Language and Literacy Education Commons^™

Book Review: Revision Decisions: Talk Through Sentences And Beyond, Jennifer Dunn

The Utah English Journal

As an English teacher teaching writing, I sometimes struggle to help my students understand the importance of revising--of making changes and not just sticking with the first thing they write.

In Revision Decisions Jeff Anderson- a grammar guru-and Deborah Dean-a strong champion and voice for strategic writing, teamed together to create a book that even the most novice of teachers can use to instruct their students on how to make revisions to writing through a variety of grammar strategies. Their focus is creating a dialogic classroom in order to help students understand that there are multiple ways to write something …

Book Review: Nightbird, Trent Mikesell

The Utah English Journal

A real fairy tale should be every child's dream. However, when the fairy tale world is plagued with a curse, the dream becomes a nightmare. This is the nightmare that Twig faces in Alice Hoffman's novel, Nightbird. Twig should be happy-she lives in an enchanting town with a loving family-but she is one of the unwilling victims of a dark spell and has to deal with its effects while helping to overcome it. Nightbird tells the story of what happens when curses and monsters attempt to destroy a family and town.

Book Review: Temple Grandin: How The Girl Who Loved Cows Embraced Autism And Changed The World, Rose Cherie Reissman

The Utah English Journal

Suitable for grades 5 and beyond, this groundbreaking multi-modal science, humane education, and autism focused biography uses direct quotes from Temple, equipment designs, photos, and animal/ autism fact-driven data sheets to offer readers an up-close and personal experience. Given its incorporation of specific chapters on animal thinking, bullying, autism spectrum data, Grandin’s advice for dealing with being different, humane treatment of animal issues, and actual diagrams for squeeze shuttle/cruelty-free facilities, this book can support teachers in addressing the Common Core standards of information/literary texts, text-based answers, academic vocabulary, and building content knowledge. It’s an excellent tool for ELA, Science, and …

Book Review: Crafting Digital Writing: Composing Texts Across Media And Genres, Joseph Wiederhold

The Utah English Journal

We tend to teach the way we were taught, and many practicing teachers—myself included—were taught to write through analog tools. After reading this book, I realized my practice was still largely rooted in analog thinking. Even though I would consider my classroom plugged in to the digital world, reading Hicks’ book helped me realize that I often integrate technology by using it merely as a tool to publish or create a product. If that digital inclusion helps improve or bring efficacy to the writing process, we often consider the effort as a step toward digital literacy. This thinking is flawed, …

Book Review: Writing Across The Curriculum: A Critical Sourcebook, Thomas Henry

The Utah English Journal

The Writing-Across-the-Curriculum (WAC) movement provides some of the most substantial strategies for keeping our discipline relevant for students and for ourselves. More-over, the WAC movement allows us to put focus into our work by informing us of outside writing practices. In a sense, WAC reminds us that our work as teachers does not exist in isolation, but exists to support a much larger economic and pedagogical structure (at all levels). This edited collection, complied by Zawacki and Rogers, provides a wonderful insight into the WAC movement and its literature.

Book Review: Out Of My Mind, Jenna Fitch

The Utah English Journal

Melody is one of the brightest students in her class, but no one knows. All of the words she wishes she could express are stuck inside—Melody has cerebral palsy and can’t talk. Only through the help of a new, special computer does Melody find her voice and correct many of her classmates’ misconceptions about people with disabilities. Unfortunately, neither Melody nor her family anticipates the additional stigmas and judgment that will arrive along with Melody’s new voice.

This 300+ page quick read says what many of the physically and mentally disabled students in our schools can’t: include me. Through Out …

Book Review: Pregnant Pause, Tanei Henry

The Utah English Journal

Before Pregnant Pause, I’d never read a book by Han Nolan; and after Pregnant Pause, I can’t wait to read another. While many other YA novels deal with teen pregnancy and parent/teen communication issues, none of the others have Eleanor Crowe dealing with them. Eleanor Crowe is a strong female protagonist, not the kind who deals with bows or elves or vampires, but the kind who deals with real issues that real teenagers are dealing with right now. Though fictional, Han Nolan has created completely believable characters that have to make decisions that many teenagers might also have to make …

Book Review: Learning To Write For Readers: Using Brain-Based Strategies, Joseph Wiederhold

The Utah English Journal

Steak and potatoes packaged as a light dinner salad. Learning to Write for Readers succeeds where other brain-based learning books fail, remaining accessible without sacrificing substance. When other brain-based education books become muddled with scientific jargon mired in convoluted explanations that do not have direct transfer to the classroom, Crow’s work remains pragmatic, rooted in what will benefit student learning today, and after they leave our classrooms.

Book Review: Mcgraw-Hill's Chinese Dictionary & Guide To 20,000 Essential Words, Hong Zhan

Publications

Chinese Dictionary & Guide to 20,000 Essential Words is a concise dictionary specially designed for learners of Chinese as a foreign or a second language. This dictionary distinguishes itself from other Chinese language dictionaries by its unconventional character look-up system, a system that searches for a character by counting the total number of “broken marks” (not linked or unlinked strokes) of each character.

Book Review: Book Blurbs

The Utah English Journal

Resources for Teachers including:

- When Kids Can't Read, What Teachers Can Do: A Guide for Teachers 6-12 by Kylene Beers,

- Tools for Thought: Helping All Students Read, Write, Speak, and Think by Jim Burke,

- Investigating Texts: Analyzing Fiction and Nonfiction in High School by Bronwyn Mellor and Annette Patterson,

- The Drowning of Stephan Jones by Bette Green,

- Why America's Children Can't Think: Creating Independent Minds for the 21st Century by Peter Kline,

and

- Aloft by Chang-rae Lee.