The Art and Science of Teaching Primary Reading (Corwin Ltd)

Had to buy this book for my B.ED but really enjoyed reading it! realling insightfull and helps break down the complecated world of teaching litteracy.

Very informative

This is the best book on reading that I have read so far in my 15years of teaching. It is easy to read and implement in the classroom. It makes so much sense and has bought the love of teaching reading back (even though I am the Maths lead!) I am really excited to share this book with teachers in my school and can’t wait to try the strategies for reading with my Y6 class. An absolute gem!I’m hoping there will be a sequel 🙂

This book is an exceptionally accessible read for educators. Chris Such breaks through the noise and presents practical information about evidence informed reading instruction, in a manner that honours both the simplicity and complexity of learning to read. A must read for every teacher.

I'm definitely in the minority of all these praises for this book but I found it very underwhelming and disappointing. It is an OK book for absolute beginners to structured literacy, especially those that need to have a change in mindset, but other than that I don't find much value in it. I'll try to give some reasons for my view...-Christopher Such, as far as I can find, is a primary educator with roles in curriculum and the like but is not a researcher or reading expert. The book, in general, is a brief summary of research that others have done on all areas of literacy (and when I say "brief" I mean "pitifully brief" - many chapters are just 2 pages with large headings, white space, and references.) Research from experts is summarized into a brief sentence or two with no depth of explanation, backup research, or practical and explicit ways to implement in the classroom. Overall, very little content.-Each literacy element (fluency, vocabulary, etc.) is presented so briefly and vaguely with lots of mentions of what children "should be doing" but very little mention of HOW to do that. It sounds wonderful as you read all the ideal things that children should be learning, but after that, the reader is left hanging to figure out the 'how' on their own. The paragraph on graphic organizers says they should be used to support understanding. Ok...how? It mentions both Venn and Double Spray diagrams but doesn't explain how to use either. There is only half a page on the subject of spelling - not even a whole "chapter" when there is such a strong relationship between reading and spelling. Although vocabulary gets a whole "chapter, teaching techniques for vocabulary is just half a page.-The author states that his grasp of Latin and Greek roots was "borderline non-existent" until recently. This is where guest authors with more knowledge would have been great. I challenge readers of the book to think about the "root word" of <bio> in different terms of <bi> + <o> as a Greek connecting vowel. It's the only way to explain the <bi> in the word "amphibian" to mean 'life'. (Same with <ge> + <o> instead of <geo> -- although this may be splitting hairs and teachers may choose to still teach <bio> or <geo> it is still good background info for an educator to have.)-Although presented as literacy science, I lost count of how many times sentences have "in my experience" or "in my view" written. Areas of literacy with competing views are presented as a wishy-washy: "some people think this..., others think this..., and my own personal view is this..." I guess this relates to the "Art" mentioned in the title, but he still doesn't present practical lesson ideas, just his own view.-This should be a great book summarizing the research of all areas of literacy! It touches on everything....and yet fully explains nothing. Christopher Such has a very accessible and down-to-earth writing style without being bogged down with technicality or reading like a textbook. Had he done a more thorough job of summarizing the research on each element of literacy this book could have been amazing. Unfortunately, it misses the mark for me. It may be great for an absolute newbie to structured literacy but after that, the reader will still need to dig into other resources as this book is only just barely scratching the surface.