Angelillo, Janet : Teachers College Reading and Writing Project, Columbia University
Janet Angelillo is a literacy consultant who has worked throughout the US and Canada. She was a senior staff
developer for the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project, and worked beside teachers in New York City schools
and the surrounding suburbs. She has taught advanced sections and given keynote addresses at both the Teachers
College Summer Institutes and other institutes around the country, and she has presented at many conferences, including
NCTE and the New York State Reading Association.
A classroom teacher for many years, Janet taught upper grades and middle school in NYC and the suburbs. She is
a doctoral student at Teachers College, and the author of several articles on writing, as well as two books, Writing
About Reading: From Book Talk to Literary Essays in Grades 3-8 (Heinemann), and A Fresh Approach to Teaching Punctuation:
Helping Young Writers Use Conventions with Precision and Purpose (Scholastic).
Review
Want to know how to teach students to think and write powerfully about texts? Read this remarkable book now.
You'll be glad you did.
--Carl Anderson, author of How's It Going?
What sets Writing About Reading apart is that Janet Angelillo shows us how to move children beyond the rich conversations
and unpolished writing they do to capture their thinking, and into clear, articulate writing about their thinking
about reading.
--Katie Wood Ray, author of What You Know by Heart
This must-have book will enable teachers to develop their students' ability to use authentic writing tasks to deepen
what they know and understand about their reading.
--Laura Robb, author of Literacy Links and Redefining Staff Development
Heinemann Web Site, February, 2004
Summary
Janet Angelillo introduces us to an entirely new way of thinking about writing about reading. She shows us how
to teach students to manage all the thinking and questioning that precedes their putting pen to paper. More than
that, she offers us smarter ways to have students write about their reading that can last them a lifetime. She
demonstrates how students' responses to reading can
start in a notebook, in conversation, or in a read aloud
lead to thinking guided by literary criticism
reflect deeper text analysis and honest writing processes
result in a variety of popular genres--book reviews, author profiles, commentaries, editorials, and the literary
essay.
She even includes tools for teaching--day-by-day units of study, teaching points, a sample minilesson, and lots
of student examples--plus chapters on yearlong planning and assessment.
Ensure that your students will be readers and writers long after they leave you. Get them enthused and empowered
to use whatever they read--facts, statistics, the latest book--as fuel for writing in school and in their working
lives. Read Angelillo.
