might be able to overcome some of the difficulties failure-track students encounter in schools.
Linguistic Anthropology Needs Iconicity
Iconicity is not constrained to the language of Trackton and Roadville; it pervades all speech. Any discussion of context is essentially one of iconicity, comparing one set of circumstances to those previously encountered, building models or types of contexts. Whenever communication between people speaking `the same language' fails, it should be to iconicity, and not indexicality, that analysts first turn: interactional participants fail to recognize the context recognized by the other, to know how to speak and act in a given context, or perceive the context as tokens of different types. These are issues first and foremost of similarity (or lack thereof), of iconicity.
In this review of Shirley Heath's ethnography of communication, Ways with Words, I have tried to give it a fair reading, pointing out how it could have been connected to larger class concerns, but generally appreciating its detailed presentation of the gestalt of two small Piedmont Carolina communities, Roadville and Trackton, and their language socialization practices. Because of the unusual connections Heath had with these communities and their especially centralized natures, a comparable ethnography will be difficult to find. The contributions Heath makes to education studies and linguistic anthropology, however, lie less in the specifics of her ethnography and more in its general focus. For education studies, she shows that thorough ethnographic research methods can be applied to increase the success of children in school. For linguistic anthropology, Ways with Words tacitly demands an invigorated emphasis on iconicity. It could be possible to critique my review on the basis of focusing on iconicity to the exclusion of indexicality; however, my goal is not to dismiss the importance of indexicality, but to assert the importance of a ground that has been recently neglected: iconicity.


Works Cited
William Foley, Ed. 1997. Anthropological Linguistics: An Introduction. Massachusetts:
Blackwell Publishing.

Shirley Heath. 1983. Ways with Words. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

John Lucy. 1997. `Linguistic Relativity' in Annual Review of Anthropology. Vol. 26.

Language is power. Heath, a reflective practitioner of both human nature and schooling, provides an in-depth view of communities which epitomize the struggle for such power. In her ethnographic study of Trackton and Roadville, Heath lays bare the socializing process of children through words. The discontinuity between home and school is disturbing; a realization that students who do not fit the traditional way of schooling are left behind. Clearly illustrated is the need for teachers and students to bridge the gap which exists in relation to both language and culture, for without this effort some students will never acquire the power needed to take control of their education or pursue opportunities from which they have previously been excluded. This is must reading for student ethnographers, doctoral students, and those dedicated to school reform, particularly those in the areas of diversity in public schools, and language. This extraordinary book compares favorably to "Growing Up Literate: Learning From Inner-City Families" by Denny Taylor & Catherine Dorsey-Gaines.

As a graduate student in English, I am not one who wanted to take any courses on rhetoric and composition. I signed up for one class this semester that focused on literacy and race. This book was a required reading. I was actually one of the only students who liked this book. Heath immerses herself in the communities of Trackton and Roadville. As an instructor of some of the local teachers, she decided to look into the literacy learning of these two communities. Trackton, an all black community, consists of people reading to learn. In Roadville, the all-white community is struggling with desegregation and parents wanting their children to learn the "right" things. The study of the Piedmont Carolinas--the area where the two communities are located--is important because it specifies that culture has everything to do with the way language and literacy is learned. I give it four stars because in the course of a ten year study, it did not seem as if she gathered a lot of research. She seemed to focus only on their lifestyles.

Such a small book, yet packed with awesome wisdom. Very simple for first-third grade, yet very complete for basic academics. I wish I had found this book before I committed to a curriculum. It would have saved me quite a bit of money.

I refer to this book often to help me stay on track. Its contents offer straight forward advice on teaching in the early grades. You'll even find it beneficial to read this book when you have a preschooler, to get an idea of what lies ahead and what to do when your child is ready. In addition, reading this book will help the homeschooling parent in choosing curriculum, not with specific suggestions, but by general ideas offered.

The included wall chart of phonics and numbers has been helpful, but leaves something to be desired in the way it was printed in only blue and yellow ink. It's just bonus material. The book is your investment.

This book is a well written, easy to use guide. It includes a handy phonics chart, and a math chart on the reverse side. You certainly get a lot of bang for your buck. The only downside, is that you need to have some familiarity with phonetic sounds, (i.e. the actual sound) that the dipthongs, digraphs, phonograms, etc. make. Otherwise, this book is spectacular.

This is one of the fundamental homeschooling books -- useful for parents of children up to about age 8.

It seems like the most effective ways to teach children are often the most easy to overlook. This wonderful book shows parents and teachers how to utilize simple, low-cost means to give their young children a strong start in learning.

This book has been most helpful in our homeschooling adventure and was key in pulling this over-achieving, by-the-book teaching mother away from the need to keep to a rigid schedule and actually enjoy teaching and learning with my children.

Highly recommended.

This was a book that I needed for school. It arrived quickly and was exactly what I needed.

One of the best references on word study; making it relevant, easy to implement and a fun way to learn words, their characteristics and patterns.
My Third Grade class looks forward to the variety of activities and their use of the high frequency words and the word wall has increased.

Words are part of our language and students must be given the opportunity to play and experiment with words in different contexts. This book is a great resource for the primary grades. It provides useful word study activities that can be implemented in the classroom such as, making new words, word sorts, word ladders, and webs. The text offers an array of appendixes that teachers can use in their classroom. The ends of the chapters are dedicated with professional development ideas to help teachers grow as learners.

This book is a must-have resource for teachers in the primary grades. It is clearly written and full of useful ideas. The importance of learning about words is clear, but it can be boring. This book presents the concept of "word study" and describes children as "word solvers" in a most appealing way, and takes the drudgery out of phonics instruction. The lists in the back (e.g., phonograms) are very handy for a busy reading teacher.

I teach college students--both preservice and practicing teachers--and I require this book every year. Students tell me that it is one of the few textbooks that they intend to keep and use regularly.

Clear, to-the-point, and full of great ideas to help those who work with elementary children learning to read. The feature I like best is the built in professional development suggestions to use the book within a building, a grade or a district as an inservice tool. Don't miss this one!