by Margaret E. Mooney
2004 pb 160 pages
Item #538
ISBN: 1-57274-672-6
Building on inspiration and knowledge in the classic Reading To, With, and By Children, Mooney takes teachers at all levels and understandings deeper into the complexities of text selection and instructing readers.
Examples and demonstrations using fiction and nonfiction texts show teachers the art of analyzing text, how to ask effective comprehension questions, and how to help students link reading and writing. A companion to Text Forms and Features.
Includes two presents for you—one copy each of Books for Young Learners title The Birds at My Barn and The News title Minibeasts.
“Margaret is that so very wise teacher who can communicate her enormous expertise to us in such a way that we feel we can achieve the success with children that she has. Her new book, A BOOK IS A PRESENT… is a gift to all of us.“
—Teaching K-8 Magazine August/September
About the Author
Author Bio: Margaret E. Mooney’s teaching, writing, and publishing career began in New Zealand, but for the past several years she has been dividing her time between New Zealand and the United States, especially the state of Washington.
She encourages teachers to view all children as worthy, not needy, emphasizing education as a process of enhancement and not one of compensation. She promotes guided reading as an instructional approach in which children practice, apply, and extend skills and strategies in order to understand text on the first reading. Margaret has written the Books for Young Learners Teacher Resource, Text Forms and Features: A Resource for Intentional Teaching, Reading To, With, and By Children, and Developing Life- long Readers.
In 1998, Queen Elizabeth II appointed Margaret as an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for her services to education, particularly the teaching of reading.
More Books by the Author
Description
A Book Is a Present is the second in a special series by Margaret Mooney devoted to intentional teaching. This book focuses on what K-12 teachers should consider when choosing any type of reading material—not just books—for instructional purposes.
Mooney emphasizes that students should learn not to just cope with reading but to take ownership and read literally, analytically, and inferentially a wide variety of books, articles, stories, advertisements, and anything else they may encounter in and out of the classroom. The selection of appropriate material is crucial. Teachers should think first about their students’ abilities and then consider the features of the texts and the way they will present it. To do this successfully, teachers need to understand the complexities, challenges, and supports of any text.
From the Introduction: “… knowing how to determine a text’s complexity and how to select the most appropriate resources is critical. The premise underpinning this publication is that we can only make informed choices about which resources to use and how to present it when we know what the selection offers…. Knowing how to consider the textual and illustrative features of a book enables the teacher to identify those that would encourage application of strategies and skills that are secure within each learner, those that would offer practice of skills… and those that would present an achievable challenge.”
Table of Contents
Foreword by Richard L. Allington, Ph.D.
Introduction: About This Book
Part I: Finding the Present
Chapter 1: Leveling–By Whom and for Whom
Chapter 2: What Kind of Book Is It?
Chapter 3: Supports and Challenges
Chapter 4: A Book Is a Present…
Chapter 5: At First Glance
Chapter 6: Presents from the Author
Chapter 7: Presents from the Illustrator
and Designer
Chapter 8: The Present Itself
Chapter 9: Presenting the Present
Chapter 10: The Lasting Present
Part II: Using the Present
Chapter 11: Choosing the Present
Chapter 12: The Hungry Sea Star—Encouraging
Inferential Reading of Text and
Illustration
Chapter 13: “Dear Red Riding Hood”—There
Is More to a Good Text Than the
First Reading
Chapter 14: A Storyteller’s Story—An Author’s
Autobiography for Budding Readers
and Writers
Chapter 15: Minibeasts—A Magazine for Dipping
and Delving and for Detail and
Comparison
Chapter 16: Free Gifts—There’s a Wealth of
Reading in the Wider World
Chapter 17: The Birds at My Barn—Putting It All
Together
Conclusion: The Present’s Presence
Bibliography
Index
Foreword
by Richard L. Allington, Ph.D.
University of Florida
Every now and then I’ll pick up a book and wonder, “Why didn’t I think of that?”
Margaret Mooney’s small book is just that sort of text. In one source she has provided a virtual compendium of those features of texts that we seem often simply to take for granted. And in taking them for granted we may underestimate the complexity that texts can create for readers, for emerging readers especially.
But while this book draws our attention to these common but overlooked features of different sorts of texts, Mooney is quite clear that the text itself is but one of three aspects of a literacy lesson. She argues that first teachers must know their students. Know them well as developing readers and writers. Know their interests and preferences as well as how far they have traveled along the literacy continuum. Second, teachers must know the curriculum. Know what things are important to teach. What sort of proficiencies is the appropriate focus of the instruction? Then third, teachers must know the texts that children will experience. It is this third focus that is the primary topic of this text.
Mooney provides a new set of eyes for knowing the texts that students encounter. Knowing the texts means that a range of opportunities for teaching open up. Opportunities that support students as they work through texts. Opportunities that result in more children learning to manage increasingly complex texts. Opportunities to assist children as they ponder and explore how texts accomplish so many and varied things.
Mooney reminds us that for too long guided reading lessons have overemphasized fictional narratives and underemphasized different kinds of texts, including maps, directions, magazines, and, of course, informational texts (including traditional content area textbooks). She sets out in a straightforward manner the sorts of features that differentiate different types of texts. Along the way she discusses features that are common to all texts (e.g., fonts and type size), but features that are too often not explained to children.
She argues that in thinking about the texts to be used in instruction we need to remember that the key issue is “not what I can use the book to teach…but what the book offers the reader in terms of content, understanding about texts, and the role of the reader…” As she walks us through a variety of texts, she illustrates just this way of thinking about instructional opportunities.
My hunch is that this book is a good candidate for an annual rereading, just before the school year begins anew. It will continue to remind us of the breadth of instructional possibilities with most any text. It will remind us that good teaching doesn’t assume anything. Remind us of the power we hold as teachers in developing children who can and do, joyously and voluntarily, read and write.
Richard L. Allington, Ph.D.
University of Florida
Introduction
About This Book
This is not a book about the teaching of reading, but rather a book for teachers of reading. Whether a certain program is mandated or whether teachers have the privilege and responsibility for selecting materials for use in their class reading program, knowing how to determine a text’s complexity and how to select the most appropriate resources is critical. The premise underpinning this publication is that we can only make informed choices about which resource to use and how to present it when we know what the selection offers. We are then able to match a book to a student rather than try to manipulate a student’s learning or skills to cope with a text unsuited to his or her capabilities, because either it is too easy or it presents so many challenges that the amount of intervention required takes away ownership of the reading and learning.
Knowing how to consider the textual and illustrative features of a book enables the teacher to identify those that would encourage application of strategies and skills that are secure within each learner, those that would offer practice of skills and strategies currently being acquired, and those that would present an achievable challenge. Considering the number of features in this way assists the teacher to make a decision not only about the book’s suitability for that student or group of students but also about the most appropriate amount and nature of support that will ensure successful learning. In other words, knowing the learner and knowing the book are prerequisites to determining the most suitable instructional approach for introducing the book.
Labeling a book as suitable for an approach, whether it be read to, shared, guided, or independent; “to, with, or by;” or another set of names distinguishing the focus, is purely a starting point. It is likely that the approach used to introduce the book may change during the lesson as the teacher monitors each student’s level of comprehension and fluency or decoding of unfamiliar vocabulary.
I have tried to explain some of the ways I look at books as a teacher and as a fledgling author of material for students and for teachers. Although not all of the ideas are written in first person, it is a personal view. I trust my passion for providing the best possible book for the teaching of reading does not override the practicalities and the realities of the classroom. I hope my writing confirms how much you know about books but may have let slip from the “front burner.” I also hope it may trigger some new thoughts, thus making the reading worthwhile at more than the superficial level. Helping teachers help students, at any and all levels, read beyond the surface is the ultimate goal of my efforts in this publication.
The book comprises two main sections. In the first part, “Finding the Present,” I share my understandings about various aspects and features of books, and how these support readers and writers. The second half, “Using the Present,” details the features of a range of texts and offers suggestions for how they might be presented to young readers and writers. Two of these titles, The Birds at My Barn and Minibeasts, are shrink-wrapped for use with this book. My writing about these books or any other examples included in the book does not endorse a specific level of suitability. The teacher knows the competence, experiences, and interests that the students bring to a book at a particular time, and that must underpin all decisions about selecting and presenting material.
Teachers are invited to make photocopies of the bookmark at the end of this book for classroom use.
Endorsements
“Margaret is that so very wise teacher who can communicate her enormous expertise to us in such a way that we feel we can achieve the success with children that she has. Her new book, A BOOK IS A PRESENT,… is a gift to all of us.”
Pat Brodorick
Teaching K-8 Magazine
August/September 2004
“Margaret Mooney always stresses the importance of teachers not only knowing the instructional approach to use with students, but also knowing the students themselves and the books those children will read. This book presents insights that can radically transform instruction and enable teachers to help their students become thoughtful and passionate readers. Indeed, this book presents critical information in selecting books for instruction, in understanding the functions of text and illustration, and in scaffolding students’ understanding and enjoyment of text.”
Terrell A. Young
Associate Professor of Literacy Education,
Washington State University, and Editor, Happily Ever After
“This book offers an in-depth explanation of what a teacher needs to know and do to select, analyze, and use text to support student learning.”
Mary Ann Whitfield
The Learning Network® Coordinator and
anguage Arts Coordinator
Hutto ISD, Texas
