Reading Reminders: Tools, Tips, and Techniques

Do you have a minute? That's how quickly this book will help you improve your students' reading skills. Designed to be read on the run and make every minute count in your classroom, Reading Reminders features Jim Burke's one hundred best techniques for teaching reading, complete with tools and tips on how to implement them.

Jim wrote this book to help teachers like himself whose often large and always diverse classrooms contain a wide range of reading abilities and needs. All of the strategies have been tested and tested again with his students, and each one has achieved significant gains in student performance, confidence, and engagement. Together, the reminders will challenge your best students and support struggling ones. This book will help you:

• teach students to read a variety of types of texts, including websites, tests, literature, and textbooks
• use a wide range of teaching and reading strategies based on current reading research
• anchor your teaching in state and national reading standards
• establish and maintain a comprehensive reading program that includes Sustained Silent Reading and direct instruction
• plan your lessons, select your texts, and assess students' learning with tools and techniques specifically designed for those purposes
• improve your students' ability to discuss and understand what they read
• develop a community of reflective readers within your classroom
• increase the amount of writing your students do.

KLIATT

Chock-full of teaching strategies and activities, Reading Reminders is a rich, reader-friendly resource for all teachers who want to sharpen their students' critical reading skills—not just those who teach reading and English. The author, Burke (an experienced California high school English teacher who is also the moderator of CATENET, an electronic roundtable for English teachers), offers a wealth of practical teaching ideas, each preceded by a theoretical rationale. For example, Burke describes several questioning techniques (e.g. the Directed Reading Thinking Activity and Reciprocal Teaching) in detail as well as use of KWL charts, reading response guides, and storyboards. He includes dozens of graphic organizers (classroom-ready reproducibles) to help students analyze and weigh ideas, and he discusses numerous types of study guides—including the "point of view" and "analogical study" guides—that help expand students' perspectives. He even offers reproducible bookmarks with prompts that encourage reader response. There is an extensive index and "works cited" section as well as nicely categorized "further info" for those interested in looking more closely at particular strategies. The section on think-alouds is one of the best explanations I've seen of how to use this strategy to encourage speculation, prediction, observation, arguing, and questioning. Highly recommended for middle school and high school teachers (particularly English/language arts)—and for anyone involved in teacher training. A gem of a book, it is one that any teacher (new or experienced) could dip into periodically, whether to dust off a forgotten strategy or to discover and mold a new one tosuit particular classroom needs. KLIATT Codes: SA*—Exceptional book, recommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 2000, Heinemann/Boynton/Cook, 327p, illus, bibliogs, index, 24cm, 00-057526, $25.00. Ages 16 to adult. Reviewer: Gloria Bryant; Reading Teacher, Hoover M.S. Potomac, MD, May 2001 (Vol. 35 No. 3)

Jim Burke is the author of the Heinemann title What's the Big Idea? The question he's always tried to answer is "How can we teach our students better?" He began this search in his own classroom at Burlingame High School in California, where he still teaches. He shares his experiences there in bestselling professional titles with Heinemann such as The English Teacher's Companion; Reading Reminders; and Writing Reminders as well as through Heinemann Professional Development Services. Looking to his peers for still more answers, he founded the English Companion Ning, described by Education Week as "the world's largest English department." Jim continues to find and support best practices in many other ways, including serving on national commissions related to adolescent literacy and standards, such as the Advanced Placement English Literature and Language Course and Exam Review Commission with the College Board, and by being a senior author on the Holt McDougal Harcourt Literature series. Jim has received numerous awards, including the NCTE Intellectual Freedom Award, the NCTE Conference on English Leadership Award, and the California Reading Association Hall of Fame Award. He served on the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards Committee on Adolescence and Young Adulthood English Language Arts Standards and recently worked with ACT on their high school English Language Arts standards. In 2007, he participated in the national Adolescent Literacy Coalition roundtable and worked with the Partnership for 21st Century Skills. Visit his website (www.englishcompanion.com) for more information.