Currently reading
Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things
Progress:
65/550 pages
Language Development and Learning to Read: The Scientific Study of How Language Development Affects Reading Skill
Profound implications for education, I think. Lakoff and Johnson explain how we make sense of the world.
Everyone involved in education in the U.S., but especially those making education policy, must read this book.
Education and the Cult of Efficiency
Everyone in public education, especially those in administration, should read this book.
Saunders creates characters with the most memorable interior dialogues I've ever read. Definitely off-beat, and definitely not to everyone's taste. There were many times when I laughed out loud, and times when Saunders had me talking in my head to the characters. He had me involved in every story, to say the least. If you love short stories, read this collection.
Lamott made me laugh out loud a number of times. Like any other book on writing, there is nothing here that will make you suddenly turn out prose that makes others swoon. That's not to say there isn't practical advise - don't think about the overwhelming task of writing a story worth reading, just work on that one scene for today - and Lamott can be inspirational. I've written something for the past three days, so I must have liked her advise.
This is an incredibly dark novel that has some laugh-out-loud moments. I don't know that I've ever had such mixed feelings about a book. Its darkness - the narrator, Roberta, has a terrible life - made it difficult to read at times. Roberta's voice, however, is so compelling that I kept coming back to it.Terrific writing, really, but not a light read.
Children and Reading Tests
This is a mind-opening book. If you teach young children, you must read this. It should dramatically change your ideas about reading assessment. From the section "Guidelines for Test Makers":
"As children respond to small bits of decontextualized material followed by multiple-choice tasks, they respond to test in such a limited way that they run the risk of internalizing an impoverished model of reading."
Maybe you already felt what this book proves. Reading it will give you the specific language you need to begin to make the argument that we must change the way we assess young people's reading.
Willingham does an excellent job of explaining the applications of cognitive science for classroom practice. If you teach, you should read this book.
What's Worth Learning?
The most thought-provoking book on education I've ever read. Everyone involved in education should read this.
