50 Essential Lessons: Tools and Techniques for Teaching English Language Arts

by Jim Burke

50 Essential Lessons is the result of the lessons Jim Burke learned while asking himself how to teach his students the skills they needed to succeed in school and in the larger world. Anchored in standards shared by a range of national literacy documents, these lessons focus on the core cognitive and personal skills-reading, writing, speaking and listening, taking notes, taking tests, and managing oneself-required on state tests and college entrance exams. Whether used to enhance your English Language Arts curriculum or as a stand-alone resource, 50 Essential Lessons will help you teach your students the academic essentials. Key Features

Genres: Education, Professional Development

416 pages, Paperback

First published November 20, 2006

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

A longtime English teacher, Jim Burke is the author of more than 20 books and senior consultant for the Holt McDougal Literature program. Jim has received several awards, including the 2000 NCTE Exemplary English Leadership Award. In 2009, he created the English Companion Ning―the largest online community of English teachers in the world. More recently, Jim has served on the AP English Course and Exam Review Commission and the PARCC Consortium.

Reviews

[Cassey · Rating 5 out of 5]

This a a text that EVERY English teacher must read! I learned so much and found inspiration on every page throughout the entirety of the book. Jim Burke truly is a genius and I can only hope to aspire to half the teacher he is within his classrooms. The explanations are easy to follow and many of his lessons can pop right off the page and into the classroom and the others are easily modified for any assignment. I will continue to follow Mr Burke and his teaching, both for students and for educators!

[William Lawrence · Rating 3 out of 5]

The main lessons book is great and should be made available to students in English education programs, but the tools & texts supplement is just terrible. I can't see teaching with so many bland forms to fill out, and I couldn't imagine being a student in an English class with such structured worksheets to have to fill out every class. Yikes!