Literature & Composition: Reading - Writing - Thinking Review

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(More customer reviews)As a general rule, I tend to stay away from textbooks like this when I teach upper-level English. I find that selections from student-focused anthologies don't always do what I want them to do, or the texts that I want to teach just aren't there.
Imagine my surprise, then, when I realised that this anthology includes Hamlet, The Metamorphosis (including the full version of the graphic novel by Kuiper), The Importance of Being Earnest, and Heart of Darkness. It also has a terrific collection of essays, from Achebe's classic "An Image of Africa" to Wainaina's "How to Write About Africa." It also has a handful of Seamus Heaney poems, a favourite of mine to teach at the upper level.
Your mileage may vary, of course, but I'm delighted by the wide range of texts that *I* actually would use in a class, and the price is actually reasonable considering the content. It's also hardcover, which means it'll last a bit longer banging around a student's backpack.

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From Carol Jago and the authors of The Language of Composition comes the first textbook designed specifically for the AP* Literature and Composition course. Arranged thematically to foster critical thinking, Literature & Composition: Reading • Writing • Thinking offers a wide variety of classic and contemporary literature, plus all of the support students need to analyze it carefully and thoughtfully. The book is divided into two parts: the first part of the text teaches students the skills they need for success in an AP Literature course, and the second part is a collection of thematic chapters of literature with extensive apparatus and special features to help students read, analyze, and respond to literature at the college level. Only Literature & Composition has been built from the ground up to give AP students and teachers the materials and support they need to enjoy a successful and challenging AP Literature course.

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Prentice Hall Literature: The British Tradition Timeless Voices Timeless Themes Review

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(More customer reviews)First, a caution: one might expect that any high school literature textbook meets certain basic standards. Unfortunately, this is not the case. And it turns out not to have been an easy thing to identify which publisher offers the level of support necessary to meet basic objectives.
I hope this review will save you some trouble! Look for Prentice Hall.
Prentice Hall's literature textbooks provide a nearly definitive anthology of English language literature and other major works of historic importance, and offer very strong support for classroom instruction. Wherever possible, the literature excerpts are complete works; in other cases, the samples are of sufficient length to provide an effective representation of style and content.
Serving on my county's textbook selection committee provided me with disturbing insights into some ways that some schools prepare for end-of-year testing. When I reviewed literature textbooks from several major publishers, I found the comparison quite shocking. You can make this comparison for yourself by perusing on-line the tables of contents for textbooks offered by various publishers.
The Prentice Hall textbooks are all quite strong. Textbooks by the other three publishers reviewed by our committee were impoverished and spare, teaching exclusively to end-of-year tests. Instead of providing materials to teach the basic skills which are intended to be assessed by those end-of-year tests, the other publishers focused on providing practice in test-taking -- i.e., in bubble-filling and guessing games. For example, one slim volume contained less than one third the text of the Prentice Hall anthology, and offered only a scant selection of writings, all of questionable merit. Among those writings proposed for use in literary analysis were several Garfield cartoons. I have nothing against Garfield cartoons; however, it is not possible to develop skills in critical analysis by reviewing such simple fare.
Students must be exposed to great literature before they can recognize or reproduce effective writing. Students must be provided with substantive information and assisted to develop real skills before they can respond confidently to end-of-year test questions. Instead of learning strategies for guessing, that time should best be devoted to the development of real knowledge and useful skills.
Fortunately, there is at least one company which still provides the materials necessary for an effective preparatory education in language arts. Prentice Hall's high school literature textbooks provide a solid foundation for teaching classic and modern literature to college-track high-school students. Instead of Garfield cartoons and one-line excerpts from some other literary selections, the Prentice Hall textbooks include representative works by many great authors, and challenging questions to help the student learn to think carefully and communicate clearly -- arguably the most important objectives for the language arts curriculum.
A small sample of some of the authors included in the Prentice Hall 11th grade American Literature text is as follows: Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Phyllis Wheatley, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Washington Irving, Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Greenleaf Whittier, Mary W. Shelley, Emily Dickinson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Sojourner Truth, Walt Whitman, Henry David Thoreau, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Stephen Crane, Willa Cather, Jack London, Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, T. S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, Eudora Welty, John Steinbeck, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Thurber, Zora Neale Hurston, Robert Frost, William Safire, Amy Tan, John F. Kennedy, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Sylvia Plath, James Baldwin, Flannery O'Connor, Arthur Miller -- and many more.
Nicely done.


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Rhetorical Devices: A Handbook and Activities for Student Writers Review

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(More customer reviews)This book is just what I was looking for when it comes to teaching rhetoric in my AP English Language classes. I wish my district had the money to buy at least a class set for my classroom. Rhetoric is a struggle for some students. The activities in this book will be just perfect for those students. I am expecting to see a great improvement in my scores on the student's rhetorical analysis essays this next school year.

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Knowing every rule and writing with perfect correctness will take your students only so far in their quest for excellence. For, beyond grammar, there's rhetoric -- language use that separates craftspersons from scribblers. Readers, too, must be able to discuss how a writer presents a case or constructs an argument. The higher scores on nearly all state assessments and college entrance exam rubrics demand knowledge of rhetorical devices and their effects. When your students are ready to go from adequate to superb, this is the book you'll use to help them. This book is a fantastic choice for teachers looking for a supplement for their AP Language or academic writing classes. Teacher's editions are available from the publisher but are only sold to teachers and schools.

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AP English Literature & Composition Crash Course (REA) (Advanced Placement (AP) Crash Course) Review

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(More customer reviews)Living up to its name 'Crash Course' - this test-prep book is concise and well organized. As an AP Literature teacher, this book is the perfect aid in preparing for the last few weeks of class before the exam. The author provides an analytical approach to refining essay writing, an outline for extracting the most important parts of literary works, and strategies for close reading on the exam. The author condenses a year's course by emphasizing only the most important content on the exam and providing 'test tips' to practice important skills for taking the writing and multiple choice sections of the exam.
For the student studying on her own, the author provides definitions of key elements of literature, summaries of novels and plays that appear frequently on the exam, and the link to REA's free practice exam. This book is completely instructional. It makes the AP Literature exam accessible to anyone willing to work on their approaches to reading and writing.


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REA's AP English Literature & Composition Crash Course

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In the Middle: New Understandings About Writing, Reading, and Learning Review

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(More customer reviews)Atwell introduces her teaching experiences with chapters about how teach writing and reading to the fragile adolescent age groups. In the following chapters she describes, in detail, her procedure of the "writing and reading workshop" for teaching in her classroom. She goes into great detail about how she prepares herself before the students ever come to class, what she does in the first week of school and how she introduces the workshop technique to her students, her use of minilessons, how she responds to students' writing and how she values and evaluates the students' writing. This book is very thorough in its descriptions of how to teach the workshop style of reading and writing. Atwell walks the reader through every step to make this technique successful. She gives many examples of dialogue she, as a teacher, has had with students showing the reader how she handled particular situations that had come up. It leaves no question unanswered. I believe this book is very helpful to teachers who wish to teach this method. Atwell captures her audience by using real stories and references to experts in this field who have studied this technique for years. Although this is a very involved technique and some beginners may feel overwhelmed by the detail, I highly recommend it.

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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."

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Great Books for High School Kids: A Teacher's Guide to Books That Can Change Teens' Lives Review

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(More customer reviews)When I wrote a book about Berkeley High School (Class Dismissed, October 2000), I was captivated and inspired by Rick Ayers' and Amy Crawford's dedicated, innovative and intelligent teaching methods--that's why they were two of the four teachers profiled in the book. This book is the text version of their dedication, innovation, and intelligence, and no high school teacher--or parent--should be without it. Brilliant and necessary!

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Teachers Rick Ayers and Amy Crawford always wanted to find a guide to the vast world of great books for teenagers-one that didn't talk down or moralize. When they couldn't find one, they set out to create it. An early prototype offered at Cody's Bookstore in Berkeley, California, was an instant success. Great Books for High School Kids is the culmination of their efforts.Collecting recommendations and essays from colleagues and advisers around the country, this is a rollicking, thoughtful, against-the-grain guide that challenges stodgy notions of what great books are and what kids are ready for.The book starts with seven essays by high school teachers about exciting, exemplary experiences they have had reading books with students in the classroom-from Dorothy Allison's Bastard Out of Carolina to Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon to Aeschylus's Oresteia trilogy.Augmented by an index of more than seventy subjects, the book also has an annotated list of hundreds of Recommended Great Books. The recommendations are playful and irreverent, ambitious and entertaining, and they go way beyond traditional reading lists. From classics to the unexpected, from literary novels to nonfiction, some drama, and even a little poetry, these are all books that teenagers have read with pleasure and can read on their own.Great Books for High School Kids is an invitation and a sourcebook for inspiring passionate, lifelong readers-a book that could seriously change the lives of teachers, of families, and of kids.

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The New World Spanish/English, English/Spanish Dictionary (El New World Diccionario español/inglés, inglés/español) (Spanish and English Edition) Review

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(More customer reviews)Foreign language study stops for many students when they get tired of flipping through vocabularies and dictionaries. Finally a publisher has combined a great text with today's technology. Wow! Speed beyond any reasonable expectation. Instant definitions Spanish to English or vice versa. If you are serious about Spanish study, get this bargain ASAP. Let's hope the concept of dictionary with CD takes hold fast

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The largest mass market Spanish/English, English/Spanish dictionary available3.3 million Signet copies in printIncludes over 70,000 entriesMore thatn 3,000 entries have been addes, expanded, or rewritten to reflect contemporarySpanish vocabulary

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