Friday, February 18, 2011

Focusing in on Mike Schmoker's FOCUS

LOVE Schmoker's new book Focus - a manifesto. "How we teach is also inseparable from literacy" (p 4). "Board, wide reading is the heart of the language arts" (p 101). "Social studies is the study of the world" (p 161). "Wide, abundant reading is the surest route out of poverty" (p 95). "Write many short, informal pieces and one longer, formal, argumentative or interpretive paper each month" (p 127).

"Literature makes significant life possible...We construct ourselves from novels, poems, and plays as well as from works of history and philosophy" - Mark Edmundson in WHY READ? (2004) and Schmoker's FOCUS (p 93).