Looking Back at Books That Have Influenced Literacy Educators: Review of Books for Professionals by Lisa Maucione Lisa Maucione, EdD, is a literacy specialist in Dartmouth, MA. She is the Vice President of the Massachusetts Reading Association and a member of MRA’s Publicity Committee.
E
ducators who have an interest in expanding their knowledge related to the teaching of literacy have numerous options to choose from when it comes to reading professional books. As the Massachusetts Reading Association celebrates its fiftieth year by both looking back over the years and looking forward to the future, a reflection on professional texts published within the last fifty years seems appropriate. As the author of this professional book review column and an educator with an interest in learning from experts in the field, I have read a great number of books on various topics related to literacy. For some of these professional books a one-time read is sufficient, but others are books that merit multiple reads and have served as resources that I turn to again and again. The books in this latter category are dog-eared, highlighted, and flagged with sticky notes. These marked-up and well-worn books have influenced my teaching, helping me to become a more effective literacy educator. In reflecting on the professional books written about literacy in the past few decades, I have chosen four such books that, in my opinion, are those that educators have turned to again and again for the inspiration, insight, and guidance they offer. ••• Writing: Teachers & Children at Work 20th Anniversary Edition (Graves, 2003) In 1983, Donald Graves published Writing: Teachers & Children at Work, a book about how children learn to write and the ways in which teachers can support children’s work as they grow as writers. 80
Twenty years later, Graves published an updated edition to reflect the changes in his thinking about learning to write and the teaching of writing. The new edition remains true to the principles of teaching writing that are at the core of Graves’s work and are also inherent to the writing workshop model. These essential principles of teaching writing include providing children with choice about their writing topics, response to their work, time to write, opportunities to publish, exposure to teacher talk about writing, and a way to collect their work over time. Throughout his book, Graves provides teachers with an understanding of how to support children as writers within a teaching framework that allows children to have ownership over their writing and helps them to understand that their writing has value. Graves argues that children come to school with a desire to write, but this desire is often lost when control over their writing is taken from them. He gives suggestions about how to help children choose topics to support their decision-making. In addition, Graves describes how to start children off writing right away, how to organize the classroom, and how to use teacher modeling and children’s literature to reinforce children’s motivation to write and develop a community of writers in which children support each other in the process. One way that teachers support writers, which Graves devotes an entire section of his book to, is through conferences. According to Graves, the first goal of any conference is to get children to talk about their writing. He provides suggestions to encourage children to talk during conferences so that teachers can learn about children’s writing and their use of craft. Graves also provides a variety of question types that teachers can ask during a writing conference to help them learn about the child as a writer, but also ensure that the child remains in control of the writing process. Within this chapter of the book, Graves also provides examples of conferences to illustrate that they are a learning process for both the student and the teacher.
