Description
Book Synopsis“This Is a Great Book!” is rooted in the belief that having a wide range of “great” books to read is essential to student success as readers inside the classroom ... and beyond.
Based on extensive research, this highly readable book explores a wide range of recommended titles that cover a spectrum of developmental stages for readers of chapter books to young adult novels. It presents novels around popular themes and features guest voices that include innovative teachers, librarians, booksellers, and students.
Numerous activities and literacy events form the core of this valuable resource. Reproducible pages include response activities, reflection tools, assessment profiles, and inventories for easy classroom use. Committed to nurturing the love of reading, the book invites readers to dig deeper in their understanding and appreciation of books by responding through writing, discussion, the arts, media, and more. Special attention is given to the world of independent leisure reading, where students make choices based on their preferences and tastes.
Experienced and new teachers will find fresh ideas and the tools they need to guide students to “great” books that will make a difference in their lives.
Trade ReviewThis is a Great Book! is rooted in the belief that offering your students great books to read and showing them how to dig deeper into their own responses to them is the foundation of turning them into real readers. This all-in-one guide, which starts with the underpinning educational research and ends at assessment profiles, blackline masters and appendices, represents a continuum of reading in many genres from chapter books to young adult novels.
Novels are a great way to stimulate students’ critical abilities and to engage with a wide range of responses that can transcend words and open possibilities and concepts in the wider world. The 101 literacy events outlined in the book invite students to delve into a text not only with written responses but with discussion, through the arts and using online media. Attention is given to exploring reading that is based on the preferences and tastes of students as they develop a lifelong love of reading.
Mary Veronica Moloney, OCT, teaches Grade 4 at D’Arcy McGee Catholic School with the Toronto Catholic District School Board.
Professionally Speaking (the official magazine of the Ontario College of Teachers)
June 2017
