I teach outside of New Haven, inside the range of districts devoted to Nancy Boyles, and just got my masters in reading from the university where she teaches, so I had to buy many of her books. My opinion is that her books are very good for finding worksheets you can xerox and use right away with students. They are quite structured. They also are very explicit about what students should say/write in response to texts. I think they can be good resources for beginning teachers, teachers who are just starting to move away from just working out of a teacher guide, or when a teacher just doesn't have a lot of time and needs to pull something quickly. I think teachers who already do a lot with comprehension and have read To Understand by Ellin Keene or books in that vein might find that Nancy doesn't push either students or teachers hard enough. I've also attended a lot of workshops with the Reading and Writing Project that Lucy Calkins heads, and have read lots of books written by people connected to that. I feel like those people and their writings bring up important questions, push me to grapple with the answers, and ultimately help make me become smarter and inspire me to grow as a teacher. I feel like Nancy Boyles writes about similar important ideas relating to comprehension, but more gives teachers the answers she has come up with. There are sometimes when I appreciate how she articulates comprehension ideas and breaks them down explicitly to share with children, but her books aren't professional development books I treasure and reread. I do have several on my shelves and pull them out on Mondays when I didn't work hard enough over the weekend and need to grab something to give students. Rather than a mentor, Nancy Boyles (through her books) is more like the colleague who hands you worksheets in the xerox room.
That's my opinion. There are lots of people in my district who LOVE her. (I'm not sure whether those people are teacher who read Lucy Calkins or Ellin Keene or Debby Miller, though.) Natasha ------------------------------ Message: 24 Date: Sat, 25 Jul 2009 11:53:01 -0400 From: [email protected] Subject: [MOSAIC] Nancy Boyles To: [email protected] Message-ID: <[email protected]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Has anyone read and used the book:? That's a Grea Answer by Nancy Boyles?? Would you recommend this purchase?? Why or why not? Thank you. Deb Holden - _______________________________________________ Mosaic mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/mosaic_literacyworkshop.org. Search the MOSAIC archives at http://snipurl.com/MosaicArchive.
