With over ten years as a primary, intermediate, and junior high teacher, I have read lots of education books. This may end up being the book that helps me the most in helping improve myself as an educator, and in helping the school improve itself. This book was jam-packed with great ideas of what truly makes a good school. "Schools That Work" is geared for both principals, teachers, and anyone else in the education field. After reading this it makes for a great reference book. The book is well organized into the different components that make a good school. Also, it has great book, magazine, and web resources throughout the entire book. In short, buy this book without hesitation--it is that good!

Allington and Cunningham provide excellent insight as to what all schools need to ensure quality instruction to students. This book is a must for all educators, especially administrators. I am a Special Education teacher and a graduate student. I refer to this text often.

With over fifty combined years of experience between them, educational researcher/ consultants Richard Allington and Patricia Cunningham have many ideas to offer in their new book, Schools That Work: Where All Children Read and Write. The book is a natural follow-up to their first collaborative effort, Classrooms That Work: They Can All Read and Write. It is lengthy, but highly engaging, and offers practical, research based ideas for those who envision and want to work toward moving their school or school system toward being one where all children become literate. Because American society has changed, and is changing, at such a rapid pace, Allington and Cunningham contend that the current organizational structure of schools, while being well intentioned, is outdated. Existing structures do not effectively meet the needs of all children, especially those who are at the highest risk of school failure. Therefore, they believe that educational interventions that offer "more of the same" will not work to fix the inadequacies in today's schools. Because many schools are stuck, looking toward traditional solutions, huge amounts of federal and state money are being poured into educational programs such as developmental kindergarten, transitional K-1 classes, retention, and remedial, resource and bilingual programs that aren't effective in helping all at risk learners learn to read and write. Throughout the twelve chapters of the book, examples of effective large and small-scale school restructuring efforts in real schools are described. These descriptions are very helpful in illustrating the authors' key points. Models such as the Coalition of Essential Schools, Success For All, the Accelerated Schools Model, Reading Recovery, School Power and Schools for the 21st Century are included. Chapters of the book are organized around central themes of school organizational plans such as instruction, professional roles, allocation of time, parent involvement, assessment and curriculum materials. I will briefly summarize these chapters to give an overview of their content. In the chapter on curriculum, Cunningham and Allington offer many ideas for getting real reading material into the hands of children. Popular methods of literacy instruction are also described, but it is clear that the authors do not believe there is one best way to teach reading and writing. Instead, they advocate for quality instruction delivered in a multifaceted approach. This position is similar to that taken in Best Practices in Literacy Instruction, edited by Gambrel, Morrow, Neuman and Pressley, a resource text for teachers of literacy. Allington and Cunningham then go on to describe essential components of quality literacy instruction. One of the important points of the book is that "good schools are a collection of good classrooms" and that the job of everyone who works at a school is to support and enhance classroom instruction. An important point is made that while most instruction for at risk students slows down the pace of instruction, what is most effective is accelerating their learning through more and better instruction so that they are able to catch up with their peers. Concerning the issue of how instructional time is used; a chapter is devoted to describing effective classroom management practices that maximize the amount of time available for actual reading and writing. Innovative ways of creating more instructional time such as allowing teachers to work on flexible schedules opens up the possibility of students receiving extended amounts of instruction before and after school, in Saturday School and summer school. In the chapter on assessment, strategies for evaluating literacy programs and progress are given. Ideas for utilizing authentic assessments such as observational records, writing samples, narrative comments, interviews, self-evaluations, portfolios and anonymous student testing are presented.

Because schools can change only as fast as the instructional practices of teachers change, Allington and Cunningham devote a chapter to advice for supporting the professional development of teachers. The authors believe that systems need to allocate greater amounts of their resources toward professional development, as well as offer administrative and collegial support in order for teachers to remain life long learners who continually develop new areas of expertise. As our changing society affects schools, it affects families too. Most children now come from single parent families or families where both parents work. Because the authors believe that schools cannot be fully effective without parent support and involvement, ideas for improving parent outreach programs are described. Innovative ways to improve communication between schools and families, involve parents in school decision making processes, and create family literacy programs and interagency family support services that help break cycles of illiteracy and poverty are provided. A chapter is set aside for offering additional ideas for developing the literacy skills of special populations of children, such as those with learning disabilities and those who speak English as a second language. In another chapter, a tour is given through a hypothetical school that reflects some of the basic themes in the book. Readers are then prompted to take a tour through their own school and look for examples of effective practices they would like to see more of, as well as ineffective practices they would like to see decreased. The final chapter of the book offers some relief to the reader, who may at this point be overwhelmed with the scope and scale of school restructuring that needs to be done. Allington and Cunningham caution, though, that there are no quick fixes in education, and that successful reform efforts are done gradually with the long view in mind. Restructuring often begins with a small group of people, or even with one person at a school. Is that person you? Do you believe that all children can learn to read and write, and would you like to help them do so? If you think so, this book could be an invaluable resource that gets you thinking about large-scale changes by starting small. Read it and pass it along to someone in your school, as someone in my school passed it along to me. Who knows what might happen next?

This is a GREAT book. It is a MUST read for all 4th grade teachers and students. It has universal appeal, that I think anyone, who enjoys reading about history, in a kind of you are there style, will enjoy. I have read this book yearly to my 4th grade classes since it was first published. The story is based in the Rancho period of California history. It is unique in that it is about a girl, and how daily life on a rancho affects her. The girl is young and the kids easily relate to her. The story itself is fiction. But, it is set on a Rancho that really did exist in what would later become Ventura County. The names of the people that the girl and her family interact with are real names of local founding families, and are historically accurate. A LOT of research has gone into making it as historically accurate as it can be. There are other good fiction stories for other periods of California history, but usually a boy is the main focus. It is WONDERFUL to have a book that has a girl as the main character and to have one that strives to be historically accurate while still telling a good, engaging story.

A truly excellent book with a gripping story and sweeping images. I found myselfe becoming attached quite deeply to all of the characters. Ultimatly a superb read , I highly reccomend it to any anemei fan

Classrooms That Work is a great reading and writing resource. It tells what strategies have been tried in the reading field. It tells what has worked and what hasn't worked. After you get through that, it gives you tons of strategies to use in your classroom when teaching reading and writing. The best things about these stratgies are that they are easy to implement and they work. You can also modify them to make them more suitable for you. These strategies allow all students to be successful in your classroom. This book is a great one to keep on hand. Although it is aimed for grades K-5, you could easily adapt or modify the strategies to work in your middle school classroom. I have many new strategies to try with my students this September!

Now in a revised and updated third edition, Classrooms That Work by Patricia M. Cunningham (Professor of Education, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina) and Richard L. Allington (Irvin and Rose Fien Professor of Education, University of Florida) is a solid, practical no-nonsense guide to creating a positive educational environment in both public and private schools, with emphasis on teaching literacy in first through sixth grades. The authors offer useful strategies and techniques for helping children learn including cross-checking, means of accurately assessing reading skill, multilevel guided reading, and much more. Classrooms That Work is a superb resource for teachers and concerned parents seeking to improve the quality and learning atmosphere of the formal and informal classroom setting.

This book changed my mind about teaching literacy skills, and the result is Special Day Class students who are reading, who love reading, and who actually TRY to read things. This book is full of great ideas that work: so many ideas that you wish you could use them all! My copy is already dog-eared and filled with sticky notes, highlighting, and notes in the margin. I've told all my teacher friends to get this book! GET THIS BOOK!

This slim book provides a one-stop reference for those researching the work of (mostly) American canon lawyers between the end of Vatican II (1965) to just before the publication of the 1983 Code of Canon Law. The annotations are somewhat uneven in quality, but remain generally useful.

The superb essay by Richard Lorenz explains the genesis of Ms. Cunningham's career, the influences on her work, how her styles developed, how she sought work, and the challenges that she faced as a person and as an artist. The essay is of such quality that it raises the overall value of the book. Two of Ms. Cunningham's weaknesses were tendencies to misuse shadow and to blur where clarity would have worked better. Many of the images in this book are marred by these routine flaws. On the other hand, there are enough rewarding works to make owning this volume a treat. You will probably find yourself strongly favoring a third of the images over the rest. If you are a fan of her nude work, I think you will find many of the portraits disappointing. I did like them better than the floral images she produced.

This book contains 208 duotone plates, 50 black and white images, and 13 color plates. All of the color plates looked a little peculiar. Something is off in the reproduction of them. It almost looked like an error in the color registration by the printer.

Ms. Cunningham's best efforts were generally of people in her family, or those she had great respect or affection for. When her connection to the person was modest, often the results were too. Generally, the more elaborate the composition, the better the result except when shadows were involved. For that reason, her outdoor portraits in full sun turned out best.

My favorite images in this book (as reproduced here) include:

My Father at Sixty, 1906; Mother and Child, Germany, 1909-1910; My Mother Peeling Apples, about 1910; The Dream, 1910; Roi Partridge, 1915; My Father, about 1918; Dane Coolidge, about 1921; Roger Sturtevant, about 1922; Sherwood Anderson, Writer 2, about 1923; Gertrude Gerrish, 1924; Henry Cowell, 1926; Portrait of Portia Hume, about 1930; Frances Dee, 1932; The Pareeckh Sisters from India, early 1930s; Robert Irwin, 1933; Alfred Stieglitz, 1934; Herbert Hoover 2, 1935; My Father at Ninety, 1936; Shen Yao, 1938; Edward Weston at Point Lobos 2, 1945; Woman in Sorrow, 1964; Brassai, 1973; Ansel Adams, Photographer 2, 1975; Morris Graves in His Leek Garden, 1972; Dr. Maria Kolisch, 1973; and Roi Patridge and Horse's Skull, 1975.

After you examine this book, I suggest that you think about what you want to learn and feel from a portrait. Do you want to know how the person liked to portray him or herself? Do you want to see a pawn within the photographer's style? Do you want to understand the person's personality? Then, go back and look at these images and think about what Ms. Cunningham has captured in each case.

As Mr. Lorenz says in his essay, even before a negative is retouched, "lighting manipulates and obfuscates reality," the "environmental context of the photograph modulates its connective power," and the "theatrics of makeup and costume alter fact and validate illusions." Where do you see these effects?

If you are like me, you will find the double exposure work interesting . . . capturing a sense of the fourth dimension of time. Many of the works will remind you of Marcel Duchamp's work, with which Ms. Cunningham was quite familiar.

Capture reality past the poser's projection . . . and add truth!