My rating:
add to my books
Loading...
Mosaic of Thought: The Power of Comprehension-Strategy Instruction
Ellin Oliver Keene and Susan Zimmermann have returned with a new edition of Mosaic of Thought that features 70 percent new material. When the first edition published ten years ago, Mosaic of Thought became a runaway best seller as the first book to explicitly describe the use and benefits of strategy-based comprehension instruction. Since then comprehension strategy instru...more
Paperback, Second Edition, 292 pages
Published
May 2nd 2007
by Heinemann Educational Books
(first published April 21st 1997)
There is a good chance some of your friends read this book. Sign in to see!
sign in »
Friend Reviews
To see what your friends thought of this book,
please sign up.
This book is currently not featured on any Listopia lists.
Add this book to your favorite list »
Community Reviews
(showing
1-30
of
617)
Mosaic of Thought was the first book I read about teaching English. Ten years ago, on the verge of leaving graduate school, I was introduced to Mosaic. I was blown away: it was as if the authors had taken off the top of my head, had observed my thought process while I was reading, and then held up a mirror to make me aware of what I was doing.
In the years since I have returned to Mosaic many times over, using it as a seed text to pull teaching points from. I found that Keene a...more
In the years since I have returned to Mosaic many times over, using it as a seed text to pull teaching points from. I found that Keene a...more
I just finished reading the second edition of this book. Like Stephanie Harvey, and a group of other reading comprehension specialists, Ellin Oliver Keene and Susan Zimmermann show how teachers can effectively model how they "think" as they read aloud. Once modeled, students can begin to "think" about what they read independently. Students are encouraged to have emotional and visual responses, text-to-self connections, and inferences. The thinking that is modeled by teach...more
This book changed the way I teach reading! It opened my mind to the possibilities of helping children with comprehension and awakening children to the wonderful world of books. Each chapter has a wonderful breakdown of how to go about teaching each skill as well as wonderful examples of children's literature for teaching that reading comprehension skill.
view 1 comment
I enjoyed reading this. It reminded me of Cziko's Reading for Understanding. I liked the way Ellin, one of the authors, started each chapter with a text, her think aloud of it, and how this played out in the classroom. The repetitive nature of each mini-lesson was ingrained in my head. Modeling think alouds, having students read individually while conferencing with students, sharing aloud after.
I wish there were more high school examples. There is only one at the end and compa...more
I wish there were more high school examples. There is only one at the end and compa...more
Wonderful exploration of the meta-cognitive comprehension strategies that initiate amazing thinking, discussing, and learning in elementary reader's workshops. If you teach K-2 and want even more concrete ideas about how to implement the comprehension strategies in this book, read Debbie Miller's Reading with Meaning. It dovetails very nicely with Mosaic of Thought (the authors are colleagues in researching/implementing these comprehension strategies), but provides specific insight for working w...more
I started reading this book 4 months ago. A page-turner it's not. It is written by teachers to help teachers learn to teach. I learned fascinating things from this, and really it seems that every teacher should read it or a book like it. We as Americans are incredibly under educated and unknowledgeable. Seeing the problems that Keene and Zimmermann were trying to solve back in the mid90s made me realize that it is laregely due to our reading - or the fact that we don't do much of it. Most people...more
Somehow I missed this widely known resource for teachers while in SF State credential program, but am so glad one of my students' teachers referred to it and got me into it. Ellin Keene and Susan Zimmermann wrote this mainly for the classroom, but the ideas and strategies are pertinenet for anyone trying to help students and themselves to have a deeper and more meaningful interaction with reading. It's a book I'll be returning to often.
Here's a quote that relates directly to Lind...more
Here's a quote that relates directly to Lind...more
I didn't particuarly love this book, but I kept having to remind myself, "This is the book that brought the reading strategies center stage, that informed all the other professional books on reading comprehension that I use and love." I just found the narrative too meandering and the explanations of how to implement the strategies into instruction too amorphous. Watching other "master" teachers use the strategies somewhat vaguely isn't all that helpful. I suppose if I had ...more
This book is a supremely readable guide to teaching (and learning!) literacy. I think the difference between "reading" (by which most people mean decoding words, word recognition, etc.) and READING, which is to really understand and interact with words, escapes many people. Mosaic of Thought really not only clarifies the difference but provides practical techniques to introducing strategies to increase READING abilities.
This was a great book, but it was really deep. I would have to quit reading often and do something else just so I could think about what I'd read and assimilate it into my knowledge base. If you want to teach children how to be readers... not just good readers or kids that can read words on a page, but actually be able to read it and relate it to themselves, this is a perfect book for you!
This book is definitely not a book to try and read in a day or two. I found myself rereading sections over and over again. This book defines the cognitive actions taken by proficient readers. It explains in great detail how to introduce comprehension strategies, fix-up strategies,etc. to students of all ages. Great book!
A highly intelligent, readable, insightful, and enjoyable piece on reading. Enlightening and pracical.
Words of Wisdom: "John Cheever once said that he wrote 'to make sense of my life.' We read, I think, for the same reason: to make sense of our lives and to connect to those who have come before us and those who now share the planet with us. We read to do our jobs, to learn, to explore, to adventure, to bring order to chaos, to open new vistas, to better understand the world aro...more
Words of Wisdom: "John Cheever once said that he wrote 'to make sense of my life.' We read, I think, for the same reason: to make sense of our lives and to connect to those who have come before us and those who now share the planet with us. We read to do our jobs, to learn, to explore, to adventure, to bring order to chaos, to open new vistas, to better understand the world aro...more
This is my teaching "bible". Since reading it, my entire approach to teaching my students to comprehend what they read has changed. Well written. I've read it at least three times.
I feel bad that I'm only giving this book three stars. It's just timing. This is the classic book for teaching reading strategies, but I read so many others that by the time I got to this one it's just feeling a little stale. I'm tired of reading teaching books that have lots and lots of uplifting narrative that show how masterful the author is. The most interesting parts of the book are outside of the classroom, when the author describes her own struggles reading adult works. In fairness, this ...more
This book is SO wonderful. This, along with the MOSAIC email list, really helped me understand how to teach comprehension strategies.
This books was well worth my time and I enjoyed and appreciated the insight of this book. As I read new books, attend library book club and conduct a Readers Workshop in my son's classroom, I am continually blessed for having read this book. I want to reread it already. I find myself wanting others (librarians, book discussion leaders, book friends) to have read this book so they can know and share in the mosaic of thought offered through great literature. I crave good literature and am some...more
A great companion to Chris Tovani's book, "I Read It, but I Don't Get It." This book shows you the strategies for teaching reading comprehension in action. Teachers will love the modelling ("I do") and the classroom examples of the strategies put to work ("you do").
Another book to change the way I teach. Grrrr....will I ever stop changing EVERYTHING I do in the classroom?
good. Not an overall hands on resource, but a thinking resource
Keene explores the metacognitive reading strategies good readers use.
This is a MUST READ for all elementary teachers!!
Good discussion of comprehension strategies.
Danette
added it
Fantastic thought- provoking book!
Recommended for library/media teachers
I love this book!
This book is informative to a point. However, it suffers from the same flaw that many of the "teacher books" I've read in the last year and a half do: too many idyllic classroom tales, not enough this-is-how-we-actually-employed-the-strategies-we're-talking-about. Also, the co-authors refer to each other in the third person a lot, which just comes off as odd. Still, if you want to know more about reading strategies, you could do a lot worse.
I just received and read the NEW 2nd edition of this book, and guess, what? I actually like this original much better! This is a really good introduction to comprehension strategy instruction in the elementary classroom. It engages the reader by posing excerpts from various genres of adult literature that "activate" the use of strategies to make sense of the text, and then from there, moves into "how to" teach it in the classroom.
I finally finished this book! It's not that it wasn't great, it just took me a while.
I took 13 pages of notes, information I'm going to use in my classroom. It just seems to me that these teaching books are way too long -- great information, but this book could have been pared down a lot.
Don't buy it -- just borrow it and take notes.
I took 13 pages of notes, information I'm going to use in my classroom. It just seems to me that these teaching books are way too long -- great information, but this book could have been pared down a lot.
Don't buy it -- just borrow it and take notes.
This is an excellent book for elementary and middle school literacy teachers who really want to push their students to the next level of thinking. The book walks you through the reading strategies that proficient readers use on a consistent basis, while also using a metacognitive narrative to help teachers understand why this is important.
Great exploration of metacognition which has reinforced much of what I know and has broadened my awareness of helping kids understand what they read.
It was a optional school-read, with a group of us reading one chapter a month and gathering before school to discuss. I highly recommend that approach!
It was a optional school-read, with a group of us reading one chapter a month and gathering before school to discuss. I highly recommend that approach!
There are no discussion topics on this book yet.
Be the first to start one »
![Assessing Comprehension Thinking Strategies [With CDROM]](http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1185382353m/1574800.jpg "Assessing Comprehension Thinking Strategies [With CDROM]")
