Book Review

I came across a fantastic resource book called, "Marvelous Minilessons for Teaching Beginning Writing, K-3" by Lori Jamison Rog.  It focused on the different strategies teachers can implement to create an effective writing workshop that benefits students within the primary grades. The book provided background knowledge about young children's writing stages and their cognitive development and how as teachers we can enhance their learning. The information within this book created a new vision for my writing workshop classes. 

The first chapter of the book introduced the different writing stages and how teachers can help their students enhance their writing skills. Then the additional chapters focused on other aspects of writing:

Chapter 2: Getting Started with Writing
Chapter 3: Substance and Style
Chapter 4: Conventions
Chapter 5: Revision, Making Good Writing Even Better

This is a fantastic book for primary grade teachers as it explain the lesson plans very well and in detail. It also includes what to say  to your students! This is great because sometimes explaining a concept to younger students can rather be challenging. 
I  also love how within the first chapter it talks about the different stages of writing and throughout the book it always refers back to them. I highly recommend this book to primary grade teachers as it has valuable lesson plans, and vital information about young children and how we can foster their writing habits. 

As part of my book review, I have also made a list about the strengths of the book and the limitations of it. Although the pros of the book are more than the cons.

Strengths:

• Lesson plans very detailed with pictures to help the visual learners (me)
• Language easy to read and understand
• The information for each chapter was very educational
• Written from a teacher's perspective, therefore it was easy to see myself implementing the lessons within my classroom
• The stages of writing allowed me to understand young children's development on a higher level
• Provided great ideas about how to create/implement a writing workshop
• The lesson plans related to the different writing stages
• Each chapter analyzed the lesson plans and how/when/why they should be used within the classroom and how they fit within a literacy program 
• The book flows nicely as each chapter focuses on a different aspect of writing

Limitation:

• Does not include the use of technology
• At the beginning of chapter 2 it analyzes the different lesson plans, but the lesson plans are located at the end of the chapter. This made me confused because as I was reading, I did not understand what it was talking about until I read over the lesson plans. 
• Although the book includes what writing stage is best for each lesson plan, it does not include a grade which I believe it is also important as what we teach needs to be grade appropriate.