Schools and Instruction Books

"Best Practice" appears to be the latest whole language code word. Many of the "best practices" suggested here have little or no solid foundation on convergent, juried, replicable research. To say that these practices make common sense is simply not evidence enough to implement them in our schools. For the first time since the Progressivism of the 1930's educational reform is not coming from our colleges and universities. They have, after all, perpetuated the "best practices" that have been failing our children since they were first widely implemented in our public schools in the 1950's. Reform is coming from political leaders, as in the "No Child Left Behind" legislation, and scientific researchers who have been commissioned by Congress. Whole school reform that is based on scientifically based, EFFECTIVE practices demonstrate positive change in the first year, not in the three to five years indicated in this book. The "Report of the National Reading Panel" would be a good place to start looking for effective school reform practices. This writer is the Coordinator of Instruction for a large, urban school system.

As an instructor of a graduate level education course, this book is an excellent example of the best that is happening in classrooms. It is filled with practical and engaging ways to involve students in their own learning. A must for all first and 20 year teachers.

As part of my school's curriculum committee, Best Practices is on our assigned reading list. After reading the introduction I was shocked to find the book not only interesting, but also easy to read. The book's main premise is that school reform, what ever direction a school chooses to take, is a process, not a magic potion. Meaningful school reform, according to the authors, could and prbably should take at least three years. No one standardized test and no one curriculum can be a cure-all for improving student performance. Best Practice tells how to begin the process of reform to produce improved student performance in an environment dedicated to that process.

As an instructor of a graduate level education course, this book is an excellent example of the best that is happening in classrooms. It is filled with practical and engaging ways to involve students in their own learning. A must for all first and 20 year teachers.

Too often we base our educational practice on ideology, folk lore, or tradition. Education has suffered from this. We have also suffered from those who would use a business paradigm to make educational decisions. Zemelman, Daniels, and Hyde of synthesized the major research findings related to effective teaching in various academic areas. They present their findings in a way that is very easy to understand and apply. This should be required reading for all principals, teachers, school board members, governors, presidents, and legislators.

This is one of those text books you have to keep. It's not expensive enough to be a text book in the first place. It has lots of great references to websites teachers should make use of. I've been passing the website information on to my computer literate teaching friends.

I respectfully encourage all serious reviewers to avoid the video review option. The video review sacrifices both rapid scanning of diverse views, and the ability to create added value from automated text search.

edutopia is a true gift to humanity from the George Lucas foundation. I consider the book and the DVD to be a superb starting pointfor the necessary global transformation.

Chapter Nine discusses a dozen promising practices that work:
01 Peer Instruction
02 Cross-age tutoring
03 Bringing local experts into the classroom
04 Multi-age classrooms
05 Cooperative learning
06 Class-size reduction
07 Team teaching
08 Looping (teachers stay with same students for several years)
09 Block scheduling
10 Schools within schools
11 School teams
12 Community service

This is a superbly crafted multi-media teaching tool that every teacher, parent, and administrator will learn from and be strengthened by.

My only disappointment is that the book's sponsors and authors focused so narrowly on just the USA and how the wisdom in this book might be applied within our existing academic and vocational infrastructure. My own focus is on the five billion poor who do not have the time for 18 years of rote education. Simply by subsidizing cells phones and creating a global network of 100 million volunteers using Telelanguage.com, we could offer free education to the five billion poor, and our own population, "one cell call at a time." Education is the only way we can create stabilizing wealth--this excellent book set its sights too low.

This book is nothing but George Lucas' personal tribute to the technology that made him a superstar. This book is filled with rhetoric, unsubstantiated claims and lots of full-color pictures. It does not have any use for someone in a teacher education program, as it reads more like a coffee table book. The included CD-ROM is the icing on the huge cake of b.s., and goes to show, once again, that if you are rich and famous, you can publish anything.

This is exactly what it promises to be --a very informative description of the best learning contexts that are being built with new technologies. Rather than celebrating the technology it focuses on the relationship between and among people and the way in which new forms of information and communication are reshaping these relationships.

If you want to think beyond the two covers of a book and 4 walls of a classroom, if you want to redesign schools and their communities as places of serious, playful learning in social contexts, this book will push your thinking. Yes, this book (and the 11 short movies) celebrates learning. No, this book is a not a critical examination of research that validates the learning outcomes although, for some of these projects, such studies exist.

A "success story" has value because it shows us how people have come to work together to create projects that push the boundaries past the routine. The purpose of these stories is to not simply to inform. We need stories like the ones in this book to inspire us, to energize us to move beyond what is now, and to realize that each of us can and should be thinking about what can be.

I use this book in my graduate courses to expose students to the range of project-based learning applications of technology, the evolving role in technology in assessment, the ways in which communities have become more involved in education and how communication technology is reshaping professional development into a continual everyday process. While a consistent philosophical and theoretical position underlies the examples, students need to abstract the principles.

The range and choice of stories is excellent but the stories are brief. Personally, I would have preferred a single spaced book with twice the information on each of the projects and examples. But in a multimedia connected world, stories can link to web sites, videos, and more extensive information on the Edutopia site and on the web. Celebrating success may not fit the critical stance that some take toward the work of education, but with all of the challenges, it is inspiring when people connect.

During a time of state budget crises that are calling for drastic changes to the educational system as we know it, Edutopia provides a breath of fresh air and a sense of hope for teachers and parents. With the budget cuts looming , and demand for accountability as measured by performance on simplified tests, and the need to do more with less, the more is, unfortunately, focused on increasing test performance. Conspicuously absent from the center of concerns is the children's learning process.

In creating Edutopia, the book, the newsletter and the web resources, The George Lucas Educational Foundation's work finds our children and their learning processes at the heart of the educational system. While many of us have grown weary of reforming education, and have resigned ourselves to the concept of "tinkering" with the system (Tyack and Cuban, 1995, Tinkering Toward Utopia), Edutopia has held on to the belief in the power of the people to make significant, lasting, and positive changes to the way our children learn, develop, and grow through the educational process. While there is great value to tinkering, Edutopia shows us that the only limitations we have are those that we place on ourselves. The contributors to this book shows us how much power is unleashed when we allow ourselves to let go of our fears of change and our reluctance to embrace the possibilities that lie in the amazing digital age.

Edutopia is not a traditional educational book. If you are looking for a book on learning theories, research studies, or foundations of a discipline, Amazon will be able to help you locate them. There are also books that will tell you how poorly we are doing at educating all children. Edutopia is a unique book filled with creative approaches to learning, assessment, community involvement, expanding the classroom, creatively shaping the learning environment. This book is about the passion that we have for the development of our children. The authors urge us to break out of the lament which plagues our practice, to free our imagination to use emerging technology to energize learning. The book is filled with real life examples with ordinary teachers who take extraordinary steps to inculcate innovative and substantial changes to the children's learning process. These are examples of people who believe that they can make a difference, that real learning can occur despite budget cuts and "uncontrollable" outside forces. The stories are about people who refuse to settle.

When I read the newspapers or listen to the evening news and get discouraged with talks of the demise of our children's education, and I am tempted to settle for the mere tinkering of our children's educational process, I pick up Edutopia and am reminded that there are people out there who are making incredible differences in the lives of children.

Knight s Don't Teach Piano by Debbie Dadey is an exciting mystery told in third person. One of the main characters is Eddie who is rude, obnoxious and mean. Another main character is Howie who is nice and smart. They live in Baley City during modern times. The people think that knights are going to take over the city. Eddie got piano lesson for his birthday. A knight gives Eddie the piano. The boys explore the knight house and find a round table and a white horse. Then they saw the knight jousting. Then the knight said I will take over Baley City.
I would not recommend this book to anyone. It isn't really detailed. The plot was not good. That why I would not recommend this book to anyone. I would rate this book two stars.

It was a great book. Eddie's grandmother has him take piano lessons from a strange man, Lance E. Lott. The place where he takes piano lessons even looks like a castle complete with a round table. Could Mr. Lott really be a knight in shining armor? The Bailey School Kids are going to find out.

I enjoyed this book because it was funny and interesting. This story comes complete with sword fights and jousting matches. Maybe Eddie should have taken flute lessons instead. If you want to find out why you will just have to read the book.

Ryan, age 8

I read Knight's Don't Teach Piano Lessons by Debbie Dadey and Marcia Thornton Jones. Knight's Don't Teach Piano Lessons is a very good book. It's about four kids who start to take piano lessons. Their teacher's name is Lance A. Lot. The four kids names are Meloby, Liza, Howie, and Eddie. I liked it because they always find something to find out, and they always have some spying to do.They are funny books. They are like detectives. I recommend this book to peole who kind of like mysteries, ages 8 to 12. There are 30 (including Knight's Don't Teach Piano.)

Knights Don't Teach Piano, by Debbie Dodey and Marcia Thornton Jones is from a series, "The Bailey School Kids" series.
My favorite character is Liza because she is very nice. Eddie thinks he is the best at everything but he is not. There is Melody,who is really bossy, and Howie,who is really good at science. If you read this book, it will be the best!

Wow!. It is Eddie's birthday and his grandma has a surprise for him. Surprise!, His surprise is a piano teacher. After Eddie's birthday party, Melody and Liza gave Eddie their meanest look on him because they will be also teach by a piano teacher named Lance E. Lott[Eddie's surprise]. When they go inside his house, there are many statues of knights. The First one was Howie. Lance taught Howie how to play better. Eddie saw many knights in the dining room. They were all seated as if they are strapped in the chair. After the piano lessons Eddie taught Lance was a knight. The next day, It was Melody's turn to play the piano. While Melody was learning piano Lance offered Liza a hot chocolate but she said "no thanks" because she does not know piano yet. When Liza's turn came she played bad notes but Lance did not seem to be worried. After that Eddie decided that he will prove Lance is a knight. When they bring Howie's Toy car. Suddenly, One of the other knights picked Howie's toy car. When they saw Lance, Eddie was making the horses free. After the terrible fight yesterday, Eddie, Liza, Melody, Howie and Eddie's grandma went to the Medieval Festival. But Yesterday there were 6 knights but now there were 5. Then, Eddie's grandma said that "Lance had to move back to England he was sorry he could not continue your piano lessons". Eddie wad about to cheer but he did not do it because it would hurt his grandma's feeling. Grandma said this "Now what would i replace for Lance as your surprise"? Grandma asked. Then Eddie asked" How about a video game''?. Then Eddie's grandma said "Oh no, Dear how about a flute"?. Eddie slumped into his chair while his friends laughed at him

THE END

Not only is this book a great resource for teaching young children, but it a great tool for future teachers. The material in the book can help you study for MTEL's.

This book is very informative and offers a plethura of ideas to work with the various reading strategies.

I found this book to be very helpful in teaching Elementary Reading. It had great ideas and good insight. Also, easy to read and well organized.

Like new condition. Only a few highlights.

I have used this book in my reading classes for graduates. It has become an excellent tool in my classroom as well. I have lent it to several teachers to use when questions concerning phonics or methods arrive. It's an excellent resource book to keep close at hand in the classroom.

Being a former student of this teacher. I am baffled at how fate allows her to share in any success at all. She was a horid teacher and turned me away when I came to her for help. She was always complaining about god in school, and was basically the worst of the liberal teachers out there. 12 years later I still feel as if she should have been a teacher and I hope she is exposed for what she is.

Firek's book is an exceptionally well written and practical resource that could be used by teachers in other subjects as well as English. The suggestions are easy to implement and will help teachers make their classes more interesting and thus motivate their students to be active learners. I highly recommend this book for all teachers!

I admit it. Even though I know how to check my email and use the computer and love the DVD player, I'm more of a technological dinosaur rather than a soldier on the front lines. I think technology can be a useful thing, yet at the same time I think we've become too dependent upon technology in our society. We created machines to help us, but the machines are really controling us. As a future English teacher, my beliefs can present an interesting dilemma. I'm not that big a fan of technology, yet I am going to be required to use it in the classroom. 10 EASY WAYS has helped me see how I can somewhat painlessly do that. The book is divided into 10 chapters: audio theatre, video projects, movies in the classroom, television as a short story, key pals, interactive writing, real research, concept-mapping software, class websites, and PowerPoint presentations. The first four chapters deal with technology besides computers and the last six chapters are all computer related.

I enjoyed the first four chapters much more than the last six. To begin with, I think it's easier for teachers to incorporate movies, videos, audio theatre, and television into the classroom than all the computer stuff. I also believe that those things have a greater relevancy to an English classroom than much of the things discussed in the computer related sections. Most students are probably going to be more computer literate than their teachers are anyway. Besides, I'd rather foster a love for literature in students rather than waste classtime teaching them to use email.

With that said, 10 EASY WAYS has illustrated to me much better than other ways I have been taught, how I could incorporate computer related lessons into my teaching if I so chose. The only problem is, technology like the ones discussed in the book is constantly changing and some of the things the book talks about might not be around in a couple years. Nevertheless, the book is filled with useful ideas that any teacher of English can use.

Firek thinks of it all - audio, video, TV, movies, keypals, word processing, WebQuests, concept mapping, websites, and PowerPoint - and explains how all these strategies are within our grasp for improving language arts learning/teaching. Easy to read, easy to do. Firek uses student voices and actual projects, like "Star Wars: Macbeth" to guide me. Excellent. Thanks for the ideas in one good book.

This is a highly accessible and fun guide to infusing technology into classroom learning. It's chock full of great examples and ideas, and the format makes it easy to use. Teachers of all subjects and at all grade levels can adapt the many excellent suggestions to the needs of their students. Buy this book and watch enthusiasm for learning bloom in your classroom!

Anna Kealoha provides as a successful mother of four and homeschool teacher provides an insightful ideology of teaching. Her experience also crafts this book as a resource that is abundant with a myriad of wonderful ways to learn.

As a pioneer of the home and school method, what Kealoha calls blend schooling, she offers a revolutionary way to look at education. She accomplishes this noteworthy task in a very practical and straightforward manner, drawing on academic theories, but only engaging that which is crucial to a parent's or educator's knowledge.

The result of this conglomerate of philosophy and practical wisdom is a wealth of information sure to assist any person concerned about their child's education.

This book had the potential to be really good, but it does not live up to this potential. Kealoha indulges herself in a brief 2 paragraphs about homebirth because "homeschooling is a natural continuation of homebirth..." While I support homebirth, this book is not about homebirth and 2 paragraphs cannot begin to treat the complex issues surrounding birth. To me, and possibly to other readers who, like me, are/were unable to birth at home, the statement that "parents should always be in complete control of the birthing situation and ... and should not readily give away their birthing power to the medical establishment" is ignorant and offensive, and smacks of snobbery.

Ignoring the extraneous and poorly-worded birthing topic, there is much that is useful in the book. However, there is also a great deal of 'filler' material that bore an unhealthy resemblance to the dittos and busy work that I remember from my own public school days. This book should have been written and edited with greater care. I imagine the author decided to write a book about alternative homelearning, wrote a few worthwhile paragraphs, then collected material willy-nilly to make a full-length book.

A better approach might be to write about homelearning as a personal endeavor and, when the material has piled up quite naturally, to edit ruthlessly, before even considering publication.

You will not find repeats from homeschool help books here! It is a fun and extremely creative book full of educational games, most used spelling words, fantastic quotes, play-dough recipes, teaching ideas, writing ideas, memory tips, art ideas, much much more! A really fun fun and stimulating book for all ages and all experience levels. It is not strictly from a Christian perspective and I find myself mentally replacing her few references to a high power with the words "God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob" but not a problem. Very non-denominational. My favorite part is where she has you visualize your perfect learning space....as a project for planning but with involvment from kids. Describe the lighting, the art, the books, the colors, the nature stuff, the seating, the work space, etc. and with her own helpful ideas. This is a "learning space" and not a "classroom". A real inspiration for that hs burn out that sets in once in a while. Not a book that you read from cover to cover, but one you keep going back to often and skipping all around. Especially for those with a desire to incorporate some unschooling ideas. Worth buying!

Anna Kealoha is clearly a connoisseur of teaching and learning, and she is happy to share her "secret recipes" for joyful and successful home education.

This encyclopedic cookbook of recipes for learning is jam-packed with creative ideas that will appeal to parents and children of all ages. It is incredibly comprehensive, with a wide variety of games, curriculum outlines, inspirational essays, lists of resources, and more.

My husband likes the logic puzzles and book lists. My older daughter likes the math section, where she finds endless inspiration for charting, graphing, and calendarizing her life. My youngest finds the word games exciting. And I find a welcome surprise on every page!

So, like Grandma's recipe book, this wise and wonderful guidebook has never yet made it onto the bookshelf at our house -- because someone is always using it!

As a homeschooling mother of four, the best testament for this book came the day the children began to use it for ideas and inspiration. Anna Kealoha has a beautiful and thoughtful attitude about how, why and when to teach our own whether homeschooling or not.

Arrived in excellent condition, fabulous book,prompt service, couldn't ask for any better value!

If you are a fan of the Hudson River school, you will not be disappointed with this book. The illustrations are large and clear, and the overview is precise. However, as noted by a previous reviewer, this is not a very detailed book. It is only a coffee table book after all.

I was more than pleased when I received this book. I teach American Literature classes at a university. I have been searching for an art book which represents adequate examples of the Hudson River School. I plan to use this book to show students samples of this type of early American art including artist Thomas Cole's paintings in connection with this time period in literature. I feel I could not have ordered a book which could have suited my purposes any better!

This book is a reprint of a 1978 exhibition catalogue of one person's private collection. There is a short (7 page) essay at the beginning which gives an overview of the Hudson River School. The rest of the book consists of illustrations of around 60 paintings, each by a different artist. Most of the artists are obscure, while the well-known painters (Bierstadt, Church, Cole) are not represented by their best works.

If you want an in-depth study of the Hudson River School with illustrations of its best paintings, this is not the book for you.

I was pleased to receive this book in a timely matter. It was in good condition when I received it.

Did not use in my assignments - other texts were necessary. I believe it will be a good reference for first year teaching.

Finally... I found an author and educator who states the obvious. In order to be a successful teacher, one has to first understand oneself as a person - the positive and negative aspects of our personality and identity that impact our instruction. Only by understanding these issues are teachers freed to "move the learner to the center".

Borich does an outstanding job utilizing a friendly, conversational manner of writing that easily engages the reader. Research seems to be placed in a better context when Borich "keeps it real" for the reader.

I especially appreciate his chapter on questioning strategies, a blatent area of weakness for many beginning and veteran teachers alike. He even extends questions techniques into promoting thinking and problem solving.

Finally, Borich successfully articulates the value of group collaboration often overlooked by teachers hooked on cooperative learning. One cannot exist without the other or student accountablily will drop and student frustration will prevail.

This is a must read book for any teacher trainer in search of research to support effective teaching methods.

I have read many methods books over the past 4 years. This book was the initial text required in a methods class. I found it to be very poor in detail (especially for the preservice teacher). I finished the book wondering, "where are the specific how to's?" I felt that I wasn't prepared to go into a classroom to teach a lesson. We were all struggling in class.
So, I decided to go to another college bookstore and found "Methods for Effective Teaching" by Paul Burden. This book answered all my questions and went into great detail. It is based on the INTASC Standards and PLT of the Praxis.

Olmstead's book is long overdue. While the research appears thorough and the writing professional, there's at least one outright mistake. Olga Samaroff (Stokowski) never taught at the Curtis Institute, rather the Philadelphia Conservatory in the same city. She also implies that the Institute of Musical Art was the equal of the Juilliard Graduate School. All you have to do is compare the faculty and the student body prior to the merger to see that JGS was indeed where the hotshots were concentrated. I have personally concluded that the book is reliable in reporting on the post World War II Juilliard but take her account of its early years with a grain of salt. This is understandable since most of the "old guard" are now deceased. Still, a valuable reference for those of us in the field.

Congratulations on a major contribution to American music. I read "Juilliard: A History" with admiration for its fine scholarship and courage in writing about contemporary events and still powerful people with such honesty.

The name Juilliard has been held synonymous with classical music training for so long that it is surprising that no-one has taken a potshot at it. This book is neither for or against Juilliard, but rather an appraisal of its strengths and weaknesses through a look at its history. The chapter on drama, containing so many references to now-household names, might be of particular interest to the casual reader. Dancers may be interested to find out why their department was forced to compete with another school in their own building. Musicians, whether they attended Juilliard or not, will find a lot of Olmstead's observations titillating. A good read, and a lot of insight from someone who worked there.

Olmstead's book is long overdue. While the research appears thorough and the writing professional, there's at least one outright mistake. Olga Samaroff (Stokowski) never taught at the Curtis Institute, rather the Philadelphia Conservatory in the same city. She also implies that the Institute of Musical Art was the equal of the Juilliard Graduate School. All you have to do is compare the faculty and the student body prior to the merger to see that JGS was indeed where the hotshots were concentrated. I have personally concluded that the book is reliable in reporting on the post World War II Juilliard but take her account of its early years with a grain of salt. This is understandable since most of the "old guard" are now deceased. Still, a valuable reference for those of us in the field.

I found Speck to be open and frank in his discussion on sex, and included a number of testimonies from youth who are dealing with or have dealt with issues in regards to this. He bases everything he writes on the authority of God's Word, not picking a verse out of context, but the principles the Bible teaches as a whole, and applying these to specific situations. Good for a family read, youth group, or on your own.

Mr. Speck is a wonderful Christian human being. His book is a wonderful book of fear and oppression for teens.

1. If you're gay, its wrong and you'll go to hell.

That's all I needed to read (although, yes, I did read a lot more). My favourite part was where Greg mentioned what seems the only possible symtoms a gay person demonstrates in their depressive and devilish lives. The whole multiple partners and drinking binges due to the lack inside themselves that they are trying to fill.

I think, in my opinion of course, Mr. Speck needs to go back to school (theological school also) and learn a little more in a many myriad of subjects. I think he lacks intellect and love. I think there is a hole in Speck. He needs to fill that hole with love, not words from the Bible.

If I could give this books 0 stars I would. The book is a disgrace to society and most definately to teens...

...unless of course you desire to instill fear into your children so they will follow your example of the world, instead of their own.

A wonderful quote for those who might be interested -

"If what we believed to be true was actually the truth, there would be little room for advance" - Orville Wright; Inventor of the Airplane.

Peace,
El.

Interesting.Informative. Easy to read. Teenagers will enjoy. I am using this book as a basis for teenage sex education class as well as the videotapes. Mr. Speck even suggests to teenageers that they write to him regarding their concerns. This is an excellent book.

Speck's gem of a book, Sex: It's Worth Waiting For, is pure gospel. Asserting that Jesus is the answer, Speck masterfully and tastefully weaves his way through the tangled web of teenage sexuality. He cuts no corners and leaves few stones unturned. Especially appreciated is the frank and useful chapter on masturbation. Although somewhat dated, the book is a helpful tool and an easy yet spiritually challenging book for the struggling teen.