A Non-Workbook, Non-Textbook Approach to Teaching Language Arts (Grades 4-8 and Up)

If you are having trouble getting your students engaged in language arts activities this is the book for you. It is chock full of well-explained and simple teaching strategies that will help students learn how to write and read better and enjoy the process as well.

--Dr. Betty Jane Wagner, Professor, College of Education, Roosevelt University, Director of the Chicago Area Writing Project, a nationally known educator and educational author (co-wrote with former internationally known educator/researcher, James Moffett). Current author of Student-Centered Language Arts, K-12.  Heinemann, and on the Internet: www.heinemann.com, www.amazon.com, and other Web booksellers.   She is the author of many currently available books. 

This important book is a must-read for anyone who teaches language arts from grade four and up.  James Charnock possesses one of the most creative and inspiring voices emerging from the language pedagogy community today.  While often challenging traditional teaching methods, he brings his 30 years of teaching experience and his generous heart to offer a wide range of practical, fun, and well-detailed strategies to teaching language arts.  His unusual, exuberant, student-centered techniques meet the child in his/her own world and go on to open up new dimensions of experience and mastery of language skills.  Here is a treasury of specific directions, charts, forms, lists, scales, and games, often with engaging titles, for drawing the student into the learning experience.  Samples of students’ responses reflect the rewarding outcomes that so often have validated this teacher’s dedication, love, and imaginative solutions to the challenge of teaching language arts.  This compilation of Charnock’s work serves as a valuable resource to empower students with not only better language skills, but also with a better sense of self.  His teaching methods can stimulate awareness and self-expression, which are among the most useful life skills a child can acquire.

Wandz Costanzo, Ph.D., Clinical Psychologist, (Subspecialty: Attention Deficit Disorder), Private Practice, Haddonfield, NJ

James Charnock is someone whose personality has been created for me by his written words.  Like Odysseus, he is the man never at a loss.  I’d be willing to bet that in his school students [fought] to get into his classes, parents pulled whatever strings they could to get their kids in, and colleagues benefited from his innovative ideas, of which he seems to have a never-ending supply.  Readers of the [Arizona English] Bulletin over the years have also benefited from his resourcefulness.  As editor, I was impressed with his approaches then, and am still impressed with his seemingly inexhaustible imagination.  His ideas can be copied and used directly or they may be the stimulus needed to create lessons that will make classes more fun, more exciting, and more meaningful.  If the goal is for our students to love language, and writing, and literature, here is a way—here are lots of ways—to help them do it.  [The AEB is the largest state English bulletin in the U.S.]

Dr. Margaret B. Fleming, Former Editor, Arizona English Bulletin (Affiliate of the National Council of Teachers of English)

If you are like I am, always looking for new activities to 'beef up' my teaching, you need to take a look at Charnock's book.  This volume is a real plus for beginning teachers and a treat for those of us with experience.  The exercises, meaningful and relying heavily on the students' own experiences (always a plus), are designed to get kids interested and actively writing.  Furthermore, all the ideas can be easily adapted whether used partially or totally.

K. L. Ariano "secondary teacher," Columbia, MD