"This book is a must for every teacher, in my opinion. That's it. For real."
--Ruth Nathan, Books and No More, CATENET
Publisher Web Site, December, 2004
Summary
In productive classrooms, teachers don't just teach children skills: they build emotionally and relationally
healthy learning communities. Teachers create intellectual environments that produce not only technically competent
students, but also caring, secure, actively literate human beings.
Choice Words shows how teachers accomplish this using their most powerful teaching tool: language. Throughout,
Peter Johnston provides examples of apparently ordinary words, phrases, and uses of language that are pivotal in
the orchestration of the classroom. Grounded in a study by accomplished literacy teachers, the book demonstrates
how the things we say (and don't say) have surprising consequences for what children learn and for who they become
as literate people. Through language, children learn how to become strategic thinkers, not merely learning the
literacy strategies. In addition, Johnston examines the complex learning that teachers produce in classrooms that
is hard to name and thus is not recognized by tests, by policy-makers, by the general public, and often by teachers
themselves, yet is vitally important.
This book will be enlightening for any teacher who wishes to be more conscious of the many ways their language
helps children acquire literacy skills and view the world, their peers, and themselves in new ways.
