Peter Smagorinsky

Smagorinsky’s book is the “ne plus ultra” of methods texts for preservice English Language Arts teachers. He advocates a constructivist approach to teaching language arts, and he deftly employs numerous illustrative examples to support and illustrate his ideas. Most importantly, this text is well written and accessible to teacher candidates. Smagorinsky uses pedagogical discourse fluently, and his conversational—yet always professional—tone helps readers to understand his ideas clearly. A staunch and unapologetic advocate of social justice education, Smagorinsky informs his teaching philosophy with empathy and equity. As my students have claimed, this text is their “bible”—they plan to keep this book dog-eared, highlighted, and annotated as they develop their teaching repertoires. They’ve let me know that they plan to rely heavily on the theory and strategies in this text throughout their student teaching experience and well into the remainder of their careers. What stronger endorsement could there be?… (más)

Summary: Creating and teaching units doesn’t have to be boring and Peter Smagorinsky shows just how to create teaching units that can be just as valuable to students as they can be for the teachers who create them. The units that teachers create following Smagorinsky’s guidelines will turn out both comprehensive and interesting.

Use and appropriateness in a HS classroom (teaching material): This is an invaluable resource to teachers who dread creating units with even more teacher-led discussions that have the potential of being uninteresting and without direction. The book is written with the idea that teachers will manipulate some or all of the information for their own needs in the classroom. It also has a chapter called ‘Responding to Student Writing’ that I find especially important, as it outlines how to effectively make sure every student gets feedback on their writing without risking teacher burn-out via peer feedback, writing conferences, etc.… (más)