Recommended Reading
Best Books for English Teaching
The following books are recommended inclusions in a teachers' professional development library.
- Atwell, Nancie: In the Middle:New Understandings About Writing, Reading, and Learning.
- ISBN: 0867093749
- Best book on teaching writing there is. It is very practical and contains extremely detailed discussion on organising and administering an appropriate writing program in years 8 -10. Inspirational.
- Barnes, Douglas: From Communication to Curriculum
- ISBN: 086709298X
- A classic. One of the most important books ever written on teaching in general. Shows why language is at the basis of student Understanding of content. Also shows how classroom language can be the basis of lack of understanding. The ultimate answer to the genre movement.
- Burke, Jim: The English Teacher's Companion, Third Edition: A Complete Guide to Classroom, Curriculum, and the Profession
- Heinemann; 3rd edition 2007
- Dixon, John: Growth through English
- ASIN: 0814119166
- A classic. The book that forms the philosophical underpinning of the growth model in English.
- Ellis, Viv, Street, Brian and Fox, Carol: Rethinking English in Schools: Towards a New and Constructive Stage
- Publisher: Continuum (May 27, 2009)
- First Steps: Reading Developmental Continuum.
- Education Department of Western Australia
- First Steps: Reading Resource Book.
- Education Department of Western Australia
- Practical, detailed and easily adapted approaches to teaching reading.
- Gibson, Rex: Teaching Shakespeare
- ISBN: 0521577888
- Gibson, editor of the Cambridge School Shakespeare, is the doyen of contemporary approaches to teaching shakespeare in schools. This is his most comprehensive text.
- Hayhoe, Mike and Parker, Stephen : Words Large as Apples
- ASIN: 0521331145
- A collection of great teaching ideas for poetry. Few of them are especially new but gathered together under the one cover makes a very useful text.
- Kress, Gunther : Writing the future
- ISBN: 0814158951
- The first book to look beyond "crtical literacy" into what a Curriculum in English for the 21st Century might look like.
- Kathleen McCormick: The Culture of Reading and the Teaching of English
- ISBN: 0719032458
- Excellent, readable summary of the major approaches to literature of the last 20 years and their implications for classroom teaching.
- Margaret Meek: Learning to read
- ASIN: 0435082515
- Theorises the reading process and then looks at appropriate approaches to reading pedagogy from pre-school to high school.
- Milner, Joseph O. and Milner, Lucy F.: Bridging English
- Prentice Hall; 4 edition 2007, ISBN-10: 0132397471
- James Moffett: Teaching the Universe of Discourse
- ISBN: 0867091819
- A classic: still among the most important theoretical discussions of what English curriculum is and what language development might look like.
- James Moffett: Active Voice
- ISBN: 0867092890
- Moffett's practical application of the theory put forward in "teaching the universe of discourse". A series of writing assignments that lead students along important developmental continua.
- Peel, Patterson and Gerlach: Questions of English: Aesthetics, Democracy and the Formation of Subject
- ISBN: 0415191203
- A recent study of what "English" means in Australia, the United Kingdom and the USA. Interesting discussion of whether "models" of English are appropriate frames of discussion or whterh English should be conceptualised in terms of the kind of person it produces.
- Rob Pope: The English Studies Book
- ISBN: 0415128676
- A comprehensive, highly readable guide to everything you always wanted to know about English. Includes examples of readings of texts based on all major literary theories and also includes absorbing explanatory activities.
- Wayne Sawyer, Ken Watson, Eva Gold: Re-Viewing English
- ASIN: 0949898848
- The blurb says it's the "most significant Australian contribution to English teaching for more than a decade". We agree, but we're biased.
- Don Smedley: Teaching the basic skills: Spelling Punctuation and Grammar in Secondary English
- ASIN: 0416341403
- Solid, sensible and innovative approaches to the teaching of spelling, punctuation, grammar.
- Frank Smith: Reading
- ASIN: 052131285X
- The key text on reading processes that underpins most contemporary approaches to teaching reading. A fascinating read.
- Andrew Stibbs: Assessing Children's Language
- ISBN: 0814102034
- A classic.still one of the best discussions of basic principles of assessment in English that has ever been published.
- Steve and Susan Tchudi: The English Language Arts Handbook: Classroom Strategies for Teachers
- ISBN: 086709463X
- Good, comprehensive coverage of a large range of issues in English teaching.