Jo Richardson

LITC 524

April 30, 2003

Professional Resource Review

Fountas, I.C. & Pinnell, G.S. (2001). Guiding Readers and Writers: Grades 3-6.

Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

What is this book about?

This book serves as a complete language and literacy framework to help intermediate teachers (grades 3-6) organize reading and writing instruction. The authors emphasize the importance of thoughtful organization and planning in language and literacy instruction in order to create lifelong readers and writers. Fountas and Pinnell organize literacy instruction into three interrelated blocks: reading, writing, and language-word study. They have included designs, procedures, materials, and management strategies for each of the blocks. The last two chapters of the book offer suggestions for teaching test taking strategies and methods of authentic integrated assessment. The appendices offer forms for language-word study, reading and writing workshops, and literacy assessment. They also provide a book list of 500 books organized by title and level for guided reading groups.

This book serves as a comprehensive tool for new teachers looking for guidance in setting up a classroom and program as well as an instrument for experienced teachers seeking to develop a more thoughtful and effective program. It even includes a detailed twenty day plan for the first twenty days of reading instruction. This book includes more than 500 pages and could be a lot for one person to "digest" independently. It lends itself to the discussion and support of a collaborative book study.

Essential Beliefs about Assessment:

v Authentic assessment is an integral and continual part of the curriculum. It involves systematically observing students in the reading and writing process on a daily basis.

v Students should take part in assessment activities which are the same, or as close as possible, to real life tasks of readers and writers.

v A teacher needs to streamline assessment so as to keep only the assessment data that is truly useful and can be used to help evaluate the student.

v A teacher can help students develop test-taking skills by treating tests as a genre, which includes a certain type of language with special demands on the readers. It is important to let students in on the "secrets" of test expectations.

v A key to successful test performance is to ensure a wide range of reading across genres, the use of effective literacy instruction, and the embedding of test-taking skills with the language and literacy framework.

Golden Lines:

v "Teaching without continual assessment is akin to teaching without the children." page 483

v "Making assessment an integral part of your teaching ensures that you will collect more authentic indicators of students' learning and save valuable time." page 506

v "Assessment, which includes collecting information about or evidence of your students' learning, is a continual and integral part of quality teaching." page 483

v "The real key to test performance is the high-quality reading instruction that students experience daily throughout their elementary years." page 470