There are certain "must have" books for teachers. This is one of them. Miller takes a decade of reading research (as synthesized by Pearson, et. al., 1992), and puts it into practice in her classroom. We move through the year with her, watching as she scaffolds for us and her students explicit reading instruction that truly works.

In Chapter 1, Miller goes straight to the crux of the matter: Gradually release responsibility to students; teach a few strategies of great consequence in depth over time; give students the gifts of time, choice, response, community, and structure.

Chapter 2 tells us how-and why-we should create a sense of community in the classroom. "Real classroom communities," writes Miller, "are more than just a look. Real communities flourish when we bring together the voices, hearts, and souls of the people who inhabit them." We must be "deliberate" in September if we are to create the type of environment in which growth and authentic learning will occur.

The Reader's Workshop is the topic of Chapter 3. Wait a minute, you may be saying, how does one have a "Reader's Workshop" when most of the students are not yet reading? "Readers' workshop in September," Miller writes, "is less about teaching children how to read and more about modeling and teaching children what it is that good readers do, setting the tone for the workshop and establishing its expectations and procedures, and engaging and motivating children to want to learn to read." And so Miller shows us, in detail, how we can go about this foundation-building. She begins with "Book Selection," then "Reading Aloud, Mini-Lessons, Reading and Conferring," and finally "Sharing."

With our solid underpinning in place we are now ready to settle in---the topic of Chapter 3. Here we learn how and why to give children choices when selecting books. Miller also discusses briefly phonics and word identification---two things that she believes should be taught side-by-side with comprehension strategies.

In the next two chapters Miller delves in depth into the comprehension strategies of schema and visualizing. She then devotes a chapter to "Digging Deeper." It is now January, she notes, and "[t]he time is right for increasing the sophistication of the read-alouds, showing them how to engage in more challenging dialogue and making connections from our past experiences to more in-depth learning." Timing, as they say, is everything. It is this type of knowledge and the ability to exploit the foundation that has been so carefully laid that makes Miller a teacher extraordinaire.

Chapter 8 through 10 are devoted to the remaining reading strategies of inferring, questioning, determining importance, and synthesizing. Miller includes numerous anecdotes, vignettes, lesson models, tips, techniques, and more. A list of references and a detailed index are included.

Practical and brilliant, this is one book that is definitely required reading for primary grade teachers.

Reviewed by K.J. Wagner
©2005 Education Oasis  http://www.educationoasis.com