Schools and Instruction Books

This is a very large format book of two hundred pages, and, with the exception of a few historic black and white photographs, it is fully illustrated in full colour. The text runs throughout the book and discusses the origins and influences of Russian Impressionism, and frequently draws comparisons with the French masters. However apart from the Contents page there is no index, no chronology, and no bibliography; although notes do appear on the same page as the relevant text.

While some of the images are impressive, the total package leaves much to be desired. The text is set in a fairly narrow sans face, not a good choice for comfortable reading, it is also comparatively large, again too large for comfortable close reading, and frequently it appears against a grey background; little good to be found there.

While the quality of photography and reproduction is sometimes very good, revealing at times the textures of the paint and the brush work, it is not consistent; sometimes the image is out of focus, this usually occurs where the close up has been enlarged too much and so render useless.

But perhaps the most irritating aspect of the book is the overall layout; it is quite simply far too busy. There are too many page permutations: double page bleed illustrations, text with running illustrations, text wrapped around illustrations, text wrapped around cut-out illustrations; I could go on but must mention one more and perhaps the most infuriating: the double page bleed image with a single column of text splitting the image so that part of it is moved across the page. As there is little relationship between the text and illustrations, I cannot see any reason for this strange integration. The overall impression is confusing and looks cheap, but more significantly it detracts from the paintings. Altogether a great shame for there is some beautiful work reproduced here. How much easier on the eye it would have been if the paintings had been assembled in a consistent layout separate from the text.

If you are looking for something really worthwhile can I suggest you take a look at Soviet Impressionist Painting, Vern G Swanson, ISBN 1851495495, published late 2007, hard to fault that one.

I am an elementrary computer teacher. I teach first through fifth graders one period a week. I think this book would have been more helpful for a teacher/parent who wanted to introduce the hardware side of computers without actually using computers. The worksheets are wonderful and the story line is great. This book did not suit my needs. I was looking for a more hands-on approach.

I bought this to help my 8th grader with her writing, but I don't think it will be much of a help.

I'm a music teacher and will likely never use anything in this book. It just doesn't fit into a classroom where experiential learning is the goal. This would be a nice way for a classroom teacher to incorporate music into their classroom, but if you're a music teacher who hates worksheets, I'd look elsewhere.

Skies & Clouds by Richard Taylor is disappointing. Beginners should find the text instructive and techniques not intimidating, but the examples contain many errors (often according to his own advice) making them counter productive to the student aspiring to greater proficiency. The author demonstrates merely modest painting ability of the subject. Regretfully the lighting and shadows are not well rendered and contrast values are weak. His clouds are overly ephemeral with little structure. A watercolor of a "Sky and Sea" is the most convincing, because the waves of the sea are well rendered, but the sky is confused with fog and rays of light that look like rain. The book's purpose of being a "field guide" to aid in the artists perception of nature is good, but a more observant eye and commentary is desirable. The watercolors display visual paint textures but fall short of being inspiring Skies or Clouds.

I purchased this book for a class on child psychology for my major in elementary education. I wasn't too impressed. If you are a teacher considering using this book for a class, I strongly recommend that you save your students' money and just have them research online.

Somebody should tell theses people that their idea of teaching costs too much?
I thought I'd get this and learn something about strings are taught.
Mostly I found out how teachers of strings are jipped?
The price on my used version is $12: it is more now.
I feel cheated with what I got.
Subjectively speaking I would say that an outline of how to teach strings should have more descriptive material
and some diagrams of how chords and notes can be achieved.
Something like :
" Listen to music and train your ears." ;
pretty much doesn't cut it with me as "instruction".

While this book is listed as hardcover, they actually send you a paperback version of the book still for the full $111. This is by far the WORST quality book I have ever seen. All of the pages are faded, most of which you cannot even read. I buy many books from Amazon and this is the first time I've ever had to return one. Do NOT buy this book! I thought, "It can't be that bad." But trust me, it is! The publisher should be ashamed. I feel bad for the authors who are stuck with a publisher producing such a low quality product.

I purchased this book new ( ~ $100). Many of my fellow students have purchased this book and the printing is so light that it is barely legible. It takes 2-3 times as long to read. Amazon offered to credit and replace, but it is a textbook and I cannot go without the book for week or two as I need it for my class.

The 20% discount Amazon offered was an insult. The product is so physically defective that it is barely usable. The publisher and Amazon must realize that students must have their textbooks to do their assigned reading - so they have us over a barrel.

My professor has complained to the publisher and is likely to discontinue using the text because of all of the problems. Amazon and Prentice Hall should be ashamed of their poor customer service.

DO NOT TAKE A CHANCE ON THIS PRODUCT. IF YOU HAVE TO BUY THIS BOOK ,BUY IT USED SINCE THE USED COPIES THAT SAW SEEMED TO BE PRINTED LEGIBLY.

Effective Literacy Instruction K-8: Implementing Best Practice (5th Edition)

I purchased this book for a college class I'm taking. The book was supposed to be in hard back and it arrived in paperback. The text itself is so light that I can hardly read it! Pretty ironic for a READING book!

I thought I ordered the 5th edition and received the 4th edition????

I HATE THIS BOOK. It's hard to read...no pictures... everything is WAY TOO WORDY. You can't enjoy what you are studying because the book is soooooo dull. It's just a bunch of bla bla bla...Each chapter intimidates you because it is so long and drawn out. There's no set vocabulary or anything. It's hard to outline and get the whole pictures when the book absolutely sucks.

My problem with this book is that after taking the diagnostic test it contains, I soon learned that it DOES NOT include a score conversion chart like the real LSAT contains. Without the score conversion chart it could more difficult for the test taker to gauge his/her improvement. Also buyer beware: it DOES NOT contain actual practice and test questions from previosly administered LSAT exams as do both the Princeton Review and Kaplan LSAT prep books. As a consumer this was not obvious to me. I was dissapointed in this product.

I used this book to prepare for the LSAT, and do not believe it provided questions as dificult as I actually encountered.

The reading level required on the actual test was higher, using more sophisticated language and requiring more subtle discrimination in selecting the correct answer.

The actual test's analytical reasoning section (i.e., "games"), was also more dificult than this guide prepared me for. In particular, two of the four were of a type not described in this book. The clues also tended to be more complex, and included more nested provisional statements.

I recommend you find something else to prepare with.

the book gives overviews of everything on the LSAT, that's true. but, it seems, esp. with the logic and the analytical reasoning games, it needs more in-depth information. it's probably on par with most of the available study guides.

This book is filled with redundancy and knowledge common to any college student. It has no teaching methods and never touches learning style. Well, unless you want to count the short section on lecture. We all know what it takes to make an interesting lecture or promote student learning with questions. We have been in college. This book is a true waste of money.

This book has some great ideas for teaching a class room and then it has some outdated material and ideas that should have been edited out of the book years ago. For example, "textbook recitation is an effective technique for teaching basic information simply because students are often motivated to read and study the assignment in anticipation of being called on to recite the information." What planet is this author from? There may be one out of a thousand students who would actually read in "anticipation" of being called on in class. There are better books available to new teachers like "Understanding by Design."