Rating: 
Summary: Excellent!
Review: A book that helped inspire me to become a teacher. Some other reviewers may not find it totally "practical" for them to adopt, but anyone with common sense would know that you take what works best for you from as many legitimate resources as possible and adapt.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent!
Review: A book that helped inspire me to become a teacher. Some other reviewers may not find it totally "practical" for them to adopt, but anyone with common sense would know that you take what works best for you from as many legitimate resources as possible and adapt.
Rating:
Summary: Nancie Atwell Introduces the Reading and Writing Workshop
Review: Atwell introduces her teaching experiences with chapters about how teach writing and reading to the fragile adolescent age groups. In the following chapters she describes, in detail, her procedure of the "writing and reading workshop" for teaching in her classroom. She goes into great detail about how she prepares herself before the students ever come to class, what she does in the first week of school and how she introduces the workshop technique to her students, her use of minilessons, how she responds to students' writing and how she values and evaluates the students' writing. This book is very thorough in its descriptions of how to teach the workshop style of reading and writing. Atwell walks the reader through every step to make this technique successful. She gives many examples of dialogue she, as a teacher, has had with students showing the reader how she handled particular situations that had come up. It leaves no question unanswered. I believe this book is very helpful to teachers who wish to teach this method. Atwell captures her audience by using real stories and references to experts in this field who have studied this technique for years. Although this is a very involved technique and some beginners may feel overwhelmed by the detail, I highly recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: Nancie Atwell Introduces the Reading and Writing Workshop
Review: Atwell introduces her teaching experiences with chapters about how teach writing and reading to the fragile adolescent age groups. In the following chapters she describes, in detail, her procedure of the "writing and reading workshop" for teaching in her classroom. She goes into great detail about how she prepares herself before the students ever come to class, what she does in the first week of school and how she introduces the workshop technique to her students, her use of minilessons, how she responds to students' writing and how she values and evaluates the students' writing. This book is very thorough in its descriptions of how to teach the workshop style of reading and writing. Atwell walks the reader through every step to make this technique successful. She gives many examples of dialogue she, as a teacher, has had with students showing the reader how she handled particular situations that had come up. It leaves no question unanswered. I believe this book is very helpful to teachers who wish to teach this method. Atwell captures her audience by using real stories and references to experts in this field who have studied this technique for years. Although this is a very involved technique and some beginners may feel overwhelmed by the detail, I highly recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: A Shift in Teaching
Review: Atwell's research and dedication to the true teaching of literacy in classrooms of all levels has changed my philosophy of teaching forever. Those who judge her approach without attempting to understand it, are only missing out on an innovative and fresh approach to how English should be taught. In my own classroom of tenth graders, I have gone from yawns and glazed eyes to students who leave my classroom at the end of the school year saying "I could write for pages and pages about how you've helped me become a better writer." I still address grammar, literature, "5 paragraph" essay writing, and the dreaded (and overrated)state tests. Instead of being students who force themselves to read and write for a grade, they are readers and writers who are proud of the accomplishments they produce in literacy. I recommend this book to anyone who is serious about changing the way literacy is taught in our schools, and creating not only engaged students, but people who love to read and write.
Rating:
Summary: Based on years of First Hand experience
Review: I bought two copies of this book from Amazon, for myself and my class aide, on the strength of the other teachers' recommendations here. The book is as good as the most enthusiastic reviewers say it is, but it is seriously flawed, and to some degree self-contradictory, because it talks too much. As good as are the author's approaches, she doesn't really need 484 pages, plus numerous appendices, to get the message across. In fact, she buries the message in verbosity. Note that other reviewers found the book easy to read. But if you are already convinced that you want to refresh your approach to teaching reading and writing, you may grow impatient with the overabundance of anecdotes, homilies and elaboration. Teachers know there is no itemized recipe for teaching, but a book on teaching writing could at least demonstrate the virtue of being concise. Mrs. Atwell should read her own quotes and not "cloud the issues with jargon in place of simple, direct prose...." (p. 16). (This is one of numerous quotes of Donald Graves, who returns the favor by endorsing her book in an exemplary brief foreword). As one who likes quoting great writings in every chapter, the author could have used and applied the Hellenistic Demos: "I will be moderate in all I attempt and do Nothing to Excess." Summary: it's just too much of a good thing. I'm going to spring for the workbook (Lessons that Change Writers) and generate even more royalties for the author, in the hopes it is more to the point.
Rating:
Summary: Great textbook...definitely a keeper!
Review: I had to read this book for a college class in my middle childhood education program, and I can tell you that it is not one I will sell back at the end of the semester. Atwell gives practical advice for incorporating a workshop approach in any class or format. Her explanations and examples are insightful and inspiring, and the appendices are a treasure for any future or practicing teacher. I give the highest praise to Atwell and my college professor for introducing Atwell's workshop approach to our class. I encourage others to do the same.
Rating: 
Summary: Atwell works in a dream world
Review: Nancie Atwell does not teach in the public schools of America with 40 minutes of overcrowded class time where spelling, vocab., grammar, reading, test preparation, and writing must go on. Not being able to find a website for her school, I can only assume that there are few, if any, real behavioral problem or remedial children (it is her own private school that provides the model and anecdotes for this text). I think the idea of the workshop is great, but I fear that much of Atwell won't translate to a real public school classroom.
This is a textbook for two of my grad classes in secondary English education, and many of my classmates (both certified and preservice teachers)agree that this program isn't realistic. There are so many demands on teachers to teach grammar, vocab, spelling, etc. and such a short time to do it, that I can't see how one could effectively hold writing workshops or teach district requirements, let alone do both. As a matter of fact, my writing class had a speaker who is an Atwellian just last week. She teaches no grammar lessons, vocab, or spelling to her 8th graders. They don't write formal essays (because they are choosing what they write). They spend some mini-lessons reviewing how the NY ELA exam works, and that seems to be all the prep that they get. She says that her students do no worse on the ELA than students from traditional classrooms, but they don't do any better, either. I am curious as to how they do in 9th grade when they haven't written a single formal essay about literary technique (other than on the ELA) and then are expected to write essays about literary elements and techniques almost exclusively. I think that Atwell's boook can give teachers some great ideas for innovation in their classroom, but I would not utilize it as my Bible or classroom cookbook--it's more like an advice column. Take a little bit away and mix it in with what is already working. BTW--How seriously can we take Atwell when she is now offering canned lessons for sale?!?!?
Rating:
Summary: Atwell works in a dream world
Review: Nancie Atwell does not teach in the public schools of America with 40 minutes of overcrowded class time where spelling, vocab., grammar, reading, test preparation, and writing must go on. Not being able to find a website for her school, I can only assume that there are few, if any, real behavioral problem or remedial children (it is her own private school that provides the model and anecdotes for this text). I think the idea of the workshop is great, but I fear that much of Atwell won't translate to a real public school classroom.
This is a textbook for two of my grad classes in secondary English education, and many of my classmates (both certified and preservice teachers)agree that this program isn't realistic. There are so many demands on teachers to teach grammar, vocab, spelling, etc. and such a short time to do it, that I can't see how one could effectively hold writing workshops or teach district requirements, let alone do both. As a matter of fact, my writing class had a speaker who is an Atwellian just last week. She teaches no grammar lessons, vocab, or spelling to her 8th graders. They don't write formal essays (because they are choosing what they write). They spend some mini-lessons reviewing how the NY ELA exam works, and that seems to be all the prep that they get. She says that her students do no worse on the ELA than students from traditional classrooms, but they don't do any better, either. I am curious as to how they do in 9th grade when they haven't written a single formal essay about literary technique (other than on the ELA) and then are expected to write essays about literary elements and techniques almost exclusively. I think that Atwell's boook can give teachers some great ideas for innovation in their classroom, but I would not utilize it as my Bible or classroom cookbook--it's more like an advice column. Take a little bit away and mix it in with what is already working. BTW--How seriously can we take Atwell when she is now offering canned lessons for sale?!?!?
Rating:
Summary: Great resource for middle school Language Arts teachers!
Review: Nancie Atwell gives encouragement and ideas to middle school Language Arts teachers, especially those who might be using the whole language approach or those who would like to enliven their current writing and reading classes. Atwell lists ideas for mini-lessons, writing topics, and reading choices. Atwell's pulse on today's youth is accurate, and her thoughts work - and will work if given a chance. I should know. I was very much against whole language a short time ago. Now with Atwell's book as my reference, I can walk into the classroom more confident about writing and reading workshops.
|
