Teaching Books

I used this book to study for the Middle School English Test(0049). I found it to be helpful in most aspects but on a test like this the book can not possibly cover every single aspect. It does cover a great portion and I would recomend this book to anyone who needs a study guide fast. (I only prepared for the test for about a week and a half.)

I used this book to study for both the 0041 and 0042 tests. This book really helped with the 0041 test- I got 190/200 correct. It did not help with the essay test at all, though. The book gives sample questions and sample answers, but did not explain what made some answers better than others. I ended up not meeting the required score for my state, even though I knew the study guide inside and out. If you need a study guide for the essay test, don't get this book.

Dr. Kern has written a practical book that really does help prepare for the test. The most valuable test prep. book I have seen (I spent $39.95 on a worthless pamphlet, so this was a nice investment for only $14.95.) Haven't gotten scores back yet so we'll see if it worked! ;-)

This book appeared to be perfect "everything guide" to the Praxis English subject area test. It was very helpful, especially in providing a good overview of basic information. The sample tests for exam 0041 led me to believe there was more lit. but test takers beware, after taking the exam, I've learned that literature is only about half of the 120 questions. The rest are grammar and composition and rhetoric. I wish that the practice exam in both this guide and actually, the one from ETS too, had been more representative of the actual test.

I must note that the inside of the book has a chart that correlates with the actual exam. It breaks down the percentages of literature, grammar, etc. rather accurately. I am only commenting that the practice exam in the book had more literature portions even for the questions about composition and rhetoric and language. This part is the only part that was not like the actual test.

I used this guide alone to study for my Praxis II for middle school language arts. You have to know which Praxis number test you'll be taking, and that'll show you which area test you need to study. This study guide contains several test versions.

Although this book was extremely helpful in my preparation for format and some content, I was surprised to find that the Praxis itself contained NOTHING at ALL from ANY book! It must be a problem with the Praxis, though, because this is the only study tool I used and I retained a lot of info from it, finally scoring a 198 out of 200. The good thing is, this study guide contains a great deal of practice tests to help you with your timing, which I hear is one of the biggest struggles in taking the Praxis.

Overall, if you need to take the Praxis II, this is the study guide to use.

I was very happy with the purchase I made with Amazon. The book was in excellent condition and the time that it took to get the book was a little long but not unbearable.

Had to send book back because I didn't have to take this class. The seller admitted to recieving the book back and did not refund my money! Will never buy from this seller and will tell friends and family to beware. Have tried to contact seller with no response!

The books condition was bad, much worse then described. I also payed for express shipping and it took awhile to get to me.

This textbook is easy to read and follow. The explanations of mathematics, how to teach young children to use strategies, and examples of worksheets make this a great resource for future Elementary school teachers.

I've just begun reading this book, but i must say the first impression is great! all the arguments are really easy to find, well organized and explanations are clear and pretty helpful.
surely, you you'd better speak already English to derive much benefit from reding it, but in this case it's practical, every grammar rule is handy and clears up any doubt.

This book is clearly written and very handy for a quick referring, the topic has been indexed by alphabets. I think it is very worthy for a research student like me in the thesis writing. I even read it for pleasure as I found it's interesting enough for a light reading.

The book arrived on time in perfect condition . I am very satisfied. Thank you

This reference book is almost perfect. I nearly always find in it what I look for. Everything is easily explained an well organized.
I'm so happy with my purchase.

it's one of the best
english book I have ever seen on the market,

I was looking for something more meaty and this book is written on an 8th grade reading level, which gives me little faith in it's target audience - day care employees. That being said, its a decent overview of the theorists and can be read in one Sunday afternoon. Kind of like a 'Day Care for Dummies.' You'll know roughly when the scholars lived and a very general outline of their ideas. Perfect for a teen or middle-schooler who baby sits and has some intellectual curiosity about what's going on in the mind of her neighbor's rug rats. Great for a new mom that is not a huge reader. But not an academic book.

little of practical value. gives high level overview of concepts but evidence supporting their effectiveness is not substantiated, and methods for applying them are few.

Theories of Childhood: An Introduction to Dewey, Montessori, Erikson, Piaget & Vygotsky
I read this book as part of a class, but I found it very interesting and it held my attention well.

This is basically a pamphlet. Wikipedia probably has longer entries for each of the theorists/practitioners covered here than each chapter of this book. It is an informative introduction, but if you want anything more than a cursory overview, go elsewhere. And even if that is all you want, might as well save your $ and look the people up on Wikipedia instead.

This book is a concise review of the theories of each of the men listed in the title. It is most appropriate for college students. It is too elementary for graduate psychology or psychiatry students, who would like a more in-depth presentation of their ideas.

I strongly suggest purchasing this book. It is full of information to help you become a better rider. As a Road Captain in The Christian Motorcyclist Association it helps me keep our Chapter members informed on safe riding practices. The writer has excellent knowledge of motorcycling and uses many real life situations to illustrate his point. He is very witty in his writing which makes the book fun to read. I would also reccomend the first book Proficient Motorcycling

If you want to ride a motorcycle safely then you must buy and read this book. I re-read it each year in the winter to refresh my riding skills in preparation for the upcoming riding season. The best book on motorcycle safety skills development.

This book is an excellent place to gain more knowledge of motorcycling or to review old information on motorcycling. Will probably reread book every year before motorcycling season begins.

I read this book and keep refering to it for years till I handed to my Dad (a new rider at 55) to help him understand motorcycle riding a bit more.

If you're too stupid to take the MSF course or equivalent, this is the next best thing. If you've already taken the course, this book fills in a lot of the cracks. Easy to read, and it willl save your life!

Excellent book for preparing the famous TOEFL. So clear, many good excercises, very useful CD-ROM and after all, it so good to have the Cambridge support.

This book really helps you develop skills and specific ways
of studying and expressing yourself literally.It even helps in expanding your awareness. Really helpful,really nice.Really tidy step-by-step guide,
makes me feel secure I got the tools for success.Just one other thing--
the CD is good,listening practices are perfect and everything,but I got a virus from it,from the .exe file on my PC so I decided not to use the send-your-response-to-a-teacher feature .And there is no other way you can measure your speaking and writing skills before you go to TOEFL.

It is well-organized.

Beginning practice is excessively useful. Also, Listening, Speaking, and Writing practice are helpful.(If you wanna practice Listening, you have to buy extra audio CDs... but it surely is helpful. It contains different types of accent such as British, Australian.)

However, as for reading practice, I cannot recommend this 'cause it's totally different from real the iBT TOEFL test. I cannot accept this book's practice style.

In conclusion, people who want to improve;
1) Listening
2) Speaking
3) Writing(including Grammer practice)

this book helps you.

I am an ESL teacher and I teach courses in TOEFL preparation. In my opinion, most of the sections of this book do not accurately represent TOEFL test questions. The authors do not seem to have had an in-depth understanding of the writing and speaking scoring rubric, or an understanding of how the listening and reading questions are composed. I do not recommend this book to anyone planning to take the TOEFL test.

First, in the reading section, while their are many good examples of academic text, the actual questions and answer choices in the book are not composed the same way as the real TOEFL questions. Therefore, a student using these questions to practice is often practicing skills that are not tested on the real test, or is wasting time trying to answer questions that would never be asked on a TOEFL test. Worse, in many cases the answer choices do not contain a clear, correct answer, regardless of what the answer key claims. In some cases, the answer choices are too vague or, I believe, simply incorrect. Also, the authors have divided up the section into the different types of questions that can be asked, but with little rhyme or reason, as they have lumped questions into the inference section which are clearly not inference questions (and not considered inference questions by the test makers), and ignored some other types of questions.

The listening section is slightly better, but the book does not come with the listening CD's, so the student will not be able to use this section. Nevertheless, there are quite a few places in the listening where the questions do not accurately represent TOEFL questions, although to the inexperienced eye the format appears similar.

The speaking section is quite sparse and offers little useful advice to the student. There are no samples available on CD of how different score levels will sound.

I did not use the writing section at all, so cannot comment on the exercises there, but the explanation of the scoring rubric and the sample papers shown in the book do not reflect an understanding of how TOEFL papers are actually scored. You will find much better samples that give a much more accurate idea of what a high or low scoring essay looks like in the book published by ETS.

Finally, the book is loaded up with "supporting skills" exercises, which seems like a good idea, except that often the skills practiced will not be found on the actual test. Moreover, the questions and answer choices in the exercises are so carelessly done that there are many instances of answers which don't make sense, choices that are too similar and too vague, and questions which don't use the skill one is supposedly practicing.

And one more thing - the book is overly large and not at all user friendly. It's hard to find anything in it, and sometimes the exercises that go with certain materials are located at the end of the unit instead of directly after the material.

One of the few good things about this book is the ETS scoring rubrics and scoring instructions provided in the front of the book, which allow you to figure out your TOEFL score. Also, it is useful to have actual computerized practice tests that reflect the testing conditions and can give the student practice with the real test format.

Other than that, I really don't like this book and would never willingly use it again for a TOEFL class.

This is a pretty good book, I would say (although, I can't compare it with other ones). The book has 4 sections for each of the testsections. Each section has tiny steps and explains everything. After each step you take a small test to see if you understood everything. I got bored with all the explanations and examples, so I only did the tests and reviewed the sections, where I had problems.
It comes with a CD-Rom, which is very good, because you can practice either the computer test or the written Test. The only problem is the listening section is not on the CD-Rom. You have to buy it extra on CDs (which I couldn't find and actually don't want to spend extra money for). So if you have big troubles understanding spoken English, you'll have to get an extra training book. That is the big minus when buying this product. Everything else is great.

This collection is great for early readers. My son loves these mini-books. I just need to open it up and he'll pick one w/ words or pictures that catch his eye and we'll make it.

It's a nice way to spend some fun learning time together - he likes to cut, help staple & fold, then read the book - all at his pace. He doesn't write yet, but we do the last part- fill in the missing letter page, verbally. We both get a nice sense of accomplishment!

Maybe I didn't read the description closely enough, but I didn't realize that the books needed to be cut out and assembled. The book is still sitting on a shelf waiting for me to find enough time to figure out how to assemble them. Not a good product for a busy mom with a lot going on.

Each of the little books not only uses a different word family, but also offers one or two new sight words. These are very short little books, great for the beginner reader that gets discouraged easily.
A snake
A snake wants to bake
A snake wants to bake a big cake
A snake wants to bake a big cake on a lake.
The last page offers the child a chance to fill in the first letter of the "ake" words.

The "eep" book goes like this
The Sheep
The sheep drove the jeep
The sheep drove the jeep and went beep
The sheep drove the jeep and went beep in his sleep.

Well you get the idea.

Children are excited about making and reading their own little books which they make. Funny pictures help them enjoy making additional words in each word family.

I have found this book to be helpful for using with my kindergarten class to work on word families. The children are very excited to learn that once they can spell (or read) a few words in a word family, they can spell (or read) many others with that same ending.

Each mini-book can be copied double-sided onto one page, and then cut apart and stapled to become an 8-page mini-book. This makes them a good choice if you are concerned about using too much paper or going over your copy budget.

The book is outstanding, however I had to pay over $4.00 in postage to pick it up.
Is this something new at Amazon? I have never had to pay postage for my past orders.

This book is loaded with well-designed practice exercises that will keep your child's language skills sharp and expanding. My son and I like its format of five items per day. What a relief that you know you will finish in 10 minutes. It makes the studying easy and even fun! They look so simple, but if you keep on doing them, they make a big difference over time.

Since my son started using this book, he often gets on the honor roll out of many peers in Beestar (a very nice web site at Beestar.org). I think this book had built a fairly solid foundation for him. Highly recommend.

My 7 year old loves to work on the daily problems before school. It has helped him become a better student.

My child is now in the sixth grade. She should be only entering fourth grade but because we do curriculum like this she has been advanced. This book is excellent for homeschooling. They need repetition for writing skills, capitalization and grammar. If you just do one little section a day it really adds up over the year. It's easy and fast.

This book is divided into weeks, with a 5 question review for each day of the week. I use this in my 2nd grade class. We do one a day, it takes about 10 min. for the kids to complete and for me to go over the skills and answers. It is a great way to review different skills, from correcting sentences, to matching vowel sounds in words or finding the correct spelling of a word. My students are finally getting that a complete sentence starts with a capital letter and ends in puncuation. I would recommend this book to any teacher that doesn't have time to teach a full grammar lesson each day.

The beginning passages of this book are simple and relatively easy to understand even if you barely know Spanish at all, but by the end of the book the readings are more complex and challenging. This is a great way to get into Spanish if you know very little. My only complaint is that the exercises are fairly pointless because the answers are whole sentences straight from the text. However, the great passages and formatting make this book worth buying as an introductory Spanish text.

I studied Spanish for six years, with the last being the 1996-1997 academic year. I have tuned in to Spanish media and read a few Spanish language magazines. I wanted to return to the nuts and bolts of the language, with an affordable textbook. I picked up Easy Spanish Reader because it was affordable and promising.

Like any good student, I began with the first story about the two high school students. I regained my confidence with the language. The second part, a short history of Mexico, was fascinating and encouraging. I learned new vocabulary words. I was able to understand each passage, referring to my dictionary only a few times. The last section, the story of Lazarillo, was difficult. Not very difficult, definitely didn't frustrate me, but it did make me work on my comprehension. The Q&A, after each passage, focused on pulling information from said passage.

Dictionary does not have all the words. Have to use your own dictionary as well as there. Gets cumbersome.

Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R2DY573HI7ZZ00 I am also listing what I would consider the 5 most important learning-Spanish resources availalbe for self-study which I think you will not only enjoy but also benefit from if you love learning Spanish as much as I do:

1. Practice Makes Perfect: Spanish Pronouns And Prepositions This book covers the proper usage of Pronouns and Prepositions and just like Spanish Verb Tenses, you will find plenty of exercises to improve your Spanish-language skills.

2. Practice Makes Perfect: Spanish Verb Tenses This is a must have book for learning how to conjugate Spanish verbs for both beginners and advanced students. You will want to read it from cover to cover and then keep it as a learning-Spanish resource.

3. Learning Spanish Like Crazy: Spoken Spanish, Vol. 1 (2 volume set) This is the self-study course that I would recommend for someone that needs to immediately learn how to speak Spanish in order to communicate with Spanish-speakers that have recently arrived in the U.S or for someone that expects to be speaking to people in familiar situations in Latin America. This course comes closer to teaching the colluquial or familiar style of conversational Spanish that you will hear native speakers use among themselves. I like the fact that they only use native Spanish speakers in this course.

4. The Big Red Book of Spanish Verbs with CD-ROM, Second Edition This is a must have book for learning how to conjugate hundreds of Spanish verbs in the various tenses. But if you already have 501 Spanish Verbs: with CD-ROM (Barron's Foreign Language Guides) then you can skip this book.

5. Mierda!: The Real Spanish You Were Never Taught in School (Plume) Actually, this one is not a must-have book. It is optional. But it is very entertaining so after studying Spanish hard I always find it helpful to use a learning-Spanish resource for pure fun. And this book is lots of fun. That's if you are not easily offened by vulgar language. Even if you are not the type who would use dirty words in a conversation you'll probably still find this book very entertaining to read. At the very least, you will pick up enough slang and vulgar Spanish words so that when you hear it you will at least recognize it.

I hope that my review has been helpful to other Amazon shoppers.

This book is often missing the correct usage of the third person indirect object pronouns "le" and "les". There are several instances in which its says "dar a alguien" where it should be "darle a alguien". This is very bad because I started using it with my students when they began to learn these pronouns. They noticed right away that they were missing.

p. 90: "entonces dijo a sus soldados" should be "entonces LES dijo a sus soldados"

p. 90: "y pronto estos ofrecieron su ayuda a Cortes" should be "y pronto estos LE ofrecieron su ayuda a Cortes".

p. 78: "La directora inicia la ceremonia y habla a los presentes" should be "la directora inicia la ceremonia y LES habla a los presentes".

p. 78: "Despues la directora entrega los diplomas a cada uno de los alumnos" should be " Despues la directora LEs entrega los diplomas a cada uno de los alumnos."

They're all over the place.

I got a great deal out of this book. Marzano's books are always very research based (a plus if you ask me) so they're nto exactly beach reading. This book, in particular, mostly describes a specific grading method that is similar to CBM, that needs to be implemented school wide. It also adresses several braod ideas that are important to authentic assessment that teachers can apply at a classroom level.

In a world where assessment is becoming more and more important, schools and teachers need to understand and manage it better. This book can help us do both.

I teach high school Spanish. Our principal makes frequent reference to Robert Marzano in faculty meetings. Apparently Marzano is very highly regarded among people with PhD in Education. Our principal especially recommended this book, so I bought it to read during the summer. I got half way thru it, dozed off many times, and put it down for good.