Product Description
Our favorite writing resource has been updated for the 90s with all-new chapters on revising and editing, using writing portfolios in the classroom, and assessing student growth. The one-stop manual for understanding and working with the writing process, finding fresh ideas for starting specific activities, and solving writing problems. 256 pages. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Super teaching help!
This book helps teachers explore the art of teaching with children.It has many teacher friendly lesson plans that coordinate well with 6 Traits teaching.

A Good "Starter" Book
This is not an in-depth, philosophical treatment of writing (though some may say the author accomplishes it indirectly), but an example after example fun activity tool for teachers--sprinkled with nuggets of wisdom throughout. For those who find such things useful (I don't necessarily) this latest edition includes rubrics, portfolio assessment, and writing across the curriculum.Even if you find only a small portion helpful, the purchase is worth the price.Suitable for primary through middle school.

A Non-Workbook, Non-Textbook Approach to Teaching Language Arts: Grades 4 Through 8 and Up

Teaching Writing
I found this to be one of the most useful books for teaching writing skills. It is loaded with ideas that can be used in the classroom and canbe used with teaching teachers how to teach writing skills. This book hassome of the most creative and effective ideas I have seen in a long time.In fact I loaned it to someone about a year ago and have not seen it since.This demonstrates its quality. It is an easy read with samples that one canuse in class forever. I recommend it highly.

excellent resource for upper-elementary writing teachers
This book provides numerous ideas and suggestions for creative and purposeful writing activities for upper elementary level students.The activities are easy to intergrate in a busy classroom, can be adapted fordifferent grade and ability levels, and the kids love them! ... Read more

Book Description

Featuring definitions of more than 30,000 essential words and phrases from Dutch to English and from English to Dutch, the Teach Yourself Dutch Dictionary provides users with a solid foundation on which to build a good working knowledge of Dutch vocabulary. The dictionary also contains a concise grammar section, and special care has been taken to include idiomatic usage to produce a reference that is comprehensive, concise, and practical.

Customer Reviews (1)

Good investment!
This dictionary provides concise definitions from English to Dutch as well From Dutch to English. The most frequently used modern Dutch words can be found in this work. There are also a lot of Dutch idioms. The print is good to read and easy to the eye, which makes it a very good study companion for learners of Dutch. ... Read more

Product Description
This resource is perfecto for any teacher seeking to add a creative and interactive dimension to a primary language program. Students learn and practice simple Spanish vocabulary by creating individual activity books that include lessons on colors, numbers, days of the week, months of the year, and more. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Ideas that can be found elsewhere
This is a book that has some ideas for cute crafts, and a great cover that catches your eye, but as far as any meat or methods to teaching young children Spanish, I wasn't impressed. I have it on my shelf and still haven't found a way to incorporate it in my class. The "art projects" take too much time away from our speaking and absorbing of the language.

Students do like to do hands-on activities, but you get too involved in the construction paper with this. Of course, I'm biased, but there's not too much out there for this age group that's active, and not just a CD or DVD... so- Try Flip Flop Spanish instead, with a CD, lessons plans, glossary and flashcards. No gluing or pasting!

Sra. Gose
Author of Flip Flop Spanish: Ages 3-5: Level 1 & Flip Flop Spanish: Ages 3-5: Level 2

waste of time
This book is cute, and if you don't know how to speak spanish, but claim to teach it, this book is a great way to waste time cutting, pasting, and coloring.However, thats about all this book is good for.If you are serious about teaching/learning spanish, this book is not for you.

Very limited Spanish.
I bought this to help me teach Spanish to my grandchildren and I was quite disappointed.It is mostly arts & crafts and VERY little Spanish.And when it says "Basic Spanish," it really means basic.

It's Great!
I absolutely love this book to use with my second grade students!I teach only once a week for a half hour per class, so we do a page a week.The students love adding to their book each week, taking the time to play each game by themselves and with a partner, and it will be a great keepsake for every student!It does take time to run all the pages off with construction paper so plan ahead!This book covers most of the topics that my curriculum includes.This is a great find!!

Learning Spanish
It is easy to learn basic Spanish with Hablo Espanol! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Welsh without tears...
Welsh is a wonderful, ancient language that has survived on the fringe of the island of Great Britain despite the dominance of its now world-wide-dominant neighbour, English. The literary works, particularly the poetry, has great power, even when translated into English, and English speakers can get a sense of the flavour of this Celtic language from the various worlds that have been absorbed into English.

This course created by T. J. Rhys Jones (about as Welsh a name as they come) is a very easy, step-by-step process to learn what is in many ways a very difficult language - particularly for English speakers, whose language comes from Germanic and Latinate roots, going to a Celtic language which stems from a different tree is truly an excursion into foreign territory. Rhys Jones has made this trip quite enjoyable, and quite do-able.

Unlike English, Welsh pronunciation is a lot less flexible in terms of matching spelling to sound, so learning the pronunciation is a bit easier to do. The grammar seciont also looks at the way words are put together - like many languages, there are colloquial expressions and multi-word phrases that stand in for single English words, and vice-versa. Each unit starts with a brief dialogue, which is then analysed for vocabulary and for grammar structure, and any other points of interest.

There is also an introductory section on mutations, the shift of a sound from one to another depending upon use - Rhys Jones gives the examples of road signs: the word for Wales is Cymru, but a border sign when crossing into Wales might read Croeso i Gymru; similarly, the word for England is Lloegr, but the sign might read Croeso i Loegr. This is a codification in letters of what happens in regular speech - we do not as a rule stop and start between each word, and the spelling in Welsh takes this into account.

There are a few difficulties with the text. While Rhys Jones indicates that there are dialect differences, some of the words don't match what I heard while in Wales in any location. As with any language text, I am more often to account the difficulty to myself than to the author of the instructional text.

There is a glossary of words in the back, but I often found myself wishing it were a fuller dictionary rather than a simple word list. There are exercises to work through, whose translations are found in the appendix, as well as more detailed tables on mutations, gender in language constructions, the special verb 'have', which in Welsh can be variously translated as gyda, cael, wedi, or rhaid.

This is a useful text; used in connection with travel or a book of poetry (Dafydd ap Gwilym is one of my favourite poets).

... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Old Book with Old Style Teaching Methods
This book, part of the popular "Teach Yourself" language series, has not been updated in quite some time.The copyright date on the book is 1973. And I fear the book has many of the problems typical to older-style language books.
Most books in the TY series (and, indeed, in most contemporary self-teaching language books) teach through dialogues and readings. Each chapter would open with a brief dialogue or reading passage, followed by a glossary of new words and then explanations of the grammar points taught in the lesson and some exercises to reinforce knowlege and understanding.

By contrast, "Teach Yourself Hausa" is little more than a sea of grammar rules and explanations, with a few disjointed sentences to show the rules in use. (And then, of course, some practice exercises to do, mostly translating brief phrases/sentences from English to Hausa or vice versa.)
But there is no story line to follow, and no real sense of how the language is actually used.

The other issue is that Hausa is a tonal language, with rising and falling tones often critical to understanding the meaning.The author makes a good effort to explain all this in print, but tapes or CDs would obviously be much more helpful. Unfortunately, there are none.

On the positive side, the book progresses slowly.It has about 30 very brief chapters, each introducing just one or two new grammatical ideas and a small selection of vocabulary words. So the dedicated learner could probably end up with a reasonable grasp of the basics of the language.

Still, I think it's time to update this book to meet the generally high standards of the rest of the series. ... Read more