I want to add my comments about Less is More by Kimberly Campbell. I am a Literacy Coach for a middle school. This is a new position, only 2 years old. Although I work with many content area teachers to add learning strategies into their teaching, it has been more difficult for me to help out our ILA teachers. After all, teaching reading and writing is what they do. :-) As soon as I read this book, I knew that I had a solution to my problem. During the past year the ILA teachers have struggled with how to get all the curriculum in. Students seen to be so busy outside of school, that they very rarely get any reading done that was assigned in class. To solve this, we have them do a majority of their reading of novels in class. Doing this takes an incredible amount of time. Time that would be better having discussions about what they are reading. I was happy to read that Kimberly saw some of the same issues that we are dealing with. I was so excited to read how she uses shorter text to teach the curriculum, plus the fact that she adds how to connect their writing to their reading! What a treasure! The book goes over how to use short stories, essays, poetry, memoirs, kiddie lit and graphic novels. By using shorter text we will be able to let the students read what they need to, and still have time to have rich discussions. We are beginning a holocaust unit in 8th grade. Typically we have the students read The Diary of Anne Frank and The Devil's Arithmetic. The unit would take forever because of the amount of time that we had to give them in class to read. I am excited to say that we are adding picture books, short stories and graphic novels to our collection of books available to the students. I can't wait to see how this enriches our discussions because now we will have time to actually have discussions! We also have the students write a memoir as part of this unit. Kimberly lists several memoirs that are good as read alouds to show what makes a memoir a memoir. I now see the usefulness of exposing them to many different examples before having them write their own. I plan on using it in a book club for our middle school teachers next year. I am very excited to share the ideas and book lists with our ILA teachers. I would recommend this book to anyone who teaches grades 4-12. It is an incredible resource that needs to be on a shelf close enough to be grabbed whenever you plan. Heather Rockensock MS Literacy Coach Holmen, WI
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