Quotes to Inspire Great Reading Teachers

A Reflective Tool for Advancing Students′ Literacy

Cathy Collins Block, Susan E. Israel

• Publisher: Corwin
• Year: 2006
• Print ISBN: 9781412926485, 9781412926478
• eBook ISBN: 9781483361949
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Teaching Methods for Reading

"Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire."
-William Butler Yeats

These quotes will inspire reflection on your teaching and provide tools to inspire your students, too!

Teachers will find a year?s worth of thought-provoking quotations by thinkers from in and out of education, from across centuries and cultures. Tied to themes of best teaching practice and reading domains, including goal setting, comprehension, vocabulary building, assessment, and collaboration, these quotes give you a daily way to deepen your reflection and critical thinking. The book also shows how to use the quotes in the classroom to directly foster improvement of your students? literacy, metacognitive skills, and goal setting, and at the same time introduce them to some of the greatest names in history and literature.

Following each quote, this inspirational guide includes: 

• Three reflective questions relating the core idea of the quote to teaching practices
• Lesson prompts that provide ways to use the quote with your students
• Literature links that identify books for K through 2, 3 through 8, and 9 through 12 and how to use them to extend student learning and thinking related to the quote

The authors have created a unique resource to help you deepen your thinking. It can be used alone or as a companion book to Reading First and Beyond (Block & Israel, 2005), which offers research-based practices for reading instruction. Don?t miss this great opportunity to enrich your teaching practices as well as your students? literacy!

Themed Collection 1

Making Meaningful Connections

Susan E. Israel, Sarah M. Luckhaupt, and Lyndsay L. Peters

READING SUCCESS STORY

The Importance of Making Meaningful Connections

It is difficult for me when I see a child struggling and having a hard time with reading. Future teachers need to think critically about effective methods and develop meaningful practices to work with struggling students. You won’t find this in the teaching manuals. The books tell you how and what to teach, but beyond that you need to be creative and think creatively.

Every single child has the capacity for learning. Each child needs to feel important. I believe every child can read at his or her own speed and time. I want every child to feel special or he or she will not perform. My philosophy after 40 years of teaching is very simple. Leave no child behind. Set your expectations high! Children will “stretch” to meet those expectations! I believe and they will achieve.

—Susanne Sullivan, Retired First-Grade Teacher

PERSONAL LITERACY GOALS

Use this space to identify three goals or positive actions you would like to focus on related to inspiring students to make meaningful connections during reading instruction and reading engagements.

“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

THIS QUOTE MAKES ME THINK ABOUT …

PROMPTING TEACHERS’ DEEPER THINKING

• What is meaningful to you about being a reading teacher?

• What personal experiences have led you to become a reading teacher?

• What are some issues that you face that keep you from focusing on your inner beliefs about being an effective reading teacher?

LESSON LINKS

1. Ask students about the different ways in which they can think about reading.

2. Who are some of their favorite people who have inspired them to be better readers?

3. Ask students to identify something important that they think keeps them from reading.

LITERATURE LINKS

Grades K–4

Read Anything Good Lately by Susan Allen and Jane Lindaman (2003) is a wonderful book that celebrates the joy of reading by providing ideas of things to read for each letter of the alphabet. Teachers can use this book to help students create their own alphabet books on why reading is important to them.

Grades 4–10

Carver: A Life in Poems by Marilyn Nelson (2001) is a true story about how students can use reading to overcome the emotional and physical challenges that prejudice can cause. This book can be used to introduce Lesson Link #1.

“Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.”

—Will Durant

THIS QUOTE MAKES ME THINK ABOUT …

PROMPTING TEACHERS’ DEEPER THINKING

• What does the phrase progressiv...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Reflections From the Authors
• Acknowledgments
• About the Authors
• Introduction
• Themed Collection 1: Making Meaningful Connections
• Themed Collection 2: Setting Valuable Goals
• Themed Collection 3: Using Assessment to Excel
• Themed Collection 4: Building Blocks for Success
• Themed Collection 5: Word Power Equals Knowledge
• Themed Collection 6: Expanding Our Opportunity
• Themed Collection 7: Thinking to Obtain Meaning
• Themed Collection 8: Identifying Our Strengths
• Themed Collection 9: Work, Study Skills, and Writing
• Themed Collection 10: Literacy Worlds
• Themed Collection 11: Collaborative Communities at School and Home
• Favorite Additional Quotes From Teachers and Students
• Quotation Bibliography
• Index