|
Teaching English by Design: How to Create and Carry Out Instructional Units
Binding: Paperback
Author: Peter Smagorinsky
Manufacturer: Heinemann
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Average Rating: 3.5
Total Customer Reviews: 3
List Price: $33.75
Our Price: $26.85
Sales Rank: 249321
Product Description
The Teaching English by Design Instructor's Guide presents a flexible framework for an English Methods course. Its week-by-week suggestions for in- and out-of-class activities support students as they learn to design units for use in their first classrooms. Peter Smagorinsky, the leading scholar and researcher of his generation in the field of English education, shows English teachers how to turn every hour of classroom instruction into an authentic and powerful learning experience in his inspiring new book, Teaching English by Design. It's a wonderful book and represents a challenge to all of us to teach better than we usually do. -Sheridan Blau Author of The Literature Workshop Peter Smagorinsky, a highly respected figure in English Education, here offers new teachers principled and practical ways of authoring curriculum, even in traditional settings. -Randy Bomer Author of Time for Meaning Many books on English/language arts instruction describe the teaching of units, but how many of them actually show how to create the units, make them meaningful to students, and use them to support your curriculum from September to June? Teaching English by Design does it all. It helps avoid a fragmentary curriculum by providing the rationale and the process for not only teaching well but also for producing integrated units that encourage students to deepen their thinking across the school year. Teaching English by Design is two books in one: a primer for teaching secondary English and a comprehensive guide to creating and using four to six-week instructional units. Peter Smagorinsky shares important insight about students, how they learn, and what kinds of classrooms support their achievement in reading and writing. Then he uses those findings to open up the key ideas of unit design to every teacher. Smagorinsky's units are organized around key concepts in English, such as: - reading strategies
- writing strategies
- genres
- periods, regions, and movements in literature
- themes
- the works of a significant author.
From original idea to construction, to implementation and beyond, Smagorinsky's practical advice supports teachers in extending, connecting, and integrating their units to increase the cohesion and power of the curriculum. Incorporating curricular theory, educational psychology, and fourteen years of high school teaching experience, Peter Smagorinsky's advice is both theoretically sound and grounded in the daily realities of today's teacher. Complemented by a wealth of web-based illustrations, Teaching English by Design is the ideal resource for preservice teachers as well as those in the classroom who want to take charge of their curriculum and find new energy in it.
|
Users Product Reviews: |
Product Review Summary: The one book I would be sure to assign for a methods course This book has a terrific and accessible overview of educational theory, and it helps students set goals and plan units with sound rationales and instructional methods. But the real gem here is the website that goes with it, loaded with thoughtful unit plans that are consistent with the methods outlined by the book. A one star review I just read is way off the mark. He read a page off amazon, and he took something out of context. Smagorinsky was talking about how the belief persists that there is one fixed body of knowledge, and he shows how there are other ways of knowing things than that, and that they are valid and help the teacher co-create knowledge based on the understandings that they (the teacher and student) both bring to any given subject. Smagorinsky is nothing if not hip. He brings a Writing Project sensibility to the book, and you'll recognize proven approaches in each chapter.
Product Review Summary: Great ideas for instruction I used this book in a Secondary Education 5000 class that I was required to take while earning my M.Ed. The author gives wonderful insights and examples into how to teach a class that is designed for its students. I found the book to be extremely helpful and will use many of Smagorinsky's ideas in my teaching this year. I particularly liked his chapter on addressing the emotional issues surrounding writing and the section that discusses using focus correction areas rather than overwhelming students with ALL grammar and writing issues at once. It was good for me, with my background as an editor, to consider the importance of teaching writing a step at a time rather than overwhelming students with hundreds of corrections each time they turn in a paper.
Smagornisky also details how to create unit rationales, stances, strategies for teaching, and effective essay assignments. I have no complaints about the book and would recommend it to all teachers.
Great discussion on modeling and scaffolding in chapter 6. I wish more of my English teachers had used this method when I was in high school.
Product Review Summary: You've got to be kidding I read the excerpt Amazon.com provides, and found it full of inane comments and bizarre examples. The author claims that a teaching models that emphasize "transmissionism" ask questions, on final exams, such as the following:
***Who was Bucephalus? (The creature was Alexander the Great's horse, by the way, and the author claims that this question was asked on a final in a Mediterranean civilization course.)
***Was Huck Finn a good boy?
Now, have you ever seen such stuff on a test? What in the world does it have to do with "transmission" vs. "constructivism," the author's weird false alternative? The truth is, every good teacher both transmits key knowledge (such as the facts of Alexander's life, and the key things Huck did) as well as helps the students construct their own understanding and test their "models." Why the false dichotomy?
The author also rakes a teacher over the coals for asking for a copy of a test that another teacher had devised for a book that both used in their classes. The author faults the teacher because, so the author claims, the teacher must presumably have made numerous assumptions about the nature of the test. (For example, that all classes dealing with a book are fundamentally the same, so teachers can exchange tests without a glitch.) It never seems to occur to the author that the teacher might have asked for the test because it could stimulate thought or provide him with some useful items.
So, when I read four pages into a book and find it chock full of what
Bucephalus left in his stall, I pass.
|
Similar Products with reviews:
Critical Encounters in High School English: Teaching Literary Theory to Adolescents, Second Edition (Language & Literacy Series) (Language and Literacy Series (Teachers College Pr))
The English Teacher's Companion, Third Edition: A Complete Guide to Classroom, Curriculum, and the Profession
Narrative Writing: Learning a New Model for Teaching
Writing on Demand: Best Practices and Strategies for Success
"You Gotta BE the Book": Teaching Engaged and Reflective Reading with Adolescents, Second Edition (Language and Literacy Series (Teachers College Pr))
|
Wireless Products Store
Disclaimer: All product data on this page belongs to Amazon.com. No
guarantees are made as to accuracy of prices and information.
|
