Seeking Diversity: Language Arts with Adolescents

In association with Amazon.com

All ProductsApparelAutomotiveBabyBeautyBooksClassical MusicDVDDigital MusicElectronicsGourmet FoodHealth & Personal CareJewelryKitchen & HousewaresMagazinesMiscellaneousMusicMusic TracksMusical InstrumentsOffice ProductsOutdoor LivingPC HardwarePet SuppliesPhotoRestaurantsSoftwareSporting GoodsTools & HardwareToysVHSVideo (DVD & VHS)Video GamesWirelessWireless Accessories

Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 428.00712
EAN: 9780435085988
ISBN: 0435085980
Label: Heinemann
Manufacturer: Heinemann
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 322
Publication Date: December 02, 1991
Publisher: Heinemann
Studio: Heinemann

---

Related Items:

• In the Middle: New Understanding About Writing, Reading, and Learning (Workshop Series)
• The Reading Zone: How to Help Kids Become Skilled, Passionate, Habitual, Critical Readers
• 100 Quickwrites
• When Kids Can't Read: What Teachers Can Do: A Guide for Teachers 6-12
• Adolescent Literacy: Turning Promise into Practice
• see more

Alternate Versions: Click to Display

Browse for similar items by category: Click to Display

---

Editorial Review:

Product Description:

In order for any classroom's diverse population to progress toward a sense of quality and a broadening of mind, expectations must be high and individual goals must be recognized. Linda Rief does more than show her students the way, she joins the journey.
- Voices from the Middle

Seeking Diversity is the result of watching, listening to, and learning from adolescents. It is also about a teacher, a learner engaged in the process of coming to know herself as a reader and writer in her own classroom. It is a chronicle of apprenticeship, where the students do astonishing things as readers and writers because their teacher believes they can, because she expects them to, and because she is right there beside themreading, writing, questioning, thinking, learning, and growing.

Linda Rief takes the philosophies and ideas of Atwell, Romano, Graves, Murray, Calkins, and the Goodmans and makes them her own. She adapts them to her classroom, her students, her style, her constraints and invites other teachers to do the same- stretch the ideas, make them theirs, but above all, trust the students.

Seeking Diversity is organized chronologically, following Linda and her students from September through June. Teachers will find especially helpful:

• organization techniquesmaterials, the room, and expectations
• ways of using life experiences and literature to immerse the students in meaningful writing and reading
• evaluation beliefs and techniques that focus on process as well as product and on self-evaluation over outside assessment
• portfolios from a range of studentswhat's in them, who chooses, and what they show us
• a new look at art as an integral part of students' literacy
• an appendix filled with handouts for both students and parents
• numerous lists of best-liked books for individualized reading, reading aloud, and reading together.

Rating: - Great for all levels of teachers
If you're looking for the perfect book for a new English teacher, this is it. But it's also great if you're looking for inspiration yourself -- and by no means do you need to be a middle school teacher to benefit from it.

My copy of this book is falling apart, because I have fled to it more frequently in times of woe than any other text on teaching. Nancie Atwell's In the Middle is also close to my heart, but Rief's book is more direct and less overwhelming and so more useful in emergencies.
Read More

---

Rating: - One of the classics
This is one of the books that turned my middle school language arts classes around. Through a blend of her refreshingly personal voice, liberal doses of her students' outstanding work, and the clear presentation of procedures and materials that help her organize her practice, Linda Rief offers a portrayal of her classroom that feels real to the middle school teacher. She is one of those teachers who knows how to take the sometimes nebulous philosophies of progressive education, clarify them, and put ... Read More

---

Rating: - Beyond the One Size Fits All Curriculum
In an educational world that demands conformity it is a rare treat to experience a teacher who celebrates the diversity and the gifts that each student brings to the classroom. Linda Rief knows the adoloscent mind, but more importantly she understands the heart of these ever changing students. The book opens with a realistic look at what her classroom is like - real voices of real students trying to find thenselves through reading and writing. It is the generous use of the students voices that made this ... Read More

---

Rating: - Wonderful Topic Poorly Written
The purpose of 'Seeking Diversity: Language Arts with Adolescents' is to educate teachers on how to teach literature. Ms. Rief's philosophy is to encourage students to interact with the literature and use it to better themselves. The students will respond with a multitude of responses.

Teachers should encourage individual response and recognize the responses will be different.

Although the philosophy is refreshing and positive, the text is poorly written and padded with excessive examples ... Read More

---