<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: What a Sad Author
Review: Calkins says, "The problem is that if our teaching is to be an art, we need an organizing vision that brings together all of these separate components into something graceful and vital and significant. It is not the number of good ideas that turns our work into art, but the selection, balance, coherence and design of those ideas (p. 4)." This articulates what I've sensed for some time and am finally beginning to understand after eight years of striving to help first graders become readers for life. Lucy Calkins built the foundation for elementary wiritng workshop and now has formed a vision for a reading workshop structure that, I believe, will endure. This book is for all elementary teachers who are about helping children create literatie lives. It is both inspiring and practical, heady and humble.
Rating: 
Summary: Visionary!
Review: Calkins says, "The problem is that if our teaching is to be an art, we need an organizing vision that brings together all of these separate components into something graceful and vital and significant. It is not the number of good ideas that turns our work into art, but the selection, balance, coherence and design of those ideas (p. 4)." This articulates what I've sensed for some time and am finally beginning to understand after eight years of striving to help first graders become readers for life. Lucy Calkins built the foundation for elementary wiritng workshop and now has formed a vision for a reading workshop structure that, I believe, will endure. This book is for all elementary teachers who are about helping children create literatie lives. It is both inspiring and practical, heady and humble.
Rating: 
Summary: Angered and Annoyed
Review: I am a professor of reading and use this book in the reading course required of my undergrad teacher ed students. Our use of this book is largely strategic -- to be able to analyze and criticize Calkins' use of reading rhetoric. This is important when one understands that the reading wars and the misguided pressures put on teachers to teach badly have intensified incredibly under the horrible No Child Left Behind legislation. Students will be faced with such nonsense as leveled libraries and need to know what it is about and particularly, I hope, to know how to examine and counter the misguided assumptions of such practices. Calkins' does have some worthwhile information here; as might be expected, her work is best when she is talking about how to read more deeply in order to support good writing, and how to use writing to support deeper readings. Calkins is not a reading professional. She should have stuck to writing pedagogy, which she does well, and left the reading texts to others.
Rating:
Summary: life-changing
Review: I cannot say enough about this book. Teaching reading IS an art, a rocket science, and this thorough, all-encompassing professional resource elevated my teaching of reading to an art level. I constantly refer back to it. I frequently mentor student teachers, and tell them that if they can only afford to purchase one professional book, this should be the one. Lucy Calkins' work will stand the test of time. She should be a household name, and it is baffling to me that she isn't.
Rating:
Summary: An Artful Presentation of the Reading Workshop
Review: I have been a teacher for just a few years and I am currently working on my master's degree. I wanted to know more about the process approach to reading and writing so I approached my professor. She loaned me a brand new copy of this book. I found Calkins the most useful information in forming an understanding of Reading Workshop. Calkins even has a section that gives tips on how to acquire more books for your school. This book is invaluable!
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding - holistic - approach to teaching reading
Review: I read the first page of this book sitting on the floor of a book store. The next thing I knew it was 30 minutes later, and I didn't want to put the book down. I knew it needed to go home with me. Calkins takes Reading instruction, breaks it down into manageable parts that she used in her own classroom and shares with you realistic, artful and purposeful ideas for teaching reading. She speaks very openly and honestly with you as a teacher who believes in teaching reading not as a science, but rather as an art. It is an amazing book that will transform the way you think about reading instruction even in simple ways. You will love reading it and want to apply her teaching strategies immediately.
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding - holistic - approach to teaching reading
Review: I read the first page of this book sitting on the floor of a book store. The next thing I knew it was 30 minutes later, and I didn't want to put the book down. I knew it needed to go home with me. Calkins takes Reading instruction, breaks it down into manageable parts that she used in her own classroom and shares with you realistic, artful and purposeful ideas for teaching reading. She speaks very openly and honestly with you as a teacher who believes in teaching reading not as a science, but rather as an art. It is an amazing book that will transform the way you think about reading instruction even in simple ways. You will love reading it and want to apply her teaching strategies immediately.
Rating:
Summary: What a Sad Author
Review: It's unfortunate that some authors use children's education as a venue for underhanded business practice. I feel that theory on education should be based on teaching experience, not (other people's experience and...) what sells. Unfortunate but true, which is why this book was read once, and left on a dusty shelf with the other duds.
<< 1 >>
|
