In the Middle, Second Edition
New Understanding About Writing, Reading, and Learning
Nancie Atwell, Center for Teaching and Learning, Maine
ISBN 978-0-86709-374-2 / 0-86709-374-9 / 1998 / 560pp / Paperback
Imprint: Boynton/Cook
Availability: In Stock
Grade Level: 4-10
*Price and availability subject to change without notice.
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The best way to teach is to learn together with the students. One of the rare breed of teachers who do know this is Nancie Atwell. —The New York Times Reading this book can be revolutionary. . . . Atwell leads us to new understandings of teaching and learning in a workshop classroom. —Voices from the Middle When first published in 1987, this seminal work was widely hailed for its honest examination of how teachers teach, how students learn, and the gap that lies in between. In depicting her own classroom struggles, Nancie Atwell shook our orthodox assumptions about skill-and-drill-based curriculums and became a pioneer of responsive teaching. Now, in the long awaited second edition, Atwell reflects on the next ten years of her experience, rethinks and clarifies old methods, and demonstrates new, more effective approaches. The second edition still urges educators to "come out from behind their own big desks" to turn classrooms into workshops where students and teachers create curriculums together. But it also advocates a more activist role for teachers. Atwell writes, "I'm no longer willing to withhold suggestions and directions from my kids when I can help them solve a problem, do something they've never done before, produce stunning writing, and ultimately become more independent of me." More than 70 percent of the material is new, with six brand-new chapters on genres, evaluation, and the teacher as writer. There are also lists of several hundred minilessons, and scripts and examples for teaching them; new expectations and rules for writing and reading workshops; ideas for teaching conventions; new systems for record keeping; lists of essential books for students and teachers; and forms for keeping track of individual spelling, skills, proofreading, homework, writing, and reading. The second edition of In the Middle is written in the same engaging style as its predecessor. It reads like a story—one that readers will be pleased to learn has no end. As Atwell muses, "I know my students and I will continue to learn and be changed. I am resigned—happily—to be always beginning for the rest of my life as a teacher."
Contents:
I. Always Beginning
1. Learning How to Teach Writing
2. Learning How to Teach Reading
3. Making the Best of Adolescence
II. Writing and Reading Workshop
4. Getting Ready
5. Getting Started
6. Minilessons
7. Responding to Writers and Writing
8. Responding to Readers and Reading
9. Valuing and Evaluating
III. Teaching with a Capital "T"
10. Taking Off the Top of My Head
11. Call Home the Child: Memoir
12. Hanging with Big Sis: Fiction
13. Finding Poetry Everywhere
14. Taking Care of Business
Appendixes:
A. Materials for Writing, Reading, and Publishing
B. Ways Student Writers Can Go Public
C. Kinds of Writing That Emerge in Writing Workshop
D. Writing Survey
E. Reading Survey
F. Student Writing Record/Sample Record
G. Student Reading Record/Sample Record
H. Personal Spelling List/Sample List
I. Weekly Word Study/Sample Study
J. Peer Writing Conference Record
K. Editing Checksheet
L. Favorite Adolescent Literature
M. Favorite Collections of Poetry
N. Quotes for the Walls of a Writing-Reading Workshop
O. Final Self-Evaluation of Writing and Reading
P. Weekly Homework Assignment Sheet
Q. Recommended Resources for Teachers of Middle School Writing, Reading, and Literature
The best way to teach is to learn together with the students. One of the rare breed of teachers who do know this is Nancie Atwell. ”
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