Customer Reviews

Content Area Reading: Literacy and Learning Across the Curriculum (9th Edition)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

As a Middle and High School teacher with ESL students, and a professional developer, I have been on the look-out for texts that would deliver a practical approach and solid strategies for teaching content area literacy. The authors advocate the use of constructivist approaches to teaching as well as in the professional development of the teacher. The target audience is the pre-service teacher (grades 6-12).

I really liked how each chapter of the 9th edition opens with an overview and a map of the concepts. The figures in the books are great illustrations of the strategies and techniques, and one in particular was a particularly apt example of Guess What's in My Head (figure 7:10)that show how unproductive it is as a teaching technique. Each chapter begins with an activity that poses a set of questions that sets the stage for learning about the chapter content. The authors attempt to be thought-provoking but in chapter 6 I wonder if they and their editors were really paying attention. Here they try to show the complexity of reading by citing the adventurer David Livingstone's encounter in Africa with "preliterate natives" (p. 186) who ate a book to literally digest its contents. Its inclusion in this book makes me wonder who they think is teaching "diverse learners" in the school.

As a synoptic text, the writers try too hard to cover all the bases of content area teaching at the expense of some in-depth analysis of the effectiveness of the techniques and strategies they recommend. Many texts on teaching reading at upper K-12 levels tend to concentrate on comprehension techniques, which is fine for somewhat-proficient readers, but neglects the weaker readers and the ESL students in the heterogeneous classroom whose comprehension difficulties are compounded with de-coding challenges.

As an ESL teacher, I would have liked to know how all of these strategies for teaching in the content areas could be adapted to my students. Instead, there is a separate chapter on "Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Learners" who, as practicing ESL teachers know, do not cease to be "diverse" after they have been mainstreamed. Having tried some of these strategies with my students, I can say for sure that QARs is far too challenging for ESL novice and intermediate learners when they are asked to think beyond the text. To participate in classroom discussion they need scaffolding for the language functions and vocabulary. In my opinion, the weakest chapter of all was Assessing Students and Texts (Chapter 4). The authors have completely missed the basic point about rubrics: to make assessment more consistent. There are better books on assessment with rubrics than this chapter.

Very upset about your condition of the book. You reported that the book was new, but it was NOT. I opened the pages and saw highlighting and there was a lot of wear for a new book! Waste of my money!!!!

This text is used to help teachers assist their students who are having difficulty comprehending or understanding written material that is used to teach them a discipline. It is well-written and offers many strategies and formats for bringing these students up to grade level to meet current standards. Well worth using for teaching content area literacy, much needed in today's fast-paced society and with so many multicultural components.

The price was the cheapest, by a couple dollars, but the item was not in as good conduction as it should have been. The biggest problem is several pagers are coming away from the binding. Besides the binding issue everything was good.

It was a great book for my graduate class in advance lit. It provided concise information and was a easy read. There is a new edition of the book that can be used with more currect information.

This book repeats itself and used incorrect information in a quote, which I had to research on-line to straighten out. The graphics and layout are distracting, and the information is nothing really new. Part of the problem is that it's being used as a textbook for the Grand Canyon University masters program, and it is meant to be a text for beginning teachers, which is not a fault of the book.

I will be keeping this book as apart of my professional library. It has a wealth of strategies that are easy to implement in the classroom. Vacca provides real life classroom examples as well. It is nice to actually see what the strategy looks like. On the contrary, I wish that they would place the strategy example on the same pg as the strategy. For example, the strategy description may be on Pg. 200 and the actual representation of it will be on Pg. 202. That gets annoying. The binding of this book is TERRIABLE to I suggest on getting the softcover, international edition. Overall, this is a very good book. It provides a wealth of examples that could be used in the classroom. It also is interesting to read, in my opinion. :)

My professor absolutely loves this book. I do not particularly care for it. Not very appealing to the reader. Pictures and examples are very blah!!! Plus, it is packed with too much information in a small space. Not enough examples for the concepts that need to be learned. The book came apart for most of my classmates. The pages disconnected from the binding. Hard cover is not so appealing. Does it serve the purpose in my Reading Certification class? Yes. Is it very appealing? No!
I will be reselling it once my class is over.

Within in a week the book was losing its pages and falling apart. For paying $90, I expected it to be in much better shape and not falling a part.

Great Book for beginner teachers. There are lots of strategies that you can use as a new teacher.