Category: Book Reviews

21st Century Visual Literacy

Visual literacy is vital skill for iGeneration students, says reviewer Patricia Thomas-Jeanig. She recommends Steve Moline’s See What You Mean: Visual Literacy K-8 (2nd Edition) which explores many kinds of visual texts and includes great teaching ideas.

Inside Scoop on Reading Tests

Reviewer Rebecca Crockett praises Charles Fuhrken’s What Every Middle School Teacher Needs to Know About Reading Tests (From Someone Who Has Written Them), a book of practical, teaching-friendly advice about prepping students for reading tests.

Teaching about the Border

Bill Bigelow’s teacher-friendly book, The Line Between Us: Teaching About the Border and Mexican Immigration, offers concrete strategies & teaching resources to help students understand immigration and globalization issues, says reviewer Kelly Moser.

Too Complex for the Classroom?

How to Teach Thinking Skills Within the Common Core: Seven Student Proficiencies of the New National Standards may be too structurally complex to be a valuable everyday resource to the classroom educator, but there’s plenty to admire, says reviewer Kevin Hodgson.

A Powerful Teaching Model

This powerful guide for PK-8 educators, Interactive Modeling: A Powerful Technique for Teaching Children by Margaret Berry Wilson, can help improve our teaching of essential academics, social skills, routines and behaviors, says reviewer Linda Biondi.

An Indepth Look at ADHD

Special ed teacher Laura Von Staden, mom of two children with ADHD, says this otherwise useful book, The Energetic Brain: Understanding and Managing ADHD, lacks the detail about specific interventions teachers need.

Techniques to Refresh Teaching

Teach Like a Champion Field Guide: A Practical Resource to Make the 49 Techniques Your Own by Doug Lemov provides new and useful information “to refresh my classroom teaching,” says reviewer Susan Shaver.