Professional Books — Review

What’s Next for this Beginning Writer?

by Janine Reid & Betty Schultze with Ulla Petersen
Pembroke Publishers, 2005
ISBN1-55138-187-7
$23.95, 124 pp, adult
www.pembrokepublishers.com

One of the greatest challenges any teacher faces is how to meet the needs of each student in the class when each student is at a different place on the learning continuum. What’s Next for this Beginning Writer? addresses this challenge in the area of written literacy for teachers of very young learners. Based on questions heard time and again in their roles as district based literacy mentors to teachers, the authors draw on their own classroom experience to demonstrate strategies for both one-on-one and group instruction that will help move each student on to the next level of proficiency. The strategies are gentle and respectful, with emphasis on recognition of where a student falls on a developmental continuum, on acknowledgement of established skills and progress, and on a systematic plan to encourage further skill development. Twenty-two lessons are laid out, beginning with an example of a student’s work and a script that a teacher might use to affirm the student’s achievement and to set goals for the next step in that student’s development. Then a lesson follows with clear, step-by-step instructions that could be used with a group of students who are at a similar place on the continuum. This is an excellent guide to teaching writing skills that will be an invaluable resource for any teacher of young writers.

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