“I Still Love Teaching Despite All the Reasons in the World to Quit” by Renes Lophanor offers a personal and global perspective of the education system while expressing a deep-seated love for teaching. Lophanor, an accomplished international secondary teacher, shares first-hand experiences and observations, highlighting the numerous challenges educators throughout the world are facing on a daily basis. In this … Read more
Inside: Book review of Everyday Mindfulness, ideas for classroom use, and a free journal cover. Hi Friends! I just had the pleasure of reading Everyday Mindfulness by Melissa Steginus. When the publisher asked if I’d be interested in reviewing this book I was hesitant at first because usually my reviews are confined to children’s books. But then my curiosity got … Read more
Have you read Teach Like Finland: 33 Simple Strategies for Joyful Classrooms? I just finished it and was VERY impressed. Probably, like most teachers, you’ve heard about Finland’s amazing education system and how extremely well their 15-year-old students perform on PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment). This book, by Timothy D. Walker is a first-hand look at what goes on … Read more
Regie Routman is my all-time, hands-down, favourite teacher-author. I collected and read all her books during my teaching career and highly recommend her books to new and seasoned teachers. Here’s one of my favourite quotes: We can’t teach a first-rate reading lesson with a second-rate book, and we can’t effectively teach craft in writing without outstanding literature. Neither can we … Read more
Hi Friends, I was going through some of my teacher books today and came across this treasure by Moira Andrew called Paint a Poem. Some teachers tend to shy away from having their young students write poems, but it’s not all that hard, especially if you loosely follow a writing frame and do lots of up-front idea loading. And when … Read more
Title: Move to Learn Authors: Joye Newman, Miriam P. Feinberg Publisher: Gryphon House, 2015 Perfect for Early Child Educators My first thought when leafing through this book was, “Wow! I wish I’d had this when my own kids were preschoolers!” Most teachers and parents know how important movement is for healthy physical development, but how many of us know that … Read more
I just finished reading Chapter 7, “Letting Go”, from the Book Whisperer. As Sandi from rubber boots and elf shoes so aptly said, “… the book has come full circle.” Since I’m a bit late today with this post, and since all my book study buddies have done an excellent job summarizing this chapter, I thought I’d share my favourite … Read more
The Book Whisperer, Chapter 6, Cutting the Teacher Strings. Chapter 6 was a very compelling read. I’m laughing at myself here because if you’ve read this chapter then you’ll recognize my lame joke:) But seriously it was immensely thought-provoking, the gist of it being that teachers need to take a long hard look at the traditional and so called tried … Read more
Welcome to Chapter 5 of The Book Whisperer! Chapter 5, Walking the Walk, was a quick, inspiring read. The big idea in this chapter is that it’s the teacher’s responsibility to be an awesome reading role model. Readers are made, not born (p. 108). And since we can’t assume all students will get the role modelling they need at home, … Read more