Review: A witty and resourceful gem!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 01 12, 2014
After having thoroughly enjoyed and received help from Super Teacher’s Six Success Steps, I went back and read the preface book to the series, Super Teacher’s Inside Look at How Kids Learn. This book was just as helpful and insightful as the last one I read by the same author! As a mom of two elementary school students and as a high school substitute teacher, the topics of “how do kids learn?” and “how do I get maximum learning engagement from my students?” are near and dear to my heart.The author’s style is conversational and flows easily and I very quickly finished this book (but not without dog-earing many, MANY pages with gems on them that I’ll be going back to think more about!).The book’s claim that the ABBLAT teaching method has a positive impact on student results and motivation is a bold one. However, reading through the author’s supportive points of how this can be the case alleviated my initial skepticism. And, nothing speaks louder than personal experience. In this case, the author’s personal experience as an administrator at an international school spoke volumes. (In fact, the author’s experiences at a school in Vietnam were so entertaining on their own; I almost thought I was reading a travel memoire for awhile, not an education book!)The big point that made so much sense to me and that I will be using in my classes and at home was this: when students are actively engaged and feel responsible for their own learning success, they learn. So, how do you actively engage your students and help them feel a responsibility for their own learning success? Well, you’ll have to read the book to find out! Without spoiling anything, I can say this: it’s not as hard as you might imagine and without hours of pre-planning, you can be implementing the steps to learning success tomorrow.For the applicability of the points made in this book and for the sheer entertainment value of the author’s experiences at an international school, this book earned a 5-star review from me. Bravo!!