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Summary: Excellent book for teachers who WANT to learn
Review: For those great teachers out there, they will find they naturally use many of the strategies in this book. This books puts them all in one place and give you more ideas as well as the research to back them up. I do feel sorry for the rater that is having this approached forced on him or her. I am afraid to say that learner centered education is far from "trendy" nor is a constructivists approach to learning. Just throwing the books at the teachers not modeling the approach for even in teacher education, the adults should also construct meaning in their learning. I do agree with the reader that some teaching methods take more time upfront and there is a lot of pressure on teachers to hit all the standards but if retention is key, spend a little more time on the front end and they will retain it after a test rather than just for the test. This book is great if you want 20 specific ideas for injecting new way to learn in your classroom. It is not an all to nothing approach, just try one new thing while maintaining you own teaching style. Those teachers who are stuck in there own methods and fearful of sharing control of the learning with their students will have a hard time with this book.
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Summary: Missing Pieces
Review: I have been in early childhood education for 12 years. Within those 12 years, drastic changes have taken place. Year after year students come to my class with less knowledge. Everyday I try to find a new or better way to teach objectives. I have found that students need hands-on activities that help build the missing pieces of their educational foundation.
"Worksheets Don't Grow Dendrites" by Dr. Marcia Tate has been extremely helpful to me. I know you can't totally do away with all worksheets, but today's students need more than that. They need movement, music, manipulatives, and visuals in order to retain what they are expected to learn.
Thanks to Dr. Tate's book, I have another resource to use instead of the regular old "paper-pencil" method.
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Summary: I love this book!! Judge it for yourself!!
Review: I wish I had this years ago. My kids love it and soaking up everything we do. This half of the year is going great!! I've never had a class so interested in anything!
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Summary: Strongly Disagree
Review: This workbook is being forced on us in the school where I teach. I have to say that I strongly disagree with the ideas presented, but I don't have a choice of whether or not I want to use them in my classroom. If you have a choice, I firmly urge you to do some research on teaching methods. I don't mean "brain-based" research, psychological research, or any kind of research on "how children learn." I mean look for long-term, consensus research on methods that have been proven to work in the classroom. To adopt nonconsensus science as the basis of school policy is to conduct very perilous human experimentation on a large scale without license and with little hope of practical success."This theory is very popular among trendy education thinkers and professors. It holds that children learn best by discovering knowledge for themselves through hands-on projects and problem solving, rather than reading something out of a textbook or taking down what the teacher says. The idea is that knowledge you acquire for yourself is more likely to be understood and retained than a piece of information handed to you by someone else. This view of education is seductive. It sounds so natural, energetic, and ambitious. Taken in moderation, it makes sense. As we all know, the lessons we figure out for ourselves tend to sink in deepest and stick with us longest. It is also true that there are some topics, subjects, and assignments where discovery learning is important. A lab experiment in science, for example, is a form of discovery learning. So is making a map of the school grounds, and collecting and classifying leaves. A good education obviously includes such activities. Virtually no one believes that learning should consist only of listening to teachers and reading from textbooks. But discovery learning has real limitations in practice when schools try to turn it into the main way children learn academic lessons. First, it is truly inefficient. Having children figure out mathematical operations, for example, by playing games and making things takes a lot of time. There are not enough hours in the school year for students to unearth all there is to know on their own. When you rely on children to "construct" knowledge or skills-rather than systematically introducing material to them-learning can become a disorganized and time-consuming process. Mathematics is a highly structured body of knowledge and does not lend itself to haphazard learning. Second, unless the teacher is ready with corrections, a lot of things one "discovers" for oneself turn out to be wrong. Third, in some places discovery learning becomes a vehicle to reject the idea that there are important skills and information that all children should learn. To many in the education establishment, the mental process of searching for answers is far more important than mastering any particular body of knowledge. What matters most to them is "learning how to learn." Schools are enthusiastic about making sure students acquire "higher-order thinking skills." Learning goals typically call for teaching kids to "think critically" and "solve problems." Give children the skills to find information and reflect upon it, the argument goes, and they'll become "lifelong learners." There's no need to force them into demonstrating specific knowledge. The problem with this rationale, of course, is that skills don't help students much without knowledge to apply them to. Modern education philosophy seems to have forgotten that knowledge makes you smarter. People we think of as creative geniuses are "brilliant" in large part because they have devoted long years to mastering knowledge in a particular field; what they know has become second nature, and their minds are free to focus and invent." -The Educated Child "Watching schools implement untested theories about "kinesthetic," or other intelligences when they can't teach reading looks suspiciously like one more fad. The hard truth is that today's youngsters, as never before, must hone their academic skills. Knowledge pays and pays handsomely; ignorance costs more than we can afford, individually or socially. Schools may want to teach English, mathematics, or physics by using music, dance, or football, but they cannot be permitted to lose sight of their academic mission." -10 Traits of Highly Successful Schools
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