Teacher Training Books

Very comprehensive excellent handbook on substitute teacher. The number one book recommended by many school districts.

I am just starting out as a sub for grade school and wanted to be well prepared. I saw great reviews on this particular book and decided to go for it. I was not dissapointed. It has a lot of good tips and includes some handy filler/emergency tactics such as games and pages to copy to keep the day running smoothly. It also has lots of handy information that is grade specific so no matter where you go, you will have a reference and appropriate backup to refer to. I highly recommend it.

This book is very handy and has been very helpful in giving a new teacher ideas for use in the classroom. Many activities and reproducable sheets are included as well. While most of the content on being an effective teacher I have read elsewhere in such titles as Harry and Rosemary Wong's 'The First Days of School', this handbook is recommended for teachers who are starting out.

This book is the best resource out there, and is currently being used at the local university. I am an education major and my campus uses this edition as well. There are many helpful bulleted lists for quick reference while in the classroom. Several supply freebies are printed up just waiting to Xeroxed st your convenience. Still, the best features are it's ease of reading and application of little details that make all the difference. This is the kind of "practical magic" you don't receive from a formal education that makes all the difference come game time.

This book provides some real insights and valuable suggestions for how to approach substitute teaching. In fact, I have used the techniques outlined in the book to solve other problems with regards to public speaking and small group leadership.

Overall, I have found the book helpful, although I do have one very minor complaint...Although the book makes every effort to be clear in its presentation (using reminder icons etc.) The headings threw me off. Generally you expect Larger headings to be the main point with smaller headings explaining subpoints; however the headings in this book kind of blurred together using the same fonts, so I had to go back in the reading to determine what the over arching themes were for the chapter.

As I said, very minor complaint!!! Otherwise, I would say...Buy this book first! The others just reiterate the same points, and they don't do it with half the level of thoroughness.

In pellucid prose, author David Mulroy, a classicist at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, discusses the deleterious effect that a decades-long avoidance of formal instruction in grammar has had on American students: SAT scores are down; reading comprehension has declined; enrollment in most foreign languages has dropped; and students suffer in general from a "higher illiteracy." While students can, that is--some of them, at least--express themselves adequately, they are not proficient at explicating the literal meanings of grammatically complex texts. Asked to paraphrase the first sentence of the Declaration of Independence, for example, one of the author's students writes: "It doesn't matter where you came from. In the end we are all human beings. Humans are at the top of the food chain, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't respect nature. Because we have one earth, learn to preserve it."

The purpose of grammar, Mulroy explains, is twofold: "It preserves and perfects understanding of the great literature of the past, and it contributes to eloquent self-expression." He argues persuasively for a return to a concentration on formal grammatical instruction in schools, not out of some school-marmish obsession with sentence-ending prepositions or the like, but because grammar is a foundation for further understanding: "Intellectuals work with words. Questioning the value of basic grammar is like asking whether farmers should know the names of their crops and animals." He points out, too, what most of us probably take for granted, that the world benefits enormously from the existence of a standard English, which grammatical instruction helps maintain: speakers of English across the globe can communicate with one another easily, which was not true of English speakers mere villages apart in the medieval period.

Mulroy hits on a number of topics in his short book, among them the ancient liberal arts curriculum, the history of the classification of words into eight basic categories, educational practices in the middle ages, and progressive education. Happily, he also includes a section on sentence diagramming. This allowed me to pass a pleasant half hour diagramming sentences with my eight-year-old: intrigued by the game at first, she came to think me unusual in my interests, and facetiously suggested we try subtracting for pleasure next. She may mock, but then she's not likely to wind up thinking the Declaration of Independence was an early-American plea for nature preserves.

Reviewed by Debra Hamel, author of Trying Neaira: The True Story of a Courtesan's Scandalous Life in Ancient Greece

Do you know what a participle is? Can you identify the eight parts of speech, and diagram a sentence? If so, and if you went to American schools, you are dating yourself; you are probably not young anymore. And quite possibly, you don't think it makes much difference. David Mulroy disagrees. In _The War Against Grammar_ (Boynton / Cook Publishers), he reports upon a hiatus he took from his usual work, translating and teaching Latin and Greek poetry, so that he could research the history of grammar. He did not do so from purely academic interest; in 1996, at a public hearing on standards for public schools, he suggested that a good goal would be for high school seniors to identify the eight parts of speech. He was surprised that he had suggested anything controversial. The very National Council of Teachers of English had pronounced that instruction in grammar did nothing but take time away from more important studies.

Mulroy makes clear that there is a need for grammar study. Opposition to grammar education coincides with decreased literacy, lower SAT scores, and increased need for college remedial writing and reading courses. His fascinating history of the subject goes way back to the basics; it isn't surprising, given his own interests, that he turns to Ancient Greece. Dionysius Thrax in the second century BCE made the first division of words into the eight parts of speech, taken up by Roman and English grammarians in their turn. Oddly, the rise of the universities meant that logic, not grammar or literature, was king, but the humanists were able to insist on a Latin grammar book for all English students in the 1540s. Raised on it were Spenser, Bacon, Marlowe, and Shakespeare; it might be oversimplification, but there is probably some sort of cause and effect here. American education was in direct descent of this emphasis on grammar, until the advent of "progressive education" which shunned "formalism," instruction by rote. Instruction in grammar was held to be detrimental to the unconscious and automatic way students would express themselves. The definition of what a sentence is can be disputed, as can definitions of the parts of speech, and the conclusion has become that such formalisms need not be taught. This has become the way teachers of English teach English, or fail to.

It doesn't have to be this way. Mulroy gives many examples, in different languages, of the art of diagramming sentences. If you can break a sentence into its parts and know how the parts function, you can understand it. He admits that when he is stymied by a complicated sentence he wants to translate from Latin or Greek to English, he starts diagramming it. "Normally, the obscurity vanishes before I finish the diagram." He tells of the remarkable success of schools that insist that students master grammar. Schools in England have made grammar the centerpiece of a literacy drive. In America, there is even an Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar within the National Council of Teachers of English, but its members are a tiny fraction of those in the NCTE. Mulroy's classic structure for advocacy (problem, history, solution) gives his book a surprising immediacy and practicality. At the end, a reader will possibly think, "I can't have just finished a book about the lack of grammar in today's schools." Mulroy has made the erudite instruction surprisingly entertaining.

I teach in a multiage classroom (K-2) and I am not a big fan of science so for me to give this book a five star rating is really saying something! I love the way the book is set up. Each activity clearly states materials needed and procedure. An important piece for me is the "Teacher information" section which gives some necessary background or supplemental information to the teacher. There is also a section called "For problem solvers" which takes kids (and teacher) to a deeper level. This book is a winner!