Book Reviews / Student Driven Learning
by MiddleWeb · Published 12/10/2013 · Last modified 11/17/2019
Reviewer Elisa Waingort highly recommends Student-Driven Learning to those who want to move toward a classroom where students are in the driver’s seat. The authors show how teachers can analyze current practice and begin leading students on hops, drives, and journeys toward ownership of learning.
Whether it’s Grandma’s biscotti recipe or a lesson plan, adding new ingredients (like digital tools) shouldn’t distract from the end result you seek, says teacher and technology consultant Mike Fisher. “The modern mindset is really about willingness, not digital knowledge. It’s about trying new things and exploring new tools and avenues for instruction WITH the students rather than FOR the students.”
Too many manic, even eruptive meetings? Reviewer Lyn Hilt recommends the preventatives and interventions crafted by these authors to promote productivity.
This is a must-read book for teacher leaders, says our reviewer, offering the stories of 8 educators who seek a new kind of teacher role in America’s schools.
Bringing iPads and apps into your classes? Having author Lori Elliott along is like having a technology mentor in the room, says Laura Von Staden.
The Best-Kept Teaching Secret “will be a book that I’ll refer to often,” says MiddleWeb reviewer Sandy Wisneski. Smokey and Elaine Daniels offer ideas that are both powerful and simple to implement, she writes, showing teachers how to bring life to “written conversations.”
If you are interested in transforming your classroom, engaging students and becoming an outrageously effective teacher, read and apply Teach Like a PIRATE right now, says our reviewer Laura Von Staden. “I took the risk at the beginning of this school year,” she writes. “I have to say, it went phenomenally well. I am committed to a pirate’s life.”
The Killgallons’ sentence-composing approach to grammar instruction, bolstered by “a mountaion” of model sentences and mentor texts, could be a valuable tool if teachers would like to see less hesitation and more acrobatics in their students’ writing, says reviewer Jenny Ovadia.
Don & Jenny Killgallon show how students can begin with basic structures and add more layers & nuances as they create sentences and then paragraphs. Reviewer & 6th grade ELA teacher Jenni Miller says the Killgallons’ use of engaging mentor texts & a 65-pp teacher guide makes this an essential reference for writing instruction.
Review: The authors deftly connect the ideas behind the close reading of text to the lives of young readers and their non-traditional reading materials.
