Teaching Books

I had to buy this book for a graduate class. I used the QRI II all the time in my school. As the special education teacher, it was a quick and easy assessment for those first meetings. The new one is a little more organized.
Overall it is a quick and easy assessment tool.

Great informal reading inventory. It is a little tricky to administer but gets easier with repeated usage. Comes with CD that has sample videos of administering and the necessary recording forms.

The book was exactly what I needed for class and I received it in just a few days!!! This was a great experience, getting a quality item in a timely fashion.

An easy to read, understand, and user friendly manual to conduct Informal Reading Inventories on struggling readers. Plenty of material to facilitate and instruct reading.

If you are familiar at all with the Flynt & Cooter IRI, you will love the QRI-4. You have stories with pictures, and without pictures, and now you do not need to find words lists like "San Diego Quick." This books gives you everything you need. Why didn't I give it a 5 then? I wish they would have organized it better than they did.

Engaging children in books and loving reading is a natural next step when they understand and go to a deeper level to embrace books. Another must-have for kids 4-8 are 2 fabulous pieces of children's literature with invaluable teaching guides for parents and teachers:The Big Squeal: A Wild, True, and Twisted Tail and
Life's Little Lessons: An Inch-By-Inch Tale of Success...which teach those all important early reading skills and develop a love for reading !

A wonderful teaching resource for teaching reading comprehension strategies. A must read for all elementary teachers!

I absolutely love the lessons in this book. There are excellent modeling lessons and ideas to help your students increase their reading comprehension skills. You won't regret buying this book.

This is an AWESOME book. I had the opportunity to listen to Stephanie Harvey talk and she is amazing! This book makes such perfect common sense. We use the Comprehension toolkit in our school and this book goes right along with it. I actually want to expand and use this book more. It is great not only for the language arts classroom but for all content area classes. This is a must have for your professional library!!!!

Most of the reviews mention what a great teaching tool this is so I thought why can't it work for me? I'm an adult that was looking for a book to help increase my reading comprehension. My thoughts were to to go back to the beginning. Though there were some good ideas, this book was by far elementary. It does cover the basic reading comprehension skills about making connections, questioning, visualizing, inferring, etc. However, the articles, examples, drawings are all written for and by children. I can 100% understand how elementary teachers and children could benefit from this book. But if you are an adult who struggles with reading comprehension this is NOT the book for you. My suggestion is to try "Read Better, Remember More" by Elizabeth Chesla. It is fantasic. It has exceptional practice exercises and skill building ideas that can help you become a good reader who interacts with the text.

This book is part of required reading for a class I am taking. So far, I've read about 3-4 chapters and the best part of this book is that the concepts it introduces can be applied right away. It's not a how-to type book - it really does force you to think about your own curriculum & content, but it does help with structure & organization of content. It's also useful if you have a difficult time "getting started" on framing out class material.

I've used this book for three years in my graduate Curriculum Design courses for teachers. My students are practicing teachers who have seen dozens of lesson planning approaches and don't need some new theory just for the fun of it. But Wiggins and McTighe present a fresh perspective that doesn't so much replace as reposition traditional approaches. It boils down to what they call backward design--or identifying learning outcomes and assessments before addressing fun activities or how to meet state standards. This means the fun activities, state standards, and building or district level lesson plan formats all work with their system--they just remind us all to figure out the purpose of a lesson before committing the "twin sins" of merely entertaining the students or covering the material.

The book is excellent in its comprehensive scope of unit design. The size of the book is awkward but easy for making copies. The writing of the book is at times hard to read. Perhaps it's a bit too comprehensive in its scope and evaluation of unit design.

I bought this book because I needed to learn about UbD's for my new district this year. I thought that the book was well laid out and gave you a great framework for the UbD's but there was so much flab in between. There were a lot of pages that I felt like I could skip through. I do not know if that is because I graduated with an Education degree and therefore I knew most of the things they said in this book or if it because it repeats itself a lot. Overall I think this book is great for college students just starting in the profession.

I used this book as part of a graduate level class. The book is quite informative and gives great ideas on how to teach for results instead of just covering necessary material. Basically, it tells teachers to start with goals, then work backward to the introduction and teaching of the material. There are other similar strategies out there, but this is very specific as to curriculum design. It gets repetitive, but it is useful overall.

I was excited about seeing the new edition but there is nothing new and it still is tremendously dull and tired.

then this book is NOT for you. I tried to teach myself Spanish (I didn't know any) and this book just did not work out because of its poor construction. The concepts are not clearly described and all too often I found myself asking why is this grammar like this or what is the difference between the different tenses. The examples are not very helpful either.

However, I took a private introductory class and then returned to this book. Here, the book has provided some value with its vocabulary which is grouped by themes (festivals, family, etc). So the book has some value for a beginner if you are also receiving extensive instruction from another source.

Contrary to other reviews I find this textbook excellent. The chapters lead the student to learn Spanish with a minimal effort at a natural, comfortable pace. Recommended for beginners!

This book is touted as a beginners volume yet it fails to perform as specified. The contents are poorly written and few examples are given to help in the learning process. To further complicate the learning of a new language, Puntos de partida provides very little explanations and direction to ensure sufficient comprehension and understanding of the Spanish language. Unfortunantly, this review can speak for most Spanish text books on the market as my Universities Spanish program has realized. Puntos de partida will not help the beginner to learn Spanish. It will deter the beginner to seek further understanding and learning of the Spanish language. This is unfortunate.

This is the most comprehensive foreign language book I've seen. It's simple, a 6th grader could teach themselves Spanish with this book. Open it, read it, and memorize it. I had a terrible time with French and was not looking foward to learning Spanish, but I picked it up immediately as I went along with this book. When the semester was over, I spent the summer reading the rest of it at my leisure. As far as the other reviews go, I'm not sure what the problem was. It couldn't be explained any more clearly, perhaps they are moving too fast? Take a day for each page or something, whatever works. If you're not picking it up, it may be your study techniques and not the book. If you want extra practice, get the workbook. Both the workbook and the textbook have the answers to every practice exercise (of which there are an adequate amount) in the back of the book. Maybe the previous reviewers were unaware?

Believe all the good reviews! I used this book with my three year old and it works. She was really struggling through the first dozen lessons and I started to doubt she was ready so I took a couple weeks off. When I started back up again I decided to go another route and do 2 lessons a day (one after breakfast, one after dinner) and that helped immensely. I know some reviewers say that slowing down helped their child but I found that doing 2 a day helped keep it all fresh in her head and build her confidence and interest quicker. The more lessons we got through and the more confidence she got the less she wiggled in her seat during the lessons. They took us 20 to 25 minutes per lesson but she was just 3 (and very active) so I wouldn't expect her to sit still better. I can't say enough good things about this program. This built up her confidence in everything and she is so proud of herself for being able to read!

I heard about this book as I was teaching my oldest to read, and several of my friends loved it. I had read Ruth Beechick's "Strong Start in Language."

Strong Start in Language: Grades K-3 (Three R's Ser.) (Three R's Ser.)

I wasn't interested in my child reading at 3 or even 4, although she was 4 when she began. I really just wanted it to be a smooth process. I think Beechick had some very good points about vocab development at 3, so we focused on that. We started making letter sheets at 4 years old, about once a week, and reading some easy books together. By 5 she was reading at a second grade level, and at 7 she is now enjoying 5th grade books. She doesn't spend all of her free time reading, but she isn't discouraged by big words because we made a special effort to read books to her with varied vocab when she was 3 and 4. My 5 year old has just begun reading short books with the same method of natural learning.

Just this year I read 100 Easy Lessons, and it was somewhat useful aiding me in natural learning with my children, but I think that you can spend that 20 min a day in a much better way and still raise children that are excellent readers. I would recommend this book only as a resource, not as lesson plans (as it was designed).

This book was recommended to me by several friends and their recommendation was correct. This book enables you & your child for easy learning to read without the stress of "unknown skills" as a teacher. This is my first attempt to homeschool, and with this aid in learning to read, I know we are on the right track. The lessons are short enough for an attention span of an active 5 year old.

After seeing that this book had the most positive reviews, I took a chance and bought this for my 3.5 year old son.
Presently, we are at lesson 52 and my son can successfully read 5-sentence stories with CVC words and even 6 letter words such as kitten.
As a preschool teacher, I was a bit worried that I was not following DAP (developmentally appropriate practices) since teaching reading is recommended for about ages 4-5. I took my son's and teachers' cues instead and now think that I have made the right choice.
Before you start your child on this book, it would help if he has the basic knowledge of:
a. letters
b. letter sounds
c. starting to sight read some words

Each lesson is phonetic-based which is the best approach. There is also a writing exercise in each lesson (which I did not do with my son) since he needs a little more time for graphmotor control. A lesson can run to about 10-15 minutes and when I see my son starting to guess the words, I take this as a cue to repeat the lesson the next day. So far, he does not "dread" our lesson times and though at times, he gets fidgety (as is normal for most 3 year old boys) he is eager to learn. I am so proud of him and would recommend this book to mommies and daddies who need a platform for teaching reading at home. Good luck!

I bought this book for my stubborn 4yr old son after spending 6 months working on the alphabet which he was basically too stubborn to learn. I bought this book, read the extensive first few pages about how to use it and then started immediately. It starts a little slow the first 15 lessons, but my son, though resistent at first, quickly caught on. The day he read his first word I was so proud of him and surprised that he could do it, but he thought it was no big deal. The skill building kept my son intersted, but did not discourage him. At first, the lessons took about 20-30 minutes, but now we have passed lesson 50 and we get them done in about 10-15 minutes. My son regularly even asks if we can do another one. This book changed my son's life. He now stands in stores and sounds out the things around him, people will comment on how well he reads and I just thank God I found this book.

This book reviews all the material you need to know for the test, in a clear, simple, efficient way. I bought it too late to use it in my AP Biology class, but I'm sure it would be good for that too. I read the whole book the week before the AP test and got a 5.

I didn't learn a lot in my AP Biology class; we rarely took our lessons seriously and our teacher gave us very few assignments. We learned material slowly--by the time May came around, we still had nine chapters left (out of 56) to read in the textbook!

Everyone in our class was pretty much flipping out over the AP test and how soon we had to take it. Nobody felt prepared. My friend actually reread the entire textbook in the week we had to review before the test. I procrastinated, and didn't want to go through that (our textbook was MASSIVE) so I read this cover-to-cover twice the weekend before the exam. Didn't need to take notes, just highlighted bits of information in spots where there were some excessively detailed descriptions.

This book has excellent diagrams, and except for occasional typos here and there, it wasn't at all difficult to read. I'd suggest it for anyone with a mediocre teacher, or people who know they're going to slack off until a week before the exam :) Reading the book once, slowly and thoroughly, and then rereading it again quickly (skimming through areas that I already knew pretty well) was the strategy that earned me a five on the exam this year! I love this book.

Several students in my class used the Princeton review book, which does spend more time explaining how the AP test works than this does, but in every other respect CliffsAP is far better than the other review book options.

It helped on class tests as well, because it explored concepts in a much clearer, easily understood way than the textbook did.

Absolutely would recommend anyone to buy it.

Yes I mean it, it really is as great as people are saying. I have always been weak at biology, and I was very nervous about taking it at the AP level especially since its so difficult, but I endured it. I got mostly Bs in that class, I got very lazy with senioritis even to the point that I skipped some chapters in the text and didnt even bother to pay attention in class or read summaries.

So although I was getting into lousy habits typical of high school seniors, I was still determined to get a good AP score. So, this book came in handy. I read the book starting in the beginning of May, and read through it by the eve of the exam. I was stressfully cramming the weekend before the test, reading through the densely packed information (very concise too), and I even skipped some parts (esp. animal phyla and plants). Its a great review, and I even learned some stuff that I was too lazy to read earlier that year. On Sunday night before the test, I still didnt know enough, and I felt screwed. But I knew I had to let go. As they say, if you've spent your time studying, you will be prepared.

I notice many people saying "this isnt a substitute for a textbook!" etc, and they are right. This alone will not get you an A in the class. It will not effectively teach you everything about bio. But it will definitely prepare you for a 5 on the AP exam, and its all I used to study for the exam. Most of my classmates used Barron's (good, but way too much info), but I knew this was better. So I called for my scores, and you guessed, I got a 5!!

If you're gonna use this, I highly recommend you start studying during spring break, or in mid April at the latest. That way, you can work your way through the book without stressing and cramming like I did, and maybe do better on any practice tests that count as grades. If this is all you're using for AP studying, make sure you READ (not skim) and understand everything (or almost everything) that this book tells you (look in your textbook if something isnt clear).

Peace out, and I hope this helps

I used this book and Dr. Sanghera's AP Biology Flashcard Quicklet to prepare for the AP Biology exam. I love both of these books and here are my reviews:
This book is cool. It's to the point and covers all the topics very concisely. So, that saves you lot of time that you can use elsewhere. However, it gives you all the info that you need to pass the AP Biology exam. It's short and sweet: material is covered in a reader-friendly way; easy to follow, understand, and retain. I used this book in combination with the following book: the Flashcard Quicklet.

AP Biology Flashcard Quicklet: Flashcards in a Book for Biology StudentsFlash cards are cool tools to review your preparation for the exam. I like this style of flash cards though: flash cards in a book. Loose flash cards could be annoying; they are hard to keep together...flash cards in a book are cool..no lost cards...easy to keep them together..Besides, in this book, the flash cards are very much self contained; good and easy to follow answers and explanations....You can use this flash card book with any AP Biology book or without any book...it's not tied to a specific book...The coverage of topics is quite comprehensive and there is lots of space to make your own notes...I love it...
I would say these are the only two books you need to pass the exam.

Great Resource. All you need is this book with Paul Sanghera's AP Biology Flashcard Quicklet, and you will be in very good shape to pass the AP Biology exam. This book is a no-nonsense, to-the-point guide to prepare for the exam, and Paul Sanghera's Biology Flashcard Quicklet is a great tool to quickly review your preparation. I have found that these two books together is a blast. Although the AP Biology Flashcard Quicklet is very self-contained and can be used with any Guide or without any Guide, but I will recommend, first read this book then use Sanghera's book.
Great book....highly recommended.

I just started studying yoga to better round out my workout routine. I picked up this book as something to help me better understand how to perform the asanas.

Pros: Well drawn anatomical drawings, clear descriptions of how the muscles work to enable you to perform the asanas

Cons: Requires some knowledge of anatomy (I have had anatomy classes so this was not a problem for me), descriptions don't tell you how to get INTO the poses, just how they work

I would not get this book to learn yoga. You would be more frustrated than helped (see the low rated comments). But if you are studying with a yogi then I think this book will help you better understand the processes that are happening when you do your poses.

A detailed book showing just what muscles are effected by each yoga movement. Alot of detail and excellent graphics

This is a book I've been looking for to understand how muscles work on a yoga session. A must for all yoga practitioners who want to know how the asanas work.

This book is an excellent learning/reference tool...the illustrations are clear, the wording is concise (not too scientific) and each pose is listed in English and Sanskrit (including the phonetic spelling) - it's a must have!

This text is a wonderful way to educate the patient's and families about the benefits of yoga to strengthen and sustain muscle mass and agility.

This is a great book to learn from, the workbook is also very helpful. This is one of the few college text books that I refused to sell back.

I needed this book for my spanish class and it provided me with the step by step instruction I needed.

this is not a bad spanish book. i don't know if i would say it is great. lots of group activities that are helpful, but they are pretty simple and repetitive. they need to be a little more thoughtful and put in lots of DIFFERENT activities. one last, quite frustrating thing, there is only a spanish-english dictionary in the back. extremely irritating because this is a spanish 1-2 book, and anytime you want to look up a word, you'll need to consult another dictionary.

I've been using Dos Mundos in my Spanish III class this fall and it's been a quite positive experience. I'm a former English teacher, and a long time psychologist, so I have some feel for the teaching/learning dynamic of a text. I'm finding DM to be intelligently written and organized, with many different kinds of activities that build on and integrate what you're learning. I like the way history, art, pop culture, geography, politics, music, literature, etc. are interspersed throughout DM. There's cartoons, color, and a reasonably unstilted, good-hearted consciousness in the book. For those of us used to American textbooks which have been reduced to squirmy blandness by pressure groups leaning on state textbook purchasing agencies, it's a bit refreshing to encounter occasional perspectives on economic and political injustice, environmental exploitation, etc. Not that this is a particularly political book, it's just that these things are usually soooooo sanitized. Some people have complained about the lack of an English to Spanish dictionary in this book. Face it---you need to buy a little dictionary to have when you're reading DM and learning Spanish. No added-on dictionary section is going to be complete enough to meet your needs. You'll only be wasting time using it, since half the time the word you're looking for won't be there anyway. You might as well go to the dictionary in the first place. To sum it up: I like this book and I'm in the process of reading the seven chapters which were previously covered in Spanish I and II, which I didn't take in this sequence.

I teach college Spanish and I love this text. It is thoughtfully constructed and provides numerous activities for communication in the target language. Dos mundos also provides very useful ideas for instructors. The pages are colorful and the content engaging. My students love all the activities I use from this text. I wish more Spanish instructors would embrace the methodology presented in Dos mundos. My level one Spanish students actually speak Spanish (albeit low-level Spanish). I don't know if I would recommend this text for independent study, however. I believe it would be most effective if used in conjunction with a dynamic instructor. I do agree that the authors should include a separate English-Spanish dictionary section. I also find the video segments to be very poor (and why are they exactly the same as the ones for Puntos de partida when they both have such different approaches to language acquisition?)

This book is a quick, easy read and should be a requirement for all! You will gain an appreciation for all economic/social classes and learn more about yourself. As a teacher, this book brought clarity to situations in the past and will guide my behavior in the future. I believe that every lawmaker and politician should read this book before making decisions about helping the poor. An amazing book and a must read!

Very enlightning book, gives a deeper understanding of povery and why it is hard to break the cycle.

Book was exactly what I thought it would be. I ordered it for a class that I was taking this summer and it arrived promptly. I was impressed with how quickly it arrived and it was in excellent shape. I have no complaints at all!

This seller never shipped the book and never returned my emails as to why. I ordered it for a course I had to teach on poverty and did not receive my book on time for the class. This seller should not be allowed to sell on the site.

As an individual who works with children in a variety of settings (club settings, classrooms, Youth Groups, etc), I picked up this book thinking it would provide me with some useful insights.

Two pages into it I was annoyed by a "hidden rule" she listed as applying to families who live in generational poverty. Half-way through I put it down in search of better resources.

I'm sure Dr. Payne's intentions are good and I suspect many of her offerings are useful. But close examination of the specific "hidden rules" as they apply to the supposed societal group who live in poverty (as though there was only one kind) reveals an author who needs to spend more time with people and less time writing books about them. It's so riddled with stereotypes it's difficult to take it seriously.

One for instance: Payne's first reference to one of the "hidden rules" of poverty is that households of this group are noisy--with televisions always on and everyone talking at once. I read it twice as I was sure I'd missed something. Surely someone with a Ph.D who'd done the proper research, would know better than to make a generalization of such ridiculous proportions, I thought.

'Guess not.

Personally, I come from a large middle-class loud German-Irish family with a television always on, music always playing (often live), and people talking all at once. The ability to tell a good joke or story was extremely important in our family, as was a sharp wit and the ability to defend one's point of view. This family produced three educators of which I am one. We're readers, thinkers, amatuer actors, singers, writers, and communicators. So for the life of me I can't quite grasp how on earth a noisy household is equated with class.

The idea that there are educators out there who are using this book as a basis to understand children who come from poor families concerns me. Apart from sparking discussion, I don't see this book as offering much of real value to educators and I would recommend those considering it to look past the hype and the slick marketing techniques and give this one a miss.