Category: Book Reviews

ESL Instruction That Works

Minding the Achievement Gap One Classroom at a Time by Jane E. Pollock, Sharon M. Ford and Margaret M. Black is a great resource for implementing Classroom Instruction That Works strategies for ESL/ELL students, says ESL teacher Julie Dermody.

Leadership for RTI

What Every School Leader Needs to Know about RTI, a book for school leaders by Margaret Searle, “provides the steps and framework necessary to seamlessly apply the RTI approach within our schools,” says reviewer Linda Biondi.

Reading in the Content Areas

Teaching Reading in the Content Areas: If Not Me, Then Who? provides useful hands-on tools for frustrated content-area teachers who ask, “How can I teach reading? I’m a (fill in the blank) teacher!”, says reviewer Sharon Nelson.

A Love Letter to Reading

Reviewer Ellen Berg finds 2009’s The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child by Donalyn Miller to be a refreshing glint of sunshine in the gathering CCSS storm – with ways teachers can support students’ journeys to love affairs with books.

Unorthodox View of Research

Though Christopher Lehman offers strategies to make the research process interesting to gr 4-8 students in Energize Research Reading and Writing: Fresh Strategies to Spark Interest, Develop Independence, and Meet Key Common Core Standards, his approach may prove too difficult, says reviewer Brooke Schultz.

Those Beautiful Howler Monkeys

Cindi Rigsbee & Laurie Wasserman each reviewed Heather Wolpert-Gawron’s ‘Tween Crayons and Curfews: Tips for Middle School Teachers, a middle school teaching guide. The two teachers drew the same conclusion: funny & full of great ideas.

Wounded by School: Broken, then Healing

Reviewer Lorie Shiveley agrees with many of Kristen Olson’s concerns about wounded students in Wounded by School: Recapturing the Joy in Learning and Standing Up to Old School Culture, but Shiveley says teachers get too much of the blame.