Teach Smarter: Literacy Strategies for Early Childhood Teachers

by Vanessa J. Levin

Discover new, practical methods for teaching literacy skills in your early childhood classroom.

Has teaching early literacy skills become a stumbling block to getting your preschool students kindergarten ready? Break out of the tired "letter of the week" routine and learn how to transform your lessons with fun and effective techniques. Teach Literacy Strategies for Early Childhood Teachers will equip teachers to infuse every aspect of their teaching with exciting hands-on literacy teaching methods that engage students and help them build authentic connections with books, so that 100% of their students will have a strong literacy foundation and will be fully prepared for success in kindergarten and beyond.

Respected author Vanessa Levin, veteran early childhood educator and author of the "Pre-K Pages" blog, breaks down the research and translates it into realistic, actionable steps you can take to improve your teaching.

Features specific examples of teaching techniques and activities that engage students in hands-on, experiential learning during circle time, centers, and small groups. Offers a simple, four-step system for teaching literacy skills, based on the foundational principles of early literacy teaching Demonstrates how to build your confidence in your ability to get 100% of your students ready for kindergarten, long before the end of the school year Understand the problems with traditional literacy teaching and identify gaps in your current teaching practice with this valuable resource.

172 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 7, 2021

Reviews

[Laura Byrd · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is really more of a 3.5 star book. To be fair, I am not a classroom early childhood educator. I’m a homeschooling mom with an education background. (I tutored and taught K-2 before kids.)

I do try to stay up to date on educational research and methods as I teach my own kids. I’ve seen many videos by Vanessa Levin and have downloaded a resource or two from her website. I honestly get overwhelmed when I have to dig through mounds of things to find the information I’m looking for. I figured purchasing her book was the best sure-fire way to get some good, organized strategies.

I have to be clear - there were some very good thoughts in this book and I did learn some things, but I feel like this book is part of a funnel to get you to join her paid online community and that it’s there you’ll find the real meat with specific strategies and ways to implement what she’s talking about.

This is a birds eye overview, but wasn’t what I was hoping for and much of what’s included won’t easily transfer to the homeschooling sphere. I feel like you might be better off skipping this book and just joining the online community if that’s something that is reasonable for your needs (it’s not for me and I’m not a member so I can’t speak to what’s there.) Alternately, check out her YouTube channel and watch some of the videos there for free.

[Brittany · Rating 1 out of 5]

If asked to summarize this book in a single sentence, I would share that it's a teacher memoir sprinkled with other teachers' anecdotes combined with a recurrent, shameless plug for the author's subscription-based website.

As a prekindergarten teacher with a degree in education and LETRS training, this book fell completely flat for me. Right away there was a reference to Fountas and Pinnell which seems a bit questionable for a book promoting literacy strategies in the midst of the push towards structured literacy. Levin also focuses a lot on her belief that there doesn't need to be a systematic approach to teaching letters and phonemes along with the importance of explicit rhyming ability which feels like it stands in contrast to prevailing literacy research.

I pushed myself to finish reading because I was hoping for Levin to redeem herself as the book progressed, but, unfortunately, I don't feel she was able to do so in the end. I did appreciate chapter 16 and the discussion surrounding the forced rotation of centers as I strongly agree with her and allowing students meaningful time to engage in play-based, self-directed learning in the early childhood classroom. However, there isn't anything in the way of meaningful literacy instruction I gained from this book that I feel will help me or any other early childhood educator "teach smarter."

[Lindsay Swanberg · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think this could be a much better starter book for teachers who are brand new to ECE, rather than experienced teachers who already know these basics. I like the author's message, but don't care for the presentation of the material: a lot of it is repetitive and comes off as filler (filler also being way too many pages filled with personal anecdotes and personal stories from other teachers that don't teach us much about actual methods for fostering stronger learning - this book falls short on actual, concrete methods, for its size and especially for its price), and the font zigzags back and forth, throughout the entire book, from huge and largely spaced to tiny and tightly spaced. If this book had stuck with a medium sized font and had cut out half the filler, it would've gotten another star. Again, this could be helpful to NEW teachers, to get their gears going in the right direction toward teaching literacy.

[Lessley R. · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was a decent introduction to the subject matter. I am a secondary education teacher who is now at home developing homeschool curriculum for my toddler, and I needed a starting place for understanding early childhood literacy. The book gave me that. I now know the basic terms and some starting points to build from. The book could have been better if it didn’t feel like a giant teaser for the author's online program. There was too much suggestion of using her program to get strategies, and not enough actually offering up strategies for the reader. There were also a number of things in the book that I needed clarification on due to lack of detail, so I took my questions to the AI that I use most frequently, and in less than five minutes, the AI had clarified all of my questions and given me personalized teaching strategies to use with my daughter that were detailed, included examples, and were, frankly, exactly what I had hoped the book would provide, but it only teased.

[Nicole Willmann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Being new to Pre-K, this book did give me some basic ideas and things to think about in an easy to understand way. I have enjoyed her content on YouTube and website which is why I wanted to read this. This book would probably not be for season Pre-K teachers as a lot of it is basic. I also do wish there was less of a push to join her paid online community throughout the book. Felt that was a bit tacky, but overall, I took some notes to help me as I start to teach Pre-k for the first time.

[Rachael Caskey · Rating 1 out of 5]

Marketing Ploy. All this book talks about is the author's teaching program she wants you to join. She gives you tiny little tidbits and peppers her book with testimonials from people who buy her course. I was hoping for more of a "how-to" book.

[Anne C · Rating 5 out of 5]

Practical and useful

Vanessa provides some simple and practical strategies that are not overwhelming to implement in the classroom. She provides real world examples and metaphors.

[Liberty · Rating 1 out of 5]

Reads like a 150 page advertisement for a website.

[Katie V · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great point of view and practical examples. Would have rated higher if it didn't include so many references to joining the online community (a paid subscription of course).