Teaching Books

I was at first apprehensive about buying this book. After all, what would the Gallup Poll know about teaching? Well, it turns out that they know a lot. Being a "highly qualified teacher", i.e. having a license to teach a subject is not enough these days. Good teachers must also be able to "connect" to students. The authors are realistic and their findings are extremely helpful. For example, working on ones weaknesses won't work. If you are an introvert, taking classes in public speaking won't help that much; it certainly won't make you an extrovert. This book is an excellent read for anyone who works with or is interested in working with students.

This book is awesome with a capital "E", and I have nothing bad to say about it. It is however, woefully inadequate, as it leaves out my own follow up research on "great" teachers. While they do indeed possess the common characteristics noted in the book (saluting when addressed directly; refering to themselves in the third person plural; loathing humanity; subscribing to Newsweek; and being unusually "voluminous" in their personal lives - I still don't get that one) I have discovered that they have a few other important traits in common as well. Below is an exhaustive list:

1. They sweat easily and profusely

2. They sometimes spit on students when emphasizing something they think is important. They never do this intentionally. It usually comes out during a hard "K" sound. More often than not, it simply lands on the student's picture of their boyfriend on their notebook - the student's boyfriend, not the teacher's. A great teacher would never spit on a picture of their own boyfriend (see appendix 4, section A.b.12.A IV)

3. They think Sweden should be a permanent member off the UN Security Council.


Before you "educators" out there run off and douse yourself in someone's sweat in the hopes your principal will be fooled into nominating your for teacher of the year, remember that, while all great teachers sweat, spit and have a thing for Sweden being a permanent member of the security council, not all people who sweat and spit and want Sweden to be able to veto UN resolutions are good teachers. In fact, many of them are simply Swedish.


I'm looking forward to reading this book some day.

While the first part of this book speaks generally about teaching, the second half addresses your individual strengths as found through the website Strengthsfinder.com and how they apply to teaching.
In order to access this information you go to their website and type in the access code on the inside of the dust jacket. The access code can only be used ONE time, and evidently the person I bought the used book from had used the access code, so I was not able to find out my personal strengths. Consequently the book was of little use.
This book is one of a series of books which use the Gallup Strengthsfinder website and happily I had purchased Strengths Finder 2.0 (by Tom Rath) new and the access code was sealed inside the book so I finally had access to the website.
Once enrolled I took a preference test (about 20 minutes) and received information on my 5 strengths. These correspond for the most part with those listed in Teach With Your Strengths. This information on my strengths is not earth-shaking but it does support Gallup's contention that we shouldn't waste time or energy trying to "fix" our lesser talents but instead develop what we do naturally (172).
As with anything it is not a magic wand, but instead an interesting way of thinking about maximizing our individual potential.

I was really happy with the book through the first two or three chapters. The book said a lot of things that I already feel about teaching. Essentially, it says, "Teachers are good because of who they are, and they're better when they teach with their strengths."

That's a great sentiment.

However, the middle chapters quickly devolved into a promotion for a particular personality trait test. I felt like bit like I was being lured into a Dianetics room. I felt slightly hesitant while moving on past the initial chapters, because the authors kept talking about one particular personality test.

I checked this book out from the library, and I had just finished telling my wife how I was going to be purchasing the book to have at school. Then came the Clifton test advertisements.

If you don't mind reading books that are intended to advertise a product, then by all means, please read this book. If that sort of thing offends you, then don't get it. If you don't care either way, only read the first few chapters. You won't know the difference.

Teach with your strengths is focused on a strategy of self-discovery first, teaching methodologies second. This may disappoint many who are looking for easy answers to becoming better teachers. However, I found it quite revealing and useful as an adult who teaches innovation and creativity in my professional life, and as an adult who teaches Christianity to adults in my personal life. The Gallup folks are trying to start a positive revolution in many people's lives by focusing on our strengths. Teachers are the prime movers and shakers in that revolution. I enjoyed it very much and look forward to even further materials from Gallup and these authors.

Like most of other SCHAUM'S outlines, the book provides the essential and important knowledge about Differential Equations. If you are dealing with math, engineering and science and would like to have a structured reference about ODE, then this book definitely should be placed on your working desk.

I'm not one to say much so I'll keep this kind of short. It always helps to have another point of view and explanation other than those offered in the classroom, whether one struggles with this material or not. This book was definitely worth purchasing.

Got this to be an understandable reference after I couldn't understand the text I had to use for the class. Product did exactly that.

Used it to help me through 2 of my college classes...both of which I received A's. Definitely a great tool to overcome difficulty with ordinary and complex differential equation problems.

First, it must be said that the Schaum Outline series provides an inexpensive way for students to get more practice and check their answers. In general, I recommend these texts. That said, I used this as a supplement to a DE class I taught and it was such a pain. The notation is nonstandard, symbols for Bessel functions are downright wrong and things like this. The application exercises were more focused on converting from English units to SI units than on the variety of application problems. To add to the fun, the cgs system is also thrown into the mix. Granted, engineers and the like need to be able to switch, but that's not the point of a DE class. It is nice to have sections on the Laplace transform and first-order systems and most exercises are ok, if repetitive. Students will have to work hard to keep the notation straight and not confuse themselves. I wouldn't use this in another class.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This book shows the heart and soul of the great Vivian Paley who I had the pleasure of meeting when she visited our graduate school class this spring. You'll find insight not only into the child's mind and how children can be educated, but how children (and as they grow to be adults) are damaged by exclusion. An inspiration for this Ph.D. student.

Mrs. Paley's premise is simple and built on two premises, the classroom is a public institution, and children do not have the right to exclude another child from playing with them. Because school is public territory, privacy does not exist, not in friendships, playtime, or stories. Students must include everyone in the public arena of school. Paley decides that her class needs YCSYCP. Please consider one outcome of YCSYCP.

Gender Typing. We must understand the class. This class exhibits two stages of gender typing; Pre-YCSYCP, and Post YCSYCP. During Pre-YCSYCP, traditional gender typing rules were in effect. Females play with dolls and boys conformed to Berk (2002). Charlie was assertive and aggressive in his play activities-playing Transformer and attacking the bad Transformer. Charlie preferred to play with other males. HE was a play boss and the one of the individuals that justified YCSYCP.

Post YCSYCP, Paley (pg 127) explains that the students switched from traditional roles to cross gender roles. She tells us that the students are no longer looking for exceptions to YCSYCP and now are accepting opposite sex roles. In this situation, cross gender activity should not necessarily be viewed as a positive outcome to YCSYCP. The student's have a need to be part of the group and YCSYCP, which demands total inclusion. As a result, students performed cross-gender activities due to a need to belong rather than a result of higher cognitive thought.

Teacher Influences. Paley's YCSYCP is troublesome because of the the underlying reason for implementation. Paley chose not to work one on one with problem students. Paley would rather listen to the moral wisdom that comes from the mouths of children; therefore, she created one rule to direct the class's behavior. As a result, the students did not learn effective conflict resolution strategies as advocated by Johnson and Johnson (1995) or the application of effective leadership principles. Leadership stresses your responsibility to those with more and less authority than you. Paley is working strictly on a "feel good" emotional level. She does not want children's feelings hurt. She fails to teach students how to handle sticky situations. Here is reality: the mission is first, never accept defeat, and never leave a fellow team member behind. These traits exist within the military and outside of the liberal ideologies. These concepts should be adapted to our classrooms. There is a distinct possibility that some of her former students are now champion homosexual rights or have become vegetarians and joined PETA to fight for animal's right with impassioned vigor.

Paley laments, "Can morality be legislated?" She continues to explain that teaching straddles the moral fence. We should question Mrs. Paley's idea of moral values. Please consider her background, Paley taught at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools. This progressive school is built upon the influence of educator and philosopher John Dewey. Dewey also has exerted his influence upon society in two other areas. He signed the Humanist Manifesto. This document is a long range plan designed to remove God from our society. If you have never read this document, look it up and realize it's implications upon our society. Dewey also had ties with the early origins of the ACLU, which actively fights against moral behavior based on Christian tradition. Is Mrs. Paley one of the godless? Should we trust Mrs. Paley's moral judgment?

Mrs. Paley has authored several books and has won an award. Please be critical of this book, especially if you are selecting it for a class assignment. She starts with a lackluster short story premise and then proceeds, performing written self-stimulation to extend the tale to a tedious, fatiguing ending. The first rip in reality is excessive use of the narrative form, which makes up >90% of the book with an occassional observation included. The reader is left deciding if these are factual events or just the passing pondering of a humanist practitioner?

The second rip in reality is the incorporation of the "Magpie in fairy land." The fairy tale makes considerable sense if you immediately put Paley into the magpie's place. Unfortunately, this writing device is not needed, annoying and does not strenghten the story just adds excessive filler. This book would benefit from publication as a Readers Digest article-it should be condensed with the "Magpie in fairyland" sequence removed.

Very few things rate five stars. Check out Master of Puppets, Clockwork Orange, Ring World, Opeth, and Death Rides a Horse. Paley is a tepid writer: therefore, this book does not deserve more than one lackluster, tarnished, and monotone, star.

I picked up this book at my daughters' school parent lending library- a school that works hard to implement policies like 'you can't say you can't play' (YCSYCP) and it often works. It certainly works inter-age but problems remain between age-mates. I, too, was a rejected child many times and hate to see any child rejected.

The author teaches kindergarten in a Chicago laboratory school and is troubled by the behaviour of children who are excluded and the children who exclude. She explores the idea of setting 'YCSYCP' as a rule by talking to her student and to older students. The younger children have a lot of questions about how the policy will work, and the older children think that if it becomes a rule early on in schooling, it has a better chance of working. Interwoven with the text is a story that the author uses to illustrate these points to her kindergarten students.

After reading well into the book, I wondered about the author since the writing seemed so.... simple, and was surprised to read that she had been honored by the MacArthur Foundation for her storytelling in the classroom. I tried to read her interwoven story with a more open mind and found it to help a little in understanding the point of the story.

The changes in the classroom as a result of 'YCSYCP' were interesting since the children overall became more inventive and more welcoming, as the author hoped they would. The author was able to define changes she had made in her classroom- like eliminating time-outs- as part and parcel of 'YCSYCP'. I think the simple language worked for these children and could be a good starting place for even older children. As the children mature in their understanding of what happens when the habit of exclusion is broken, they will be able to step back and examine exclusion and rejection in more philosophical terms.

I think this book and others you can find like it are worthwhile as people search for ways to make schools more humane and functional for all students, not just the favored.

This book expresses what many of us know inherently, but Paley finds a way to say it, to bring it into your conscience, and to do it with a lyricism that is her writing "voice." It makes me wish she were my Kindergarten teacher...well, not really, since I still love my dear Mrs. Shabay and Miss Reezak!

If you're a teacher or a parent, the focus is on what is important about play, and most especially, the KINDS of play kids engage in. Makes me want to set up a "dress up" room in my house - - and I don't even have kids yet!

I picked up this book at my daughters' school parent lending library- a school that works hard to implement policies like "you can't say you can't play" (YCSYCP) and it often works. It certainly works inter-age but problems remain between age-mates. I, too, was a rejected child many times and hate to see any child rejected.

The author teaches kindergarten in a Chicago laboratory school and is troubled by the behaviour of children who are excluded and the children who exclude. She explores the idea of setting "YCSYCP" as a rule by talking to her student and to older students. The younger children have a lot of questions about how the policy will work, and the older children think that if it becomes a rule early on in schooling, it has a better chance of working. Interwoven with the text is a story that the author uses to illustrate these points to her kindergarten students.

After reading well into the book, I wondered about the author since the writing seemed so.... simple, and was surprised to read that she had been honored by the MacArthur Foundation for her storytelling in the classroom. I tried to read her interwoven story with a more open mind and found it to help a little in understanding the point of the story.

The changes in the classroom as a result of "YCSYCP" were interesting since the children overall became more inventive and more welcoming, as the author hoped they would. The author was able to define changes she had made in her classroom- like eliminating time-outs- as part and parcel of "YCSYCP". I think the simple language worked for these children and could be a good starting place for even older children. As the children mature in their understanding of what happens when the habit of exclusion is broken, they will be able to step back and examine exclusion and rejection in more philosophical terms.

I think this book and others you can find like it are worthwhile as people search for ways to make schools more humane and functional for all students, not just the favored.

Ross' book is definitely one of the better books on the market. There are books that promise to teach BH quick and easy or "as you go", but the truth is that there isn't an easy way to do this. BH is a very different language and for most folks with an Indo-European native language is pretty tough to learn.

Moreover, it is important to remember that each BH book is written for a specific purpose, either self-study, in-class instruction or as a reference grammar. Most books, including this one, fall into the second category of being written for in-class instruction, although many of these can be used for self-study as well. But with the focus on the in-class instruction these books are formatted to fit a two semester course in first year BH. And you can only fit so much into the first year or you can only learn so much in two semesters. So they are not comprehensive as a reference grammar might be. So there will be things that the author simply doesn't have room to cover and will be left out. This one is no exception, but that is not a bad thing. Reference grammars are intended to be comprehensive and thorough, but on the other hand they're not very useful as a textbook for a first year student. On the contrary, they can be pretty overwhelming -- try showing Jouon, Gesenius or even Weingreen to a new student and you might scare them away.

This book is well structured and well laid out -- nice type-setting, which is very important especially in case of Hebrew fonts. Ross' introductory material is pretty good compared to most grammars, it's visual and well laid out. I like his section on vowels, it is often neglected and poorly done in other grammars. Likewise, his verbal summary tables at the end of the book are great and well laid out. They should be a standard part of every BH textbook. The answer key in not provided, which might make it challenging if used for self-study.

The individual lesson's are structured quite well, Ross is pretty clear on his grammatical principles, has good examples and exercises. He introduces you to verbal stems besides Qal pretty early on and then covers each stem separately with all the different patterns and variation for weak and doubly-weak verbs within each stem. I tend to think that this is a better approach then Lambdin's (although I like his book too for different reasons), where you spend an entire semester learning BH before learning another stem besides Qal. Ross also has pretty well structured discussion of the most important syntactical rules and examples which is very helpful. This comes after all the verbal stems are covered, that is after one has reasonably "mastered" BH grammar. I would think that introducing some syntax early on (like Lambdin does) would make learning BH more fun, but that's a matter of preference. This way one does not have to search through the book to find this or that syntactical rule.

Ross' book compares pretty well to other BH grammars, like Lambdin or Seow in particular. It may not be as in-depth in some areas, but it is in others. And it's structure and layout are very good. Compared to Van Pelt/Pratico or Futato on the other hand, it's much more in depth and better organized than those two. But there probably isn't an ideal BH textbook out there -- once again it's a matter of preference. They all have their strengths and weaknesses and depending on the audience and the setting, each of them can be appropriate. But Ross is definitely one of the better ones out there and I do recommend this book.

The textbook is great if you think you have a solid grasp on Biblical Hebrew. The exercises concluding each lesson are wonderful, save for there not being a key within the book to help with potential incorrect transliterations and mistranslations.

Mediocre at best.

I am a second-year, first-time-with-Hebrew MDiv student with an A average overall, and one seminary instructor chose this book to teach us Hebrew, rather than the book our seminary traditionally usually uses. Here is why I think that a Hebrew first-timer and MDiv-er shouldn't buy this book -- and why, as a committed student who wants to master the material in it, I would ask profs to use different textbooks to teach other students like myself.

1. Most U.S. M.Div. people need to learn to translate from Hebrew into English, not the other way around. Far too many of Ross's exercises (in fact, the majority of them for the first 30 or so chapters) are about translating from English to Hebrew -- something we do not need facility in to do good jobs as pastors/preachers/exegetes. Better to see lots of Hebrew and translate it into English -- the skill to be mastered, after all.

2. Each of the first 40 or so chapter/lessons has a maximum of 10 phrases for the student to translate from Hebrew to English. This is insufficient to acquire mastery of any of the concepts, grammar, or vocabulary covered in any one of the chapters, especially without an answer key available, let alone to continually reinforce and build upon one's mastery of previous vocab/grammar. Also, one does not get to see what specific forms of verbs, constructs, etc. actually look like "in vivo" often enough to facilitate future translation.

3. In each chapter, the author introduces vocabulary that he does not then use in translation exercises until tens of chapters later. As the old saying goes, "Use it or lose it."

In short, I would never recommend this book as a textbook or study aid to students new to Hebrew. I have found it helpful to reference and use the abundant exercises and explanations in Kelley's "An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew," as well as the "Basics of Biblical Hebrew" book and workbook to gain mastery of the material.

This is an excellent grammar if you are after conciseness but enough depth to have a good grasp of the language.

The weakness is not enough exercises and no answer key (not in back of the book and no one has published one as yet).

A good compromise for those learning Hebrew on their own is to supplement with Page Kelley's Biblical Hebrew which has plenty of exercises and is very verbose.

If you intend to use this book for self-learning, it is best to have some previous experience in some other anicent language (e.g. Greek); this will reduce the steepness of the learning curve especially in dealing with grammatical terminology. If you have no previous experience there are books which are more 'user friendly' like Mansoor or Pratico. But of course you sacrifice depth for user-friendliness.

The book is clearly written and seems to contain all of the information necessary for a first-year grammar. My only complaint is that, to the best of my knowledge, there is no answer key for the book. So if you are planning on self-study, this would not be a good choice.

A great tool for learning to read, write, and speak Russian. Accompanies textbook and audio CD.

Anyone who wants to save money can get the 5th edition for a fraction of the cost. The main difference is that sections 7.1 and 7.2 are reversed.

I have taught many times from this book and since I didn't choose the text I have no way to compare it to the alternatives.

My students find the book confusing, in part, because the book attempts to cover everything an instructor might want to teach from it. Any text covering this material would have the same characteristic. It is critical to guide students as to what is important and what is not. One cannot simply teach this textbook as is.

Much of the material covered in the text is middle school level and not part of the K-5 curriculum. That's fine as long as the instructor realizes that students aspiring to teach Kindergarten will find middle school material difficult, confusing and irrelevant to their goals.

There is not enough practice in this book to build any skill in which the student is deficient or to cover any gaps in the student's preparation. It is simply not possible to do this in a math for elementary teachers course. Students must rely on tutors for this kind of help. The textbook, then, does not proceed sequentially - like an algebra textbook would - to build skills in a systematic way but rather topically. The book veers from the very abstract to the very concrete and students have trouble with this also.

Most students who will use this book have a good grasp of place-value, operations with fractions and decimals, factoring and simple algegra. This material is covered in Chapters 1, 3-6.3. This is not the case for sets, functions, logic, all topics in geometry, and simple probability and statistics. These topics may be in the official high school curriculum but are rarely taught to mastery to the typical student who decides to become an elementary teacher. Furthermore, these topics are ignored in college math placement tests and in remedial math courses. Those responsible for designing a course that might use this book must take this reality into account.

Another challenge for students is to approach mathematics concepts in which they have a sound working knowledge from multiple learning styles. This is difficult even for those who are well prepared. The book is good resource for this.

This book is not clearly written. Many terms are used incorrectly or in a very questionable manner. The answers in the back of the book for all odd-numbered "homework" problems and all test questions is very helpful and convenient. If I were chosing a textbook, it would not be this.

Maybe it's the teacher, perhaps it's the book. But this is one of the most difficult classes I've had in my life. All I feel like doing is pulling out my hair. This book is so unclear. If you're trying to learn math, this isn't the book for you. If you want to be confused, I highly recommend it.

Very complicated book. Bad examples and format. AN FYI for college students trying to save money, the older edition is the SAME as the newest one. What a rip off.

I had Bennett as an instructor and used this book throughout the course sequence. I found it to be a helpful resource for teachers who were unfamiliar or "rusty" with mathematics. However, if you are a math-minded person looking for more ideas, this book will not help you develop your potential. It is a good place to start thinking about ways to teach and learn mathematics, but not a great collection of information on the whole.

I used this book in my Italian 101 class in college. You can learn a lot from it. The only thing that I really didn't like about it were the exercises. Each exercise was a continuation of the previous exercise with the same characters. I prefer that each exercise be independent of each other.

Brandon Simpson

With two other spanish dictionaries in my library, I knew I needed this one when a friend shared hers with me. It is excellent in its usage examples for each entry...very helpful for any level user. Typeface is clear and legible.

This is an excellent resource for both English and Spanish speaking individuals. I use it in my classroom and it is invaluable. Volunteer tutors rely on this to find just the right word while trying to explain something to students. The center section about cultural items is interesting and can be used for classroom instruction.

This dictionary's best feature is its integration of idioms and phrases with regular entries. You can look up the first word of an idiom or phrase in either language (such has "home plate," "bittersweet," "take part in," etc.) and find the equivalent in the other language. It's a great conversational tool. It also notes which words and phrases are common in which countries. The only drawback is that if you want to read literature or other more complex works, you will probably need a more extensive dictionary.

This is one of the best and most comprehensive dictionaries I've seen that you can still fit in a backpack. It definitely won't fit in your pocket as the title suggests, but is well worth the bigger size. I used this dictionary while I was studying in Spain for ten months and it helped me more than almost any other source I had at the time. It covers almost every word used by people in colloquial language, has every conjugation of every verb, and covers a lot of grammar. There are only a few grammatical things I found that it didn't cover, such as the subjunctive, but you'd need a whole nother book to cover that. If you're going to study in a Spanish speaking country or want a very comprehensive dictionary, I would highly recommend this one.

I did a lot of comparison shopping among Spanish-English dictionaries of similar size (or slightly smaller) and like this one best.

I wanted to mention an interesting detail: For some inexplicable reason, the Oxford Spanish Desk Dictionary and the Pocket Oxford Spanish Dictionary appear to be the same book, and are the same size. The only difference is that the "desk" dictionary is the hardcover version (the listed dimensions are very slightly larger because the hard cover extends beyond the page edges just a bit). The "pocket" dictionary is just the softcover version of same.

Now, why the "desk" version and the "pocket" version are the same size, I'll never know -- and, in fact, this "pocket" dictionary is much larger than a pocket-sized paperback -- not a big deal as long as you know what you are getting.

Nonetheless, a great dictionary, and I highly recommend it. I just thought this was an interesting bit of information.

In the past, I did not feel like children should use test workbooks this early. After we enrolled in Beestar weekly reading program (an excellent web site http://www.beestar.org), we realize that there are so many kids doing so well. No wonder the standard tests keep raising the bar. A low expectation from parents only leads to low achieving children. This book boosts your child's vocabulary, reading, and test taking skills effectively. It gives you a good chance to know how much your child learned in school. No matter how he was taught, the book would cover the bases and practice what he learned. We enjoyed this fine book very much!

I have been using these tests to prepare for the state test. Most of the tests are a little easy for my high kids, however they work great for my on-grade level and at-risk kids.

Good reading cannot be achieved overnight. Young kids need to learn and read extensively to build their skills. Taking practice tests is an effective way, because they are questioned and results are clearly measured. Without feedback, you don't know where you are or what you need. This book provides tests on phonics, vocabulary, grammar, reading, and even reading graphs. My child used it for assessment as well as for learning. Very good contents. The book is short though; my child finished it in 3 weeks. For further practice, I found Beestar (www.beestar.org) very helpful, too. My child's reading skills are improved quickly with such test drills.