Pages: 153 Price: $30.00 ISBN: 0-19-516595-0(hardcover)
Janet Allen and Christine Landaker's Reading history: A practical guide to improving literacy is an appealing presentation of strategies that engage students in the reading side of history. With techniques well-grounded in the literature, Allen and Landaker include so much in the opening chapter; it's a wonder they found more to write. It turns out that Allen and Landaker found a lot more to include.
The book is structured around the concepts of building background knowledge, providing support for reading comprehension, making learning meaningful to students and best practices. Without making readers aware of it, the authors use this structure to take the reader through the learning process. In each chapter, Allen and Landaker highlight the use of active learning strategies and illustrate their capabilities in advancing student learning to the next level. Each collection of techniques builds on the new abilities gained from the previous set of activities. For instance, the first chapter techniques of admit slips, book passes, read alouds, list-group-label, predict-o-gram and concept ladder help students build their content knowledge.
Allen and Landaker follow those strategies in chapter two with techniques that make the knowledge meaningful, help with new vocabulary, and provide support for reading different styles, such as narratives and exposition. Using activities like question games and graphic organizers students gain support for their reading comprehension. While going through this second portion, Allen and Landaker make it clear that these comprehension strategies will only work if the background knowledge was built first.
In making history knowledge meaningful for students, Reading History again looks to graphic organizers and other techniques to help with the learning of dates or concepts. But Allen and Landaker recommend these strategies to assist students in seeing and appreciating multiple viewpoints and in taking ownership of history by learning how to turn their new knowledge into tangible work. Activities such as writing alphabet books and timelines allow students to document their new learning beyond the traditional question and answer scenarios.
Many texts fail to address the presence of testing in our schools and how active strategies fit the testing reality. It is gratifying that Allen and Landaker finish this portion of the book with just such a discussion. They believe that these techniques help students at test time in four ways:
Allen and Landaker don't finish with testing. They conclude with a nice consideration of best practices in the teaching of reading. Emphasizing that there is no perfect method that will reach all students, Allen and Landaker highlight practices that will ensure a solid foundation for student learning. Practicing what they preach, they include a teacher planning diagram to reflect on the instructional decision making process and ensure that the theory and activities balance with student learning.
In Reading History, Allen and Landaker consistently highlight the use of supplemental materials so it was no surprise to find a rich collection of appendices filled with such items as graphic organizers, professional reading recommendations, sources for supplemental materials, book lists for titles that complement textbooks, a webliography and the authors' own list of references from the book itself.
Allen and Landaker have written a wonderful guide to incorporating reading into history. But reflective readers should be prepared to stop and think on how these same strategies can be used throughout the curriculum. This reviewer certainly feels more prepared for teaching.
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