Whitaker, Zoul and Casas present a clear four-part framework to build leadership skills, stressing the importance of having a vision and taking the first step. Educator Laura Von Staden notes the standards relate both to teachers and to leaders identified by title.
Andi McNair’s “Genius Hour” is a valuable resource for educators who want to release potential in students but do not know how or where to start. Reviewer Terry Carter praises McNair’s focus on scaffolding strategies that can help students pursue their passions.
Book Reviews / Social & Emotional Learning
by MiddleWeb · Published 06/08/2017 · Last modified 11/12/2019
Carla Tantillo Philibert’s Everyday SEL in Elementary School gives inspiring, practical advice and lessons to help educators in classrooms and schoolwide meet their students’ social and emotional needs, says upper elementary teacher Linda Biondi.
Quality Questioning Can Help Us Transform Our Classrooms provides a detailed guide for fashioning quality questions and asking them in ways to encourage student learning. Instructional Partner Debby Smith says new and veteran teachers will want to keep it at hand.
Mock trials can bring project-based learning alive in English and social studies classes. In Judging for Themselves, David Sherrin provides everything teachers will need to put Galileo, Tom Robinson and others on trial, says social studies teacher Joanne Bell.
Reading Nancie Atwell and Anne Atwell Merkel’s The Reading Zone, 2nd edition, is like getting a letter from a good friend and mentor, says ELA teacher Amy Matthes. Find reading workshop case studies to help readers become passionate, skilled, and habitual.
Jenny Grant Rankin’s First Aid for Teacher Burnout: How You Can Find Peace and Success is the perfect salve for the tired teacher’s soul. This short book is packed full of great ideas to relieve, rejuvenate, and energize, says teacher-librarian Rita Platt.
Literacy coach Amber Bartlein finds Alan Sitomer’s “Mastering Short-Response Writing” to be “a quick read with practical ideas that can be implemented tomorrow.” His Three C’s System has already helped all of Barlein’s writers, including the ones who struggle most.
Ben Curran offers a future classic on lesson planning as a reflective, deliberate, on-going practice built with precision and thought. Teacher Linda Biondi thinks pre-service teachers, teacher educators and classroom veterans will all benefit from his practical advice.
If a school can agree to have both ELA and content area teachers use the ideas in “Strategic Journeys for Building Logical Reasoning” there is potential for students to achieve more intense thinking rather than surface learning, says reviewer Mary Langer Thompson.
