Customer Reviews

Classroom Management That Works: Research-Based Strategies for Every Teacher

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

First, I should start by saying I'm a 23-year-old teacher who graduated from Penn State University. I've been teaching now for about 5 months.

I have bought about a dozen education "how-to" books from Amazon over the past year, and the best purchase I have made (by far) is the first book by this author, "Classroom Instruction that Works." So I think that my expectations when buying this book may have been too high.

The best part of this book is, like the first book, everything is based solidly in research which is outlined in a detailed, yet easy to understand format. However, this book just doesn't thrill me...here's why:

1) Part of this book focuses on school-wide discipline systems. This is pretty much useless to me as a classroom teacher.

2) Unlike "Classroom Instruction...," this book's design is to break each item down by first talking about the issue in an elementary school setting and then in a secondary school setting. Therefore, right off the bat, about half the book is useless to me.

3) This book describes the biggest management factors and where specific problems can arise, but it doesn't go into specific solutions.

4) Lastly, I feel that this book isn't as in-depth as I was hoping for. I think any teacher with any amount of experience is probably beyond the suggestions in this book. Overall, my students are well behaved, but I have one class that is consistently a problem. I was hoping this book would give me a new idea or approach. It didn't. Honestly, I'm way past making eye contact and proximity, if you know what I mean.

Overall, this isn't a bad book, but I can't say I found it helpful. Honestly, I hope the author got lazy or was rushed when writing this. Part of me is afraid that maybe this book is top quality and I'm the reason the management tools aren't working in my troubled class.

While, I haven't been very successful in finding a good, practical book about classroom management, if you're looking for a book about instruction techniques, I would recommend "Classroom Instruction that Works."

I think like many classroom teachers, one of my main difficulties is finding a good classroom management style that works. So I was looking forward to reading this book and getting some new ideas and information. However, the book does not really go into much detail about how to implement the strategies that they list. They really just kind of scratch the surface, naming a few effective strategies, but then spending the majority of their time talking about HOW effective these strategies are.
Imagine if your favorite television show was Lost on ABC. You found a book in the store called Lost -- America's New Classic. So you bought it, expecting to find cast information, episode synopses, and spoilers for upcoming seasons. Instead, upon opening the book, you find the results of studies done with Nielsen families and network executives, proving with hard data just how popular Lost is. No real information about the show, just a lot of tables, pie graphs, etc. to show its popularity.
This is effectively what Classroom Management That Works does. It does give a few tiny samples of some strategies to try, but mostly, they give charts and graphs about how many standard deviations away from the norm you can expect to be if you implement these strategies.
In some cases, in fact, I was not sure exactly how accurate I could take these results to be. When one study is done with 1,021 subjects, and another is done with only 109 subjects -- can you really compare the results side-by-side?
Overall an interesting read, but to be honest, not all that helpful.

I bought this book for a graduate course I'm currently taking. I wish I had this book years ago, when I first started teaching. Classroom management is the most important part of effective teaching. This book combines research and clearly explains what's most effective and what isn't.

After reading Marzano's other books and seeing how effective some of his materials and strategies can be, I was extremely disappointed in this book. I found his book Classroom Management that Works to be a below average book on classroom management when compared to other classroom management books. Marzano does a nice job of highlighting some basic strategies to help with classroom management, but he fails to address the major issues facing teachers and the classroom today. Marzano fails to help teachers more effectively manage classrooms in order to maximize classroom instruction. He also fails to provide teachers with more strategies to motivate students. Furthermore he fails to provide teachers with strategies for promoting parental involvement to help achieve greater student success. I was also disappointed that the book did not address managing large classrooms nor did it address managing difficult student student behavior. Moreover Marzano does not provide teachers with strategies for altering student behavior in order to eliminate negative behaviors and elicit proper behavior. I believe Marzano has provided schools with some wonderful books and resources and it hurts me to say, but I don't believe this to be one of them. With much regret, I must say, there are far better management books available.

"Classroom Management That Works: Research-Based Strategies for Every Teacher" is a good book for new or about to be teachers. The book will give the novice clear explanations and root know-how to managing you class.

I have read other reviews and I have found a lot of negativity.
This book does tell you that these (the strategies named in the book) strategies do work because of research indicating that it does affect student behavior. And, it does indeed tell you how to do things in the classroom, and it tells you what to change or address. So, yes go ahead and buy this book...its good stuff. The actual book is much smaller than the photo.

Classroom Management That Works by Robert J. Marzano is well-written and applicable to MY classroom. It gives action steps with specific examples of how others implemented the ideas. I bought the book as part of a class, but it will be one that I continue to use in my teaching.

Had no problems dealing with this vendor. Purchased the book and received it quicker than expected in the best condition.

This was an excellent textbook, well written, and contained helpful information for my college class. The chapters were reviewed by different students within the class and were found to be very informative with much information for improving our classroom instruction and managing our classes effectively. Thank you once again Marzano for an excellent and well written text.

This book has been valuable in helping me prepare for another year of teaching. Caution: it is heavy on the research!