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Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com
The best way to teach is to learn together with the students. One of the rare breed of teachers who do know this is Nancie Atwell.
- The New York Times Reading this book can be revolutionary. . . . Atwell leads us to new understandings of teaching and learning in a workshop classroom.
- Voices from the Middle When first published in 1987, this seminal work was widely hailed for its honest examination of how teachers teach, how students learn, and the gap that lies in between. In depicting her own classroom struggles, Nancie Atwell shook our orthodox assumptions about skill-and-drill-based curriculums and became a pioneer of responsive teaching. Now, in the long awaited second edition, Atwell reflects on the next ten years of her experience, rethinks and clarifies old methods, and demonstrates new, more effective approaches.The second edition still urges educators to "come out from behind their own big desks" to turn classrooms into workshops where students and teachers create curriculums together. But it also advocates a more activist role for teachers. Atwell writes, "I'm no longer willing to withhold suggestions and directions from my kids when I can help them solve a problem, do something they've never done before, produce stunning writing, and ultimately become more independent of me." More than 70 percent of the material is new, with six brand-new chapters on genres, evaluation, and the teacher as writer. There are also lists of several hundred minilessons, and scripts and examples for teaching them; new expectations and rules for writing and reading workshops; ideas for teaching conventions; new systems for record keeping; lists of essential books for students and teachers; and forms for keeping track of individual spelling, skills, proofreading, homework, writing, and reading. The second edition of In the Middle is written in the same engaging style as its predecessor. It reads like a story - one that readers will be pleased to learn has no end. As Atwell muses, "I know my students and I will continue to learn and be changed. I am resigned - happily - to be always beginning for the rest of my life as a teacher."
Great resource for teachers
| Customer Rating:  | | This book is essential for any english or elemtary school teacher. I teach social studies and found many ideas within it informative and relevant. The book is written in an approachable way, filled with mini-lessons and examples of her own students writting. An easy read and needed guide for great practice within the classroom. I highly recomend this. |
Excellent!
| Customer Rating: | | A book that helped inspire me to become a teacher. Some other reviewers may not find it totally "practical" for them to adopt, but anyone with common sense would know that you take what works best for you from as many legitimate resources as possible and adapt. |
Based on years of First Hand experience
| Customer Rating: | | You can let students have choices about what to write and still have formal guidelines, unlike what the other reviewer/teacher wrote. Nancie Atwell's book is based on years of her own first-hand experiences in the classroom, and, as someone who assigns and reads well over 1000 formal essays per school year to over 200 students, I'll listen to Atwell's advice before some burned out teacher's rantings about the need to drill, drill, drill. |
Condensed version, please
| Customer Rating:  | | I bought two copies of this book from Amazon, for myself and my class aide, on the strength of the other teachers' recommendations here. The book is as good as the most enthusiastic reviewers say it is, but it is seriously flawed, and to some degree self-contradictory, because it talks too much. As good as are the author's approaches, she doesn't really need 484 pages, plus numerous appendices, to get the message across. In fact, she buries the message in verbosity. Note that other reviewers found the book easy to read. But if you are already convinced that you want to refresh your approach to teaching reading and writing, you may grow impatient with the overabundance of anecdotes, homilies and elaboration. Teachers know there is no itemized recipe for teaching, but a book on teaching writing could at least demonstrate the virtue of being concise. Mrs. Atwell should read her own quotes and not "cloud the issues with jargon in place of simple, direct prose...." (p. 16). (This is one of numerous quotes of Donald Graves, who returns the favor by endorsing her book in an exemplary brief foreword). As one who likes quoting great writings in every chapter, the author could have used and applied the Hellenistic Demos: "I will be moderate in all I attempt and do Nothing to Excess." Summary: it's just too much of a good thing. I'm going to spring for the workbook (Lessons that Change Writers) and generate even more royalties for the author, in the hopes it is more to the point. |
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