Education Teaching Books

Perfect review to reinforce what we are already covering in Math. I use these Scholastic Review books one day each week just for a change of pace. They are not good if you are using them for your primary instruction books, but the reviews are helpful since they often come at a concept in a slightly different way.

I used this as a supplement for our class instruction for math homework. My kids enjoyed them :)

This book is what you expect from Scholastic. Solid drills with clear and concise reviews on 3rd grade multiplication and division topics. Third grade children need significant practice to really grasp the calc skills. This ready-to-use resource includes more than 40 fun practice pages. The simple directions and fun exercises make them perfect for kids to use independently in school or as homework. The problems are not difficult. Its goal is to make your child master the fundamentals, not just know them.

An effective way to achieve mastery is to time the drills. I recommend you run a clock for your child and set a fun speed goal to get rid of procrastination. For a benchmark, you can use Beestar online math tests to compare your child's speed with others. My son's math skills (include speed) improved significantly with this book. I'm glad I bought it.

Highlights:

Multiplication and division facts
Multiplying 2- and 3-digit numbers
Multiplying with regrouping
Multiplying money
Word problems
Dividing with remainders

As someone who has taught foreign languages for 20 years and headed up a university foreign language department for nine years, I suspected I had fallen into ruts and needed a fresh overview of current theory and practice. The book met my needs perfectly. In fact, I will be rereading it. Highly recommended.

I read this book in a teacher's book study. Although it certainly addressed all of the current philosophies of language learning, inclusion,contextualizing, giving detailed feedback, etc., the main thing I remember from that book study is how glad I was not to be still in graduate school having to read things like this regularly. It was heavy on theory and short on practical, usable suggestions for the actual teacher having to deal with discipline issues, keeping the kids entertained and motivated, and coping with paperwork while instructing. The prose was dense and unapproachable. I can see that a lot of effort was put into the book, but I hope any future editions will take the practicing teacher into account. It takes a lot of time and effort to put together a stimulating language class. Reading this book took more time than it was worth in terms of practical information.

This is great book to have and read as a teacher's guide book in ESL and SLA field.I've used this book in the class and this gives lots of resources and methodology, etc. This is one of my favorite book.

Bought this for my girlfriend who is going to MedSchool. She seems happy as a pup with two tails about this book. I don't know how, Med students creative writing skills are worst that a sloth, but I don't think they care much for creative so much as they look for factual data.

This book contains everything technical I needed to know to apply for medical schools. It gives you all the step by step guides. It also gives you detailed, necessary information according to how early or late you may be in the preparation process. This book was a great purchase! I absolutely recommend it.

I didn't have any contact with medicine before college and was in desperate need for good information. This is a great resource.

This book is a great resource whether you are interested in med school or already in med school. It delineates what to expect for next 4 yrs in med school with extremely helpful guides!

The problem with this book and those similar to it is that these books reinforce the idea of how wonderful it will be to become a physician. Here is all you need to know: After four years of grinding out top grades in classes like organic chemistry, you can look forward to another four years of no sleep, no social life, being humiliated and terrified by residents and attendings, and running up 100,000 to 200,000 dollars of debt, and then another 3 to 7 years of residency....all this to live in fear of being sued by a four-pack-per-day-smoker who will blame you for his myocardial infarction. Or better yet, be constantly second guessed by every high school drop out with an internet connection who someohow knows more than you and your expensive high-powered medical training because they "looked it up on the web". Do I have another 4 or 5 hours to tell you about managed care? Take it from a doctor who is living his "dream"...run, run away to something less stressful and more fulfilling than present day medicine...you know, like juggling chain saws.

One star! Let me explain. This book does have a lot of practice activities but the 2008 is quite misleading. There is very little that is new here. Barron's has the vocabulary lists, same listening practice, same reading practice as it has had since at least 1996. I guess coming up with new material cuts into the profits. Very little here will help with the new test formats. The paragraph grammar fill in with root word is recycled from a previous edition and doesn't allow the use of perfect and progressive tenses even though the AP exam does. The conversation speaking section is really messed up since their dialogs are impossible to interact with unless you have listened to the dialog previously which you cannot do on the AP test. For example, one between the student and a college guide has instructions for the student to indicate where to go first on the tour, then the guide answers "oh, I see that you've heard a lot about the science program." These conversation dialogs were not written according to the new guidelines and are the same ones that Barron's used in their messed up, rushed 2007 version. Also, the reading sections are not from authentic sources even though the college board is now using authentic sources. Overall, this book is harder than the actual AP test (buy a released version from 1998 or 2003 and you'll know what I mean) which one would think is a good thing but it is not. They are more difficult (especially the reading) because Barron's has gone out of its way to use extremely obscure vocabulary. Unless you have a great chance at a five you will be extremely frustrated by this book.

I suppose for students studying on their own this book would be ok although it doesn't matter really, unless you are pretty close to fluent or have had extensive traditional instruction in the language you'll fail anyway or if your lucky get a three which is good for nothing. However, language teachers don't buy this book if you have any previous Barron's edition. These greedy money suckers come up with ten new pages and call it a new version except in this case the 2007 version and the 2007-2008 version are almost exactly identical.

It's too bad there isn't an AP practice book filled with practice activities and with no explanation about the test, no vocabulary lists, no wasted pages - just practice. 100 dialogs, 100 reading selections, etc. Now that would be a real practice book.

I was just reading the previous review, and he is right. This book is just frustrating and demoralizing. First of all, the reading section in this book is nothing like it on the real AP test; the real AP test reading selections are actually quite easier. The listening selections were somewhat helpful for the AP test... the actual clips were probably just as hard to understand as these were. Other than that, this book was of no help for me for the AP test. Because of this, I thought I would earn a 3, when in fact I earned a 5. I would highly recommend the NEWEST VERSION of AP Spanish: Preparing for the Language Examination by Jose Diaz if you want a great grade on the exam. The test was very, very similar to the activities in this book, maybe because Jose Diaz is a table leader at the AP Spanish readings. If you purchase Diaz's workbook, make sure to buy the audio CDs and answer key seperately if your teacher does not use it as a supplement in class like mine did.

As required for licensure, I used this text for the mandated Crisis Intervention post-master's course. In addition to basic mental health crisis intervention, the book primarily focuses on crisis response, crisis planning, and other concepts introduced to the general public by FEMA and HRSA after the events of 9/11.

I suppose if you are not familiar with the planning component, and do not want to take the time to search through the free FEMA and Red Cross files on the net, you'll have a brief, one-stop shopping experience with this text. And, I also suppose this is "stuff" one should probably know for administrator level position within human service organizations. However, be warned...this is great theory that academics want you to know. But in the real world, the plan in written and put on a shelf.

The material is becoming a bit dated now with the continued inclusion of psychoanalytic theory, the Chinese "danger" and "opportunity" symbols refuted by language scholars, and too many offensive terms. For example, on page 5 decribes veterans suffering from PTSD as those who have "turnstiled through VA hospitals," and page 280 on substance abuse includes an example of a "passerby who gives a street bum a handout," so that "the bum is enable to buy the wine." Some fresh talent is needed to revive this book.

I work as a Crisis Intervention Specialist for a hospital, so I thought that this information would be useful, as I was taking a graduate level class in Crisis Intervention. I think that this is a good book for someone that is just starting out, but for a seasoned veteran, I thought that it wsn't that helpful.

The authors definitely know their material, but I agree with the review by, "a reader," in relation to how much swearing they put in with dialogues. I also thought that the dialogues were contrived with no attempt at making them seem realistic. I got the impression that the writer may not have been a therapist and was playing make-believe, "If I was at the top of my field in psychology and having suicidal thoughts, this is what I would say and this is how I would respond to someone like that." I just don't see some of the people being as straight-foreward with a therapist or colleague as they conveyed and even in the study groups we'd read some of this out loud and yell, "IN MY DREAMS!"

James and Gilliand are not the James brothers by any stretch of the imagination. (I am referring to the James brothers-- one was a psychologist who wrote like a writer and the other was a writer who wrote like a psychologist.)

The book was adequate for what my prof used it for: it was a springboard for discussion in class and prepared us to go further in our education to becoming crises intervention specialists.

A fairly good text, it probably covers the field better than other available sources. However, the selection of illustrations seem to be chosen based on how much profanity they can include. I realize that crisis situations involve people who don't monitor their usage, but why include every F--- and other curse word when they aren't needed to convey the meaning.

I teach large classes and probably won't adopt this title because of the gratuitous inclusion of verbal static.

I have been in the field for twenty years. Asked to teach a course to students at a nearby university, I ordered this book!
I find that it is very readable and interesting and very much like the work I have been doing for the last two decades! Students will learn first hand information of what makes up crisis work, and become familiar with the many facets of crisis work. Down to earth writing and very real case scenarios! Excellent resource!

this is a complete guide for anyone interested in self improvemen

Este libro... es una muy buena guia para dar el curso de metodologia o para aquellos que inician una investigacion en psicologia.... El ingles es de facil comprension. Lo que posibilita a los estudiantes de habla hispana entender el lenguaje con relativa facilidad....

For me, the real strength of this book is the way the presence of Eleanor Duckworth shines through her writing. I liken it more to the beacon provided by a lighthouse than to a how-to manual that describes rowing techniques. The clear direction that shown through for me was that learning is complex, and that teacher behaviors must be equally complex, but the guiding light is simple: Listen to and respect the learner and respond with your whole person, and the learning that needs to happen will occur, for both partners in the process.

This book is excellent. It is an important read for teachers today. As an educator it is extremely disheartening to see the direction of education being driven today by politicians, rather than parents and teachers. Ms. Duckworth redirects are attention where it belongs, on the students & how they learn. This book gets us (teachers) thinking about the kind of classroom culture we want to create for our children. It is about what we value as educators. Don't mistake it for a quick reference, how-to book. This is not meant to be a outline of various lesson plans to try out with your class. It is more thoughtful than that and more important

This book is packed with the interesting observations derived from much experience.
"Knowing enough about things is one prerequisite for wonderful ideas." P.14.

I agree with all the other reviews, good and bad - which in some sense is in agreement with a point ED makes. We must seek out everyone's different ways of understanding. Ironic. Reminds me somewhat of Daniel Goleman's "Emotional Intelligence" in this regard.

"(P)eople sometimes use language that goes far beyond their thoughts. Some people can dazzle us with elaborate words when they do not really know what they are talking about." (p. 17). (But remember the Postmodern Generator!) I wonder how much familiarity with philosophy of language educators attempting to understand language learning in children have. A look at the references reveals no sign of folks like Quine, Wittgenstein, or even Chomsky. This alone suggests what benefit there might be in interdisciplinary efforts. Contemporary understanding of the nature of language shared with those who have practical experience teaching children and vice versa. Imagine what Wittgenstein might have said about the section on "Language and Thinking" (p. 16- 18) and on "Constructing What We Know" (p. 18-22) "In order to know something, or to think about something, then, we do not have to use words." or "Logic Is Deeper Than Language"! This is too much fun. One book that discusses a similar comparison is "Wittgenstein, Mind and Meaning: Towards a Social Conception of Mind" by Meredith Williams, as well as in "Constructive Evolution: Origins and Development of Piaget's Thought" by Michael Chapman. It seems that Piaget was influenced only by the earlier Wittgenstein when the later Wittgenstein would have been a much better fit. This seems so apparent to some that aspects of Piaget (genetic epistemology) are a "closed chapter in the history of science." (p. 127 in "Piaget-Vygotsky: The Social Genesis of Thought" by Anastasia Tryphon.

But this seems very good advice: "Words that people hear-and the younger the child is, the stronger the case-are taken into some thoughts that are already in their minds, and those thoughts may not be the ones the speaker has in mind." (p. 22)

As a parent and teacher, I strongly recommend this book to everyone concerned about children's learning. The main point of the main essay is that when children think and come up with their own ideas, it's the same fundamental process that scientists do when they are doing science, what inventors do when they are inventing, what creative artists do when they are creating, etc. Although the ideas may not seem like much to us (and may, in fact, turn out to be incorrect), they often seem wonderful to the children--and we should be supportive of children having ideas, rather than squelching them because it can be helpful in their learning. Moreover, Duckworth believes that children who are encouraged to generate ideas are more likely to grow up to be adults who come up with ideas that are true innovations in science or art, and that the world will benefit from them.

"The Having of Wonderful Ideas", by Eleanor Duckworth, was not quite what I expected. Although I learned from some aspects of the book I expected more "ideas" that could easily be understood and incorporated into classroom activities. I felt that the essays on the many experiments conducted by the author and Piaget were far too lengthy, almost drowning out any real "wonderful ideas". This book is not easy to read, and may leave the reader struggling to read to the end. However, as I stated previously, I did learn a few things, but they came too far and few between the lengthy essays.

Dr. Powell's conversational style is quite reader-friendly. She provides depth of information in a manner that is easy to understand. This book is particularly strong as an undergraduate text for a Foundations of Middle Level Education course.