Reading Instruction Books

I don't like to write reviews for books that are not good but I feel that people should think twice before spending their money on this one.
Imagine a book called 'Dictionary of European Words.' It would contain some German verbs, some French nouns, some Italian adjectives, etc. How useful is it going to be?
This book would be a cousin to such an imaginary but nontheless absurd book.

My main gripe is that, as someone already pointed out, it is badly organized. It is nearly useless as a reference book. The faults are too many to mention, so I shall not, except for just one example: all the pictures are B&W, and not even numbered, so that one has to sort through just to figure out which description applies to which one of the many illustration found on the same page.

The real source of the problem with this book is that it tries to cover way too many cultures -- from Thailand to Korea to Japan to Bhutan -- and it tries this in a mere 216 pages (!), including the frontispiece, blanks, and index: as if a Guide to Buddhist Art could be done like a store catalogue. Just the symbolism of the mudras alone would easily take 200 pages, I should think.

Every Buddhist culture has its own peculiar relationship and input to Buddhism. Although there are large areas of doctrinal overlap that all Buddhist cultures have in common, each culture still has its own line-up and order in the pantheon of deities, rituals, implements and practices. This book blithely glosses right over them -- like Doria looking for Nemo in the deep blue sea.

On that note, it bears mentioning that the author has a MA in Asian Art from London University's School of Oriental and African Studies, with a major in Japanese Art. My feeling is that the author herself has but a superficial familiarity with the topic at hand.
The author was either brave, reckless, or ignorant to attempt so much with so little. This is unfortunately more of a scansion than a reading, properly speaking.
(Compare Robert Beer's Encyclopaedia for a guide done right.)

But to be fair, it might be somewhat helpful to those just beginning their studies and are grabbing at straws.

Buddhism is cool. All around us we see Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, Tibetan prayer flags, and people standing at bus stops with their hands in mudras. Buddhism has been cool for a long time and throughout Asia smart people and devoted people have spent a long time delving into the elaborate stories about enlightened ones, buddhas of the past and future, celestial deities. Some have morphed from men to women. Some can save your soul, heal you, make you happy when you're sad. Meher McArthur's book can help you find your way through the bewhildering maze of Buddhist imagery and iconography. Laid out in a intuitive style and clearly explained, this guide is especially useful to students trying to get a grip on why that statue has eleven heads and eight arms. Highly recommended.

With its excellent organization, concise explanations in clear language, and straightforward iconographic drawings, my entry level students found Reading Buddhist Art a welcome clarifying light upon a subject that is often impenetrably intricate and arcane. They were enthusiastic about this book. McArthur's achievement is first her neutrality; she does not emphasize one branch of Buddhism over another but rather by revealing the uniting threads in a religion that expresses itself in wide variation among disparate cultures and eras, she offers an overview that allows students to attain a secure foundation of concepts as revealed through art. Second is her exceptionally well designed, easy to follow, structured organization, in which the important particulars of Buddhism are revealed according to this cosmic yet also international and historical scope, and the intricacies of symbolism are shown to have a logic that unites iconography from seeming details to major architectural forms. Short, well-written opening essays focused on history and fundamental concepts precede a pictorial survey of the essential pantheon, presented individually in hierarchical order according to the original Indian name. Each deity is accompanied by a subordinate list of major variant names as they appear in different countries, and a brief yet thorough introductory description supported by comparative iconographic illustrations. This is followed by explanations of minor symbolism, major architectural monuments, a glossary of important terms, and other essential information. The beauty of this text is that it encourages students to learn actively, from what they can see, rather than bog themselves down in abstract descriptions of doctrine. It can stand alone as a beginner's guide in at a museum or temple site, and also function as a superb supporting reference in a general introductory class. McArthur has given any interested entry-level person the means to create a solid foundation on which more specialized advanced studies can be securely built.

Despite nice illustrations and photos, this work suffers most from poor organization. Instead of going through each of the building blocks f Himalayan statuary and iconography, then putting them together (i.e., mudras, vehicles, hand objects, etc.), it is organized (not right word) in a peculiar fashion that resists its use as a reference book. Often it goes into great detail about trivial things, then omits more important things. For example, it clutters the landscape with discussions about different sects - this is really premature. If you read German, my recommendation is buying Wolfgang Schumann's masterful "Buddhistische Bilderwelt" [The world of Buddhist Iconography], which you can probably buy from www.amazon.de.

Imagine yourself in an Asian museum, or some Asian art shop, on whose wall hangs a scroll that depicted some sort of a Buddhist figure. Assuming that you're someone who is interested in art, wouldn't it only be natural that you turn curious in the identity of the figure? This book, in my view contrary to the negative reviews, does a great job in meeting such need.

The main part of book assumes a very convenient two-page format. The left hand side page consists entirely of photographs and illustrations. This side serves as the index -- as described above, you are to scan through these pictures to find which figure (Shakyamuni, Vairochana, Maitreya, etc), posture (standing Buddha, sitting Buddha, etc), artifact, mudra (hand gesture that is believed in the Vajrayana sect to facilitate reaching enlightenment faster) you seek to identify. To the right are explanations of related symbolism, function, different representations, convenient cross references, and even transliterations of the name of the identity in question into various languages (mostly Sanskrit, Chinese, Japanese; less Korean, Vietnamese, Mongolian).

The book evidently isn't meant to be exhaustive. As repeatedly said, I think it is to serve as an introduction to the field. Criticizing the book for being short is equivalent to saying that no introductory book deserves to be written. No doubt there could be more detailed and thoroughly researched references in the field. Yet for beginners like myself brevity has its own merits (though in the long run I might have to purchase one of those more detailed references).

Having said this much, some mundane criticism of my own: 1) all photos are in black and white, and a bit too small to allow for appreciation of the details -- imagine a colorful mandala (a geometric diagram that depicts the Buddhist universe) enclosed in a 4x4 inch black-and-white box. 2) In many cases the explanation on the right hand side page does not match the gesture in the accompanying illustrations.

This title has earned a deserved excellent reputation. However, the publishers dropped the ball on the proofreading. The introductory section is rife with typographical errors, which is inexcusable in any professionally published work. That this is a book about literacy presents a sad irony to the reader/user. Nevertheless I would recommend this title to all language arts teachers at all levels.

This is a great resource for any teacher. It covers all the basics of reading in a complete and concise manner. It condenses tons of information into an easy-to-read text. If you only have time to read one book on reading, this is definitely one to read.

This book would be a great resource for aspiring and new teachers. Unfortunately, colleges don't provide enough depth in this area. The book is an easy read and is truly user-friendly. As an experienced teacher I did not find anything that I am not already doing except for the author's point on vocabulary. According to her, it should not be a part of the prereading. I still plan to work with vocabulary but I am going to try it in the postreading block. I did copy a chart for future reference before passing this book on. So, the book was not a complete waste. Whatever you do, do NOT pay full price for this book!! (Read below.)
I smiled when I read other readers' distress with the editing of this book. I was very annoyed with this. I actually wrote to Zephyr about this. There are many mechanical and syntactical errors in the book. I, too, was offended that a professional text was so poorly handled. I told the publisher I would withhold judgment until hearing their position in the unlikely chance that there was a reasonable explanation. As of today, they have not responded. To me that speaks volumes. I will not be purchasing any Zephyr Press, Chicago Review Press, or Independent Publishers Group items in the future.

What on earth happened here? I've never written a review before, but I was so upset by this book's publication that I have to write one this time. It is virtually impossible to read this book and to have any respect for its content with the absolutely amazing number of standard English writing errors. This book looks like a rough draft that hadn't been proofread/edited even once before it was published. I can't believe it's in print!!!! This book was purchased at a price commensurate with other books of its size. For that price, I would expect that the book would have been to a polished stage, and this was barely a first/second draft. How did this book get into print and offered on Amazon as a legitimate published book when it's merely a very, very rough draft??

Expertly written by experienced reading teacher and educational consultant Gail Saunders-Smith, The Ultimate Guided Reading How-To Book: Building Literacy Through Small-Group Instruction is an impressive and "user friendly" resource created especially for classroom teachers and offering them practical, effective strategies for coordinating their efforts to guide different levels of readers to higher literacy levels, implement a five-step guided reading process, coordinate literature workshops and literature circles, and more. An excellent supplementary resource for grade-school educators, The Ultimate Guided Reading How-To Book is an invaluable addition to reading skill development curriculum reference and resource collections.

If anyone is concerned about their youth or pre-youth.. or just need some good advise on your 15yr-old... this is a must read...

When you start not to understand your child... and he/she seemingly have a different culture all of a sudden... you need help.... how do you build a close relationship? How can you understand their world...

I think this book help me for sure....

We read the book with great relief. We were sure our teenagers were the only ones behaving and speaking a language we did not understand. After reading the book and trying some of the techniques suggested, we can only describe it as the Rosetta Stone of teen language. It was great!

Today's teens live in a different world from their parents, more so than ever before. It's hard to teach your teens how to grow up spiritually, especially when you may not have had good guidance from your own parents. This book is a great resource for learning how to connect to your teen. Learn how to make connections with your teen that will give them their needed sense of authenticity, importance, security, significance, lovability, and responsibility. My husband and I are already making great steps towards beginning to better relate to our teenage daughter.

Let me make something clear from the outset. I am a postmodernist. Deal. For those of you that are still reading, let me explain why this book is dangerous. First, McDowell's goal is one that I can wholeheartedly agree with. Students shooting each other is a situation that is unacceptable. Something needs to be done. This, unfortunately, is very much NOT it. The reason is very obvious, once you set aside your bias and consider what the author is trying to do. He is attempting to show you how to lead (i.e., coerce) your child/children back into a faith in God.

This very attempt to coerce your children back to God is wrong. No one should be forced to believe in Christianity or anything else, or we may as well reinstate the Crusades and the Inquisition. It will give you a good laugh if you take it the way that I can only assume that it is meant: as a joke. If you do what McDowell suggests, you will be forcing them to believe what you do and you will be sending them down a certain path to self-destruction. If you want your children to relate to you and to be healthy, teach them critical thinking skills and attempt to understand their lives and their decisions. They are their own human being and they CAN indeed make their own decisions.

It's a fun joke and I read it every once in a while to give me a fun laugh. Taking it seriously is a mistake. You do a good job, Josh. Keep the laughs coming!
Harkius

If you are using JACT's Reading Greek to learn Greek, you need this book. I wholeheartedly reccomend this series, as it is the best reading method Greek series I could find.

Since I took a year of Greek in college, I'm not so much learning Greek as getting reacquainted. But I took the class ten years ago, so naturally, I had forgotten lots.

I started by reviewing the first chapters in Reading Greek, but I quickly realized that I needed more than just what the text and grammar/exercise book could supply together.

Luckily this book exists. It's design for each chapter really helps. First it presents some words and phrases which might be a bit sticky--I check here before I even try to read a new section. Then I read the Greek section in the text. Then I come back to the Independent Study Guide, check the English translation section to see if I understood what I read. And I am faring much better now.

"Reading Greek" was first published in two volumes: the TEXT and the GRAMMAR, VOCABULARY AND EXERCISES. "An Independent Study Guide to Reading Greek" was subsequently published to patch up the shortcomings of the original volumes (which could not be easily reprinted with corrections because they are so interrelated). The authors - a committee - admit that even teachers of Greek found the original volumes quite difficult to follow. The original explanations are too brief; reference material is scattered throughout the text; and the typography is poor (with some very small Greek fonts, and badly organized headings and subheadings).
If your school or university has prescribed "Reading Greek" - you wouldn't buy it otherwise - you are, unfortunately, part of a captive market and you really need to buy "An Independent Study Guide to Reading Greek" as well to make sense of the course.

Designed to be used in conjunction with the "Reading Greek" series. Gives answers to problems and translation notes. Excellent for self-study for someone who has had some training in a foreign language (esp. Latin), or has occasional access to a Greek teacher.

This course package is rather nice and still the most comprehensive, compact, well-rounded and historically-oriented, well-balanced introductory greek course. BUT IT IS ONLY FOR STUDENTS WHO CAN STUDY ON THEIR OWN AND KNOW HOW TO HELP THEMSELVES (E.G. READ A GRAMMAR GUIDE)
Having studied Latin with Reading Latin by CUP, I found this course to be somewhat less sophisticated. I would still choose this course over any other course available with English as an instructional language, it is profound, unpretending, the linguistics side is solid, the stories interesting and neither too light nor too long. Combining the text book and the grammar/exercise book into one compendium would improve the usability of the course. I also recommend that more exercises be added in the next edition. A better layout would also help, including larger font size. Still a best buy. The selection of texts is one of its strong points: not everyone who studies Greek wants to delve into Mythology, insurance fraud is a real life topic, here packaged in a very funny, capturing story. If you learned Russian and remember the story of the Marsman in the GUM, here are more stories that will stay in your memory for a long time.

For those of us learning on our own, or for whom Wheelock has proven as dry as toast, the Reading Latin course (text volume and grammar volume) has been a godsend. And now with this Independent Study Guide it will be even better!

This course is the best buy in language learning for learners who can study on their own and are seriously interested in aquiring a language. You will profoundly enjoy it.
There is only one thing to regret: that no comparable course exists for Classical Hebrew or Classical Japanese. Learning Latin with this course will make you love Latin (even when you hated Latin in the past).
It is sophisticated, in a very British manner and approach.
This course is not for the type of student who has grown accustomed to the American "lean back and chat" "communicative" approach, who expects to get to reading Ovid in 7 days, and needs to have it all in a self-opening one-way can.
This is a serious compendium, enjoyable, intelligently designed and taught, something that will last on your book shelf.

Better yet, do yourself or your students a favor and FORGET SIDWELL.
This cancer on the body of Latin education has impaired and imperiled students for too long. Choose Wheelock, choose
Scanlon, choose to sit down and memorize Lewis and Short, but please, please, don't keep buying this putrid and detestable
mockery of a language course. If you need evidence of this man's utter madness, look to the mind-numbing exercises devoid of holistic comprehension, and to the chaotic presentation of grammar. Introducing the passive voice a dozen chapters after deponents? Absurd! Criminal! This study guide might be necessary, but it is also clumsy in arrangement and difficult to navigate. The mise en page is likely to scare new students, and turn them away from what can be a very fun and accessible language without the obstacle of a rotten mushroom like this guy. Sidwell: the sun has set on your empire of tears; you have had your day.

The independent study guide is basically a necessity for self-learners using the Reading Latin course. It includes English translations of the readings in the text volume and the solutions to the essential exercises in the grammar volume. However, Jones & Sidwell make it a point to not give solutions for exercises marked as optional, or for the short reading exercises at the end of each section. This seems fair enough because neither makes new demands on the student, and the shorter reading exercises are meant to encourage self-reliance.
It gets 4 stars because while the text always denotes long vowels by putting macrons on them, the study guide does not except for a small handful of solutions. I can't say it's because those solutions would have been too confusing without macrons because macrons are missing from plenty of others that are ambiguous as a result (obviously it's not going to kill you - plenty of people learn Latin without macrons, but it's also not consistent with the other volumes of Reading Latin). Additionally, some of the given answers use expressions or vocabulary not encountered by the student until later in the book. Typos are extremely rare if not nonexistent.

These are what give more terrorists more training. Remember September 11, 2001? Well, this book makes it easier for them to avoid taking flying lessons.

These are what give more terrorists more training? Yes, I remember September 11, 2001 and NO, this book does NOT make it easier for terrorists to avoid taking flying lessons. I would say that is idiotic thinking if I was a mean person... it's just ignorant thinking and that's not being mean, that's being truthful.

"The school of hard knocks" is no place to learn aviation. The knowledge imparted by Mr. Schiff's years of experience is absolutely invaluable to a "green" student pilot like myself. His writing style reflected his love for aviation, talent for teaching and sense of humor. I could hardly put these books down! By passing on his experience in such a readable way, I definately feel he has helped me to be a safer pilot.

There are lots of great book for aviators out there. Most of them hit on one subject and are good like want to know about weather than try Weather Flying by Bob Buck or what about aerodynamics try Skip smiths books Illustrated guide to aerodynamics. Are you a new pilot and don't want to die, try The killing zone. Are you moving up kerosene then try the Turbine pilots flight manual or Fly the wing.

But being a CFI/II/MEI this is the set of books that recommend first to all pilots of all capabilities. I have had a 20,000 hour 47 driver tell me he learned A LOT of things from these books. I re-read them just about every year and guess what I learn more and more.

If I ever get to meet Mr. Schiff I would like to shake his hand and offer him a heartfelt thank you for making me a better pilot and a better instructor.

I highly recommend this book. I read it on a car ride and couldn't put it down. It resonates so well with my experiences as a teacher, teacher educator, and reading researcher. For some reason there is a political twinge to reading philosophies - I've always wondered about it - and this cleared it up for me quite a bit. Seems to me that if reading research PROVES what works with children who are struggling to read, there should be very little resistance to implementing it in reading curricula, but there is massive, and even angry resistance out there. I've asked my students, who are future teachers, why they think that is and there reasons are in harmony with this book: tenure ("I don't HAVE to do anything"), fear ("people are going to find out I have no clue how to teach children to read"), laziness ("but I've gotten away with doing the same old thing for so long I don't want to be professional and improve my practice"), and above all, ignorance ("I never learned how to do this in graduate school" - "Oh, before it was Whole Language and now it's phonics - the pendulum is just swinging again and it means nothing" - "Those right wing Bush-loving neo-cons are forcing their agenda" - "It takes a lot of money to implement instruction that my students need and I can't do it without some funding"). Read the book - it's amazing...I truly loved it.

I did not find this book useful,and not just because I am already in the field of learning disabilities.
My comments concern the organization of the book, and its content.
I do not believe that scattering the examples throughout the book was necessarily relevant to the particular chapter they illustrated. For example, in several chapters adults who had failed in school and were then successful were used as illustrations, rather than assembled. I understand, however, why the book was organized this way.
There is no concluding chapter or comment after the excellent examples of successful education in chapter 6.
I believe the book would have more impact if the examples had been drawn from a wider geographical area.
Finally, for whom is the book intended? Will graduates or teachers read it to learn what they should be teaching? Is it an introduction for parents?
While there is plenty of interesting information, "The Reading Glitch" is not a book I will be recommending to anyone.

This is an important and timely book about the crucial skill of reading.
Reading well is a skill that must be learned, and the evidence is clear that reading instruction in American schools is failing many students, particularly those with learning difficulties and the disadvantaged. This is a shame, because scientific research into the reading process points the way to success for all readers.
These are the themes of The Reading Glitch, a book for general audiences that seeks to make sense out of the science, teaching, and culture of reading in America. The authors of The Reading Glitch are Lee Sherman, a research writer at Oregon State University (OSU), and Betsy Ramsey, a research associate at Oregon Health Sciences University.
The difficulties many students have with the primary task of reading have large implications not just for literature and language arts classes, say the authors, but in every other part of schooling and outside and beyond school, for the rest of a person's life.
The book points out that approximately 40 percent of all American fourth-graders scored below national standards for "basic" reading skills, according to the federal government's National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) conducted in 2000. By the time they're leaving high school, the NAEP found, American students are often still struggling. By age 17, only about 1 in 17 seventeen year olds can read and gain information from specialized text, for example the science section in the local newspaper.
American educators have been arguing over the causes and cures of reading problems for decades, but the preferred reading instruction used in most schools is still a variant on the Dick and Jane books introduced in the 1950s. The method is generally referred to as "whole language," referring, by way of contrast, to other methods which base learning on understanding the parts of written language.
"The tenets of `whole language' or `discovery learning' are simple," writes author Sherman: "reading is as natural as speaking. Therefore, skills instruction is unnecessary. Children will learn to read when exposed to books in a supportive, caring environment, just as they learn to speak in day-to-day interactions with Mom and Dad. Give them lots of rich literature, and off they'll go."
But this "reading is natural" notion rests on a fallacy, a "fatal mixing of apples and oranges. Humans' ability to communicate orally is an evolutionary adaptation that began a million years ago. Writing, in contrast, is a human invention that has been around only about 5,000 years. Spoken language is passed down in our genes. Written language is not."
Assuming individuals will learn to read by being exposed to writing makes about as much sense as assuming a person could fly an aircraft by being exposed to a Boeing 747, Sherman says.
Sherman and Ramsey bring together research conducted through the last two decades in diverse but related fields such as brain imaging, child psychology, and reading instruction which leads to what Sherman calls an "inconvenient truth": "A mounting body of evidence shows that struggling readers lack a skill that is absolutely essential to the reading process: phonemic awareness. Simply put, it's the ability to hear the individual sounds in spoken words.
"The typical disabled reader can't distinguish these sounds (called phonemes) - so she fails to make the next leap - linking sounds to letters. Without these basic building blocks, the rest of the reading skills - decoding (letter combinations), word recognition, and reading comprehension -- are all but impossible."
The good news is that studies sponsored by the federal National Institutes of Health show that all kids can be taught to read competently. "All the literacy deficits kids bring to school can be overcome with a research-based reading program that starts where they are--not from where we wish they were or where we think they should be--when they enter kindergarten."
A research-based reading program will include direct instruction in phonics, the sounds associated with letters.
"Research has shown again and again that all children, including the disadvantaged and the learning disabled, can learn to read adequately when given direct, explicit, systematic instruction in phonics.
"Despite countless studies that affirm this, however, the whole-language philosophy shuns phonics, demonizing it as a right-wing plot against progressive teaching methods."
Many educators, Sherman and Ramsey lament, dismissed the 1998 National Academy of Sciences report, Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children, which concluded that children need to be taught to read, directly and systematically. And these teachers rejected the findings of the congressionally mandated National Reading Panel, which reported in 2000 that kids need direct instruction in phonics.
"For many educators, these panels lacked validity because they included experts from fields such as neurology, pediatric medicine, and psychology. Interference from these perceived outsiders in classroom practice is deeply resented by many educators," Sherman notes.
The Reading Glitch explains the science and provides numerous examples of individuals and schools using that scientific background to help kids to read.

I'm sorry, but this isn't right. This is the exact same program as Wanda Sanseri's "Teaching Reading at Home" and most recently, "Spell to Read and Write". It is indeed a great program for establishing anyone in the fundamentals of reading, writing and spelling, but this is almost verbatim to Wanda's program...and at twice the price. I know this is a free world and we can't slap a copyright on the alphabet, but in all fairness to Wanda, this wheel has already been invented.

Using the Riggs system takes time and effort, as well as consistency, but the outcome is well worth it! My daughter was using (writing, spelling, reading) words that were well above her grade level while still in first grade. This system stresses "rules" and for any child who loves things to be black & white, this is a perfect system for learning how to read and write at the same time.

As required text books go, this wasn't too bad. The author overused citations and they were printed in smaller type that was challenging to read. The subject matter was fairly interesting but the citations were often distracting rather than enhancing.

This special edition thoroughly covered the historical perspective of reading instruction in America and is an excellent resource in the field of reading.

The book was the one that I exactly needed for my Master's Class, it is very useful and very informative for the reading program.

This book is really easy to read and easy to follow. For a text book it's quite good. I had to buy the book for a class, but the book could have been much, much worse.