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Peter Johnston
Year: 2004
Foreword by Richard Allington
120 pp/paper
Grade Range: K-8
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Table of Contents | About the Author(s) | Reviews
This title is also available in audiobook format. "Choice Words is a groundbreaking work, and perhaps the most powerful and teacher-friendly book ever published."
—Richard Allington 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.
Table of Contents
About the Author(s)
Peter Johnston grew up and taught elementary school in New Zealand before coming to the United States to earn his Ph.D. at the Center for the Study of Reading at the University of Illinois.
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Reviews
Education Book Reviews - April 2005
"Although this book is written with the intended audience to be language arts and English teachers, any teacher can benefit from understanding the power of his or her words." Education Book Reviews, April 2005 English Journal - January 2005
"This is a powerful book, one that will reinforce the language thoughtful teachers employ to help students become independent, active learners; it will also challenge the many ways teachers talk with students, ways that work against their best intentions at times."English Journal, January 2005 Instructor - November/December 2007
"This small book is packed with big ideas about the importance of teacher language." Instructor, November/December 2007 Language Arts - March/April 2005
"Not only is the information important, but reading Choice Words will make you a better communicator with anyone, anywhere." Language Arts, March/April 2005 NERA Journal - 2006
"This slim book will provoke conversation and question in professional development discussions and serves as a beginning for inquiry into vocabulary as cultural practice." NERA Journal, 2006 Scholastic Early Childhood Today - January 2005
"Peter H. Johnston presents a sensitive analysis of the social, moral and interpersonal aspects of the language used by literacy teachers he and his colleagues observed." Scholastic Early Childhood Today, January 2005 Voices From the Middle - September/November 2006
"In this accessible, exciting, and important book, teachers will find rich examples of ways to consciously use language to build classroom communities..." Voices From the Middle September/November 2006
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