Rating: 
Summary: Lots of Cutesy Fluff Interspersed with some Useful Info
Review: This could have been a more effective piece of work if the editors at Heinemann,the publisher, would have done a better job of curtailing the extensive droning on by the co-authors regarding their conversations and their moment-by-moment descriptions (I awake, I sip my coffee, I gaze at the overcast sky, my thoughts go back to yesterday, etc.). The practical and useful information, some of it helpful and some marginal, is buried within pages of this type of meandering. The author's seem determined that all practical information be presented within flowery, cutesy stories. I took notes as I read the book and discovered no new earth shattering information. Good reading teachers who read this book will find that they are already doing much of what is being prescribed by the authors.
Rating: 
Summary: A great book!
Review: This is the first book I've found that does not concentrate mainly on primary readers. These strategies work for all grade levels! I taught 5th grade this year for the first time, moving up from primary grades. I needed different reading strategies for my more mature readers, and I wanted to know what kinds of questions to ask for assessment when they read on their own. This book supplies key ideas in the higher levels of Bloom's Taxonomy as well as a student interview with a rubric for evaluation. I checked it out of our professional library at school, and I am buying it so I can reread it and have it for my personal reference.
Rating:
Summary: Best Reading Comprehension Book!
Review: This is the single best book I have ever read on reading comprehension. Not only do the authors describe specific comprehension strategies, they also provide concrete classroom examples and explain how they themselves use the strategies. The authors describe how a genuine community of readers is developed. This is a must read for anyone who teaches reading and language arts!
Rating:
Summary: The Reading Teacher's Best Friend!
Review: When I taught at a new charter school, our principal gave each of us this book to read and implement in our classrooms. I have many many textbooks and instructional manuals about how to teach, but this is the only book that I have read from cover to cover! This book not only instructs, but inspires you to change the way that you teach reading. The children become MUCH better readers as a result of this change in instruction!
Rating:
Summary: Great resource
Review: While I agree that at times this text gets too wordy and would have been improved by making a point and moving on, it still has much to offer. This book was recommended to me by my school principal. While she is a bit more of a fan than I am, I would still recommend the book to other educators. This is a resource that I return to over time. The amount of worthwhile material and my faith in the ability of educators skim through redundant text leads me to agree that this is a good addition to any educator's library.
Rating:
Summary: Great resource
Review: While I agree that at times this text gets too wordy and would have been improved by making a point and moving on, it still has much to offer. This book was recommended to me by my school principal. While she is a bit more of a fan than I am, I would still recommend the book to other educators. This is a resource that I return to over time. The amount of worthwhile material and my faith in the ability of educators skim through redundant text leads me to agree that this is a good addition to any educator's library.
Rating: 
Summary: Good, but wordy
Review: Zimmermann and Keene have put together a good overview of some reading strategies to implement in the classroom. The strategies are generally straight forward, but the anecdotes associated with each strategy pose two major problems in my mind. First is that they are almost all about elementary classrooms. I really don't think I can identify one as a middle or secondary level classroom. The problem with this is that if you are not an elementary teacher, the book is not geared for you. Second, the anecdotes are all about reading lessons specifically.Given the requirements that many states have regarding standards and of course the notorius reauthorized ESEA or NCLB, teaching across curricular areas is critical for success. Focusing on reading classrooms is beneficial, but if you aren't a reading teacher, there isn't much in the way of guidelines to help you integrate reading strategies in the content area. This is the main failing of the book in my opinion. While the authors develop their ideas fully and clearly illustrate the benefits of the strategies through anecdotal evidence, usually depicting the growth of one individual child, the fact that they leave out areas where the book is most needed is problematic. Anyone can adapt these ideas to their classroom, but you need to figure out where the pitfalls and successes are going to be. There isn't much in the way of advice to help content teachers. In many respects the ideas are very similary to the six traits of reading, but like the six traits, one of the strategies can easily take one full day of class time and when you have a specific amount of content to deal with during the course of a quarter or semester, taking one day for a reading strategy or several days out for several reading strategies can be difficult or impossible. Even with these problems I would still recommend this book to a teacher trying to improve reading comprehension for their students. Ultimately unless we teach our students to comprehend what they are reading, all children will be left behind.
Rating:
Summary: Good, but wordy
Review: Zimmermann and Keene have put together a good overview of some reading strategies to implement in the classroom. The strategies are generally straight forward, but the anecdotes associated with each strategy pose two major problems in my mind. First is that they are almost all about elementary classrooms. I really don't think I can identify one as a middle or secondary level classroom. The problem with this is that if you are not an elementary teacher, the book is not geared for you. Second, the anecdotes are all about reading lessons specifically. Given the requirements that many states have regarding standards and of course the notorius reauthorized ESEA or NCLB, teaching across curricular areas is critical for success. Focusing on reading classrooms is beneficial, but if you aren't a reading teacher, there isn't much in the way of guidelines to help you integrate reading strategies in the content area. This is the main failing of the book in my opinion. While the authors develop their ideas fully and clearly illustrate the benefits of the strategies through anecdotal evidence, usually depicting the growth of one individual child, the fact that they leave out areas where the book is most needed is problematic. Anyone can adapt these ideas to their classroom, but you need to figure out where the pitfalls and successes are going to be. There isn't much in the way of advice to help content teachers. In many respects the ideas are very similary to the six traits of reading, but like the six traits, one of the strategies can easily take one full day of class time and when you have a specific amount of content to deal with during the course of a quarter or semester, taking one day for a reading strategy or several days out for several reading strategies can be difficult or impossible. Even with these problems I would still recommend this book to a teacher trying to improve reading comprehension for their students. Ultimately unless we teach our students to comprehend what they are reading, all children will be left behind.
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