Practice with Purpose

This book offers a good basic start for the over ten year teacher who wants to start something new. This book enables you to "start over" with your thinking about whole and small group instruction for older grades in reading. I will be putting it to use in September, so I've had the whole summer to mull the ideas over. Some things I won't be trying for lack of space and time requirements for organizing but I will be starting 6 stations so that I can manage to meet with 4 small reading groups starting the first month of school. It's an easy read and supplies pictures and examples as well as a whole section in back of blackline master handouts. Worth the money!

Most teaching blogs and websites provide teachers with information on workstations in the lower grades. Practice with Purpose is a wonderful tool for all intermediate teachers wanting to gain confidence, tips, and knowledge about workstations in the literacy class. It provides examples of workstations including poetry, newspaper, drama, word study, writing, and independent reading/ library. There are reproducibles in the back to provide accountability for the children and organization for you. There are photos throughout to provide concrete examples for visual learners. There are lots of lists of items to make your workstations doable and more successful. Of course there is lots of wonderful information that provides the purpose of workstations, what to do if problems occur, mini-lessons, anchor charts, resources, assessment tools, differentiation, and a explanation of how each station supports achievement on state tests!!! Way to go Debbie Diller!!!

To help me plan for the coming school year, and then everyone went remote! I like the ideas presented. The book came securely wrapped. I recommend this seller. Thank you!

This book revolutionized my teaching.I had heard about centers but didn't quite know how to set them up, etc. This book not only gave many ideas for centers, but also provided much of the stuff one needed to make them.The book revolutionized my teaching, as I started using centers...many from the book, and was able to create many of my own, after learning about them and how to use them.If you want to put in centers, this is definitely the book for yowl

Love LOVE L-O-V-E this book. It offered great insight into running small groups/centers with older grades. I have already recommended it to our Dean of Students as a good resource for our 3-5 grade teachers. I no longer will say "Center's don't really work in the upper elementary grades", now I understand that they can, and what I had been doing wrong...

As an educator I was so excited to get this book! Good ideas, easy to use!

I have used the strategies in this book for the last couple of years in my classroom. I love them. I would love for her to come out with a book on this subject for math in the upper elementary grades. I highly recommend this resource!

The book was in good shape as it said it was in the review. I loved not having to pay full book price.

Debbie Dillar presents a variety of practical literacy centres for the grade 3-6 classroom. The ideas are presented clearly with an emphasis on making sure that the teacher gives her/himself time to model, practise and model again the activities, before the students use the stations independently. I particularly like the emphasis on practice and student accountability at the centers, rather than worksheets to be corrected. Dillar writes a section on how each centre supports state tests, which is also applicable to Ontario EQAO testing. This book supports the philosophy of Fountas and Pinnell, S. Harvey, Patricia Cunningham and Janet Allen. Some practical cards ready to use to set up the stations (after being taught and modeled) are included in the appendix.