The chapters are quick and concise with a Key Understandings to Think About and a Notes section at the end of each one. There are many pictures and illustrations to support the text, including a color insert showing various pictures of classroom set-up and student writing samples. Each chapter starts with a quote from educational and literacy leaders. A little less than half of the book is set aside for the appendices, which has a plethora of support to the ideas mentioned in the earlier sections of the book, including nursery rhymes, poetry, and songs, inquiry projects, literacy and language lessons, lists, and templates. It is apparent that the authors and Heinemann carefully thought out how to package the resource in order to make it highly useful.
I love the book for all of its possibilities! I was reading it more from a parent angle, looking for ideas for summer learning with my daughters (almost 5 and almost 8). While reading I was noticing that many of the ideas and the philosophy behind them reminded me of the Marie Clay resources that I have read, including her newest set of three books. I was going to write myself a note about this toward the front of the book, and coincidentally the first page that seemed to have enough space to write my note was a dedication page to none other than Marie Clay.
As a secondary language arts teacher, I loved that I could see how this resource aligns with the reading and writing workshop that my students do as 6th - 8th graders. I appreciated that I could envision the strong foundation that the ideas Pinnell and Fountas suggest would build for prekindergarten students before they even start kindergarten. By valuing children as readers and writers, even when their reading consists of talking about the pictures or retelling what they remember from a favorite book and their writing is mainly drawing, children will continue to grow into confident readers and writers.
Most importatntly, by following the books ideas, teachers will work toward a life-long love of reading and writing, rather than relying on drills and rote memorization that while it might show desired results on standardized testing will not necessarily mean that they are highly skilled readers and writers. Though the target teaching range is prekindergarten, I also believe the resource would be valuable to primary teachers for its literacy philosophy, balanced literacy in the classroom, and possibilities for workshop teaching in the younger grades components.
One final note is that I already know my daughters are going to love what we do this summer inspired by this book. Last night I called my younger daughter over to do the letter recognition sheets with her (pp. 432-433). Of course it ended up not being the best scenario because my older daughter ran over and though I told her that I wanted to see what her younger sister knew, she still would not provide sufficient wait time and started either blurting out or whispering letters to my younger daughter a lot of the time. Nonetheless, when we were finished, my younger daughter wanted more. I thought to flip to the front of the appendices and told her that we could sing some songs together, which she loved. This morning as I had the book to the side of the computer so that I could type my review, she just came by, saw the book and said, "Hey, can we do more fun stuff from your book?"
I am looking forward to blending some of their ideas with mine, as well as differentiating for my older daughter this summer. I think that we are going to start with a focus on food since the handbook had many ideas throughout, and summer is a perfect time for the concept. My older daughter was saving her apple seeds the other day, saying she wanted to plant them, which lends perfectly to many literacy and inquiry activities. We also receive a lot of produce each week from Bountiful Baskets, so we talk about all the different fruits and vegetables. They also enjoy cooking and baking with me, and we will have more time for that during the summer.
I highly recommend this comprehensive resource to parents, prekindergarten teachers, and primary teachers - another great book from Heinemann!
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