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Summary: THE ULTIMATE TEXT FOR READING WORKSHOP K-2
Review: If you are a K-2 teacher considering Reading Workshop implementation and can only afford to buy one book, THIS IS THE BOOK TO BUY!Debbie Miller takes you by the hand and walks you through all the aspects of Reading Workshop. The writing is easy to read and practical; yet full of necessary information which will allow the reader to implement Reading Workshop confidently. This book is the real-world application of the strategies from MOSAIC OF THOUGHT. I have recommended it to all my K-2 colleagues.I can't wait until school starts to try this out!
Rating:
Summary: THE ULTIMATE TEXT FOR READING WORKSHOP K-2
Review: If you are a K-2 teacher considering Reading Workshop implementation and can only afford to buy one book, THIS IS THE BOOK TO BUY! Debbie Miller takes you by the hand and walks you through all the aspects of Reading Workshop. The writing is easy to read and practical; yet full of necessary information which will allow the reader to implement Reading Workshop confidently. This book is the real-world application of the strategies from MOSAIC OF THOUGHT. I have recommended it to all my K-2 colleagues.I can't wait until school starts to try this out!
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Summary: Reading for Meaning is a "must have" for any primary teacher
Review: If you have dedicated yourself to producing thoughtful readers who read for meaning, this is the book you need! Not only is it filled with helpful lesson ideas, but the arrangement of each chapter follows a scaffolded approach to help young readers engage and develop as lifelong readers. Miller shows teachers how to lay out the entire year. Included in this book are chapters about schema building, mental images, inferring, questioning, non-fiction reading, and synthesizing. She focuses on one comprehension strategy in each chapter, including how to introduce it to students AND what children's books she considers "tried-and-true." At the end of each chapter, the author includes a list of children's book titles that all highlight the comprehension strategy perfectly for young children. I have purchased many of the titles that she recommends. All of the books are outstanding pieces of literature that children adore. Also, the lessons work well in a Reader's Workshop format. After instruction, students can get busy practicing reading from their own books by using what they learned right away. This book is an outstanding resource for any teacher!
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Summary: Reading for Meaning is a "must have" for any primary teacher
Review: If you have dedicated yourself to producing thoughtful readers who read for meaning, this is the book you need! Not only is it filled with helpful lesson ideas, but the arrangement of each chapter follows a scaffolded approach to help young readers engage and develop as lifelong readers. Miller shows teachers how to lay out the entire year. Included in this book are chapters about schema building, mental images, inferring, questioning, non-fiction reading, and synthesizing. She focuses on one comprehension strategy in each chapter, including how to introduce it to students AND what children's books she considers "tried-and-true." At the end of each chapter, the author includes a list of children's book titles that all highlight the comprehension strategy perfectly for young children. I have purchased many of the titles that she recommends. All of the books are outstanding pieces of literature that children adore. Also, the lessons work well in a Reader's Workshop format. After instruction, students can get busy practicing reading from their own books by using what they learned right away. This book is an outstanding resource for any teacher!
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Summary: This is a great book for primary teachers!
Review: In this book, Debbie Miller takes you inside the walls of her first grade classroom, leading you through the course of the school year where her students become independent and motivated readers. You can hear the excited buzz of the students as they discover meaning in their reading and thoughtfully discuss their findings with their peers. Her students are intrinsically motivated to learn from their reading as they simultaneously decode the text. I highly recommend this book to any primary teacher looking for new strategies and techniques for teaching and modeling comprehension in their classroom. Debbie Miller gives fun and practical ideas that can be applied in most any grade. She supplies the reader with endless strategies for creating a collaborative and safe learning environment. Every page is packed full of inspiring stories and examples that will transform your teaching and questioning strategies. Don't let this book pass you by!
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Summary: A Must Read!
Review: Step back from your classroom for a moment and enter into Debbie Miller's first grade classroom. You will notice students who love to read, sharing what they have read with their peers, asking questions to clarify, and self-motivated projects everywhere. How do they do this when they are only emergent readers? In this book, Debbie Miller explains her month-by-month strategy approach to teaching her students the importance of reading for meaning. This book is filled with concrete examples, usable ideas, and motivating stories of how her students accomplish the task of reading and making meaning. I recommend this book to all elementary reading teachers. There is something here for everyone.
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Summary: A Must Read!
Review: Step back from your classroom for a moment and enter into Debbie Miller's first grade classroom. You will notice students who love to read, sharing what they have read with their peers, asking questions to clarify, and self-motivated projects everywhere. How do they do this when they are only emergent readers? In this book, Debbie Miller explains her month-by-month strategy approach to teaching her students the importance of reading for meaning. This book is filled with concrete examples, usable ideas, and motivating stories of how her students accomplish the task of reading and making meaning. I recommend this book to all elementary reading teachers. There is something here for everyone.
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Summary: A Must-Have for Any Primary Grade Teacher
Review: There are certain "must have" books for teachers. This is one of them. Miller takes a decade of reading research (as synthesized by Pearson, et. al., 1992), and puts it into practice in her classroom. We move through the year with her, watching as she scaffolds for us and her students explicit reading instruction that truly works. In Chapter 1, Miller goes straight to the crux of the matter: Gradually release responsibility to students; teach a few strategies of great consequence in depth over time; give students the gifts of time, choice, response, community, and structure. Chapter 2 tells us how-and why-we should create a sense of community in the classroom. "Real classroom communities," writes Miller, "are more than just a look. Real communities flourish when we bring together the voices, hearts, and souls of the people who inhabit them." We must be "deliberate" in September if we are to create the type of environment in which growth and authentic learning will occur. The Reader's Workshop is the topic of Chapter 3. Wait a minute, you may be saying, how does one have a "Reader's Workshop" when most of the students are not yet reading? "Readers' workshop in September," Miller writes, "is less about teaching children how to read and more about modeling and teaching children what it is that good readers do, setting the tone for the workshop and establishing its expectations and procedures, and engaging and motivating children to want to learn to read." And so Miller shows us, in detail, how we can go about this foundation-building. She begins with "Book Selection," then "Reading Aloud, Mini-Lessons, Reading and Conferring," and finally "Sharing." With our solid underpinning in place we are now ready to settle in---the topic of Chapter 3. Here we learn how and why to give children choices when selecting books. Miller also discusses briefly phonics and word identification---two things that she believes should be taught side-by-side with comprehension strategies. In the next two chapters Miller delves in depth into the comprehension strategies of schema and visualizing. She then devotes a chapter to "Digging Deeper." It is now January, she notes, and "[t]he time is right for increasing the sophistication of the read-alouds, showing them how to engage in more challenging dialogue and making connections from our past experiences to more in-depth learning." Timing, as they say, is everything. It is this type of knowledge and the ability to exploit the foundation that has been so carefully laid that makes Miller a teacher extraordinaire. Chapter 8 through 10 are devoted to the remaining reading strategies of inferring, questioning, determining importance, and synthesizing. Miller includes numerous anecdotes, vignettes, lesson models, tips, techniques, and more. A list of references and a detailed index are included. Practical and brilliant, this is one book that is definitely required reading for primary grade teachers. Reviewed by the Education Oasis staff
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Summary: Reading With Meaning is a great resource!
Review: This book is an excellent choice for any primary teacher! Her ideas are relevant for the first year teacher as well a teaching veteran. The goal of this book is to help educators get children active and involved in what they are reading. The chapters are set up in a logical progression from the beginning of the school year until the end. . The reader shares in this wonderful teachers joys, worries, and successes of the new school year. Her high yet attainable expectations for her students are inspiring. I plan on using several of Debbie's ideas in my classroom.
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Summary: Fantastic Professional Development Book
Review: This is a book that makes sense and is easy to read. The videos that can be purchased that go along with the book are also fantastic. Debbie Miller shows teachers a meaningful way to teach comprehension. My students are loving school and it is amazing to see their growth because of the ways I have made changes because to the book. This book has a huge list of books that Debbie uses in her own classroom. It is a great resource.
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