Education Book Reviews

Ruzzo, Karen, & Sacco, Mary Anne (2004) Significant Studies for Second Grade: Reading and Writing Investigations For Children. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

In Significant Studies for Second Grade: Reading and Writing Investigations for Children, Karen Ruzzo and Mary Anne Sacco invite readers into their second grade classrooms to observe the recursive nature of their planning and teaching. Two reading studies (dialogue and non-fiction) are presented in Part 1 of the book, followed by two writing studies (setting and content area writing) in Part 2. The authors skillfully weave their planning processes for reading and writing workshop with the voices of their students to create an in depth account of a complete school year. For teachers inexperienced with the workshop format, or longing to make the experience more productive for their students, this book is an excellent resource.

The authors have a dual purpose in writing this book: first to explain “thoughtful planning and explicit teaching and their effect on student learning” (p. 1); and secondly, to tell a “story that takes place in the classroom, bringing, through the voices of our second graders, this planning and explicit teaching to life” (p. 1). An unusual feature of this book is the inclusion of a new teacher’s perspective. At the conclusion of each unit of study, a second year teacher reflects on her time as a student teacher in Sacco’s class, noting what she learned from her observations and participation, and how she has adapted what she learned for her own classroom.

It would have been easy to enjoy this book primarily as a story – to delight in what these young students had to say about what they were learning about reading and writing, to admire their teachers’ careful attention to their student’s needs- and to loose track of the particulars of planning. Ruzzo and Sacco prevent this from happening by organizing the book on two levels. First, each chapter begins with an overview of the unit of study (each from between 5 and 7 weeks), as well as detailed day-to-day plans for each week of the study. The authors make frequent use of graphics and diagrams to record student responses, and to highlight components of workshop including daily goals/objectives, ideas for mini-lessons, student work assignments during workshop, and opportunities for whole-group and partner sharing. In addition, numerous photographs are included showing children at work, examples of student work, class charts, word walls, and bulletin boards. The authors include an extensive appendix of useful reproducible forms for student and teacher use.

As a story, this book is a rich account of planning, teaching, and learning in a second grade classroom. By chronicling their thought process as they plan, the authors introduce readers to their notion of “thoughtful planning and explicit teaching.” As an example, when planning a unit on dialogue, the authors realized that their young students were having difficulty identifying which characters were speaking, resulting in poor comprehension. They explain to us:
It was clear that if we wanted our children to read fluently and deepen their comprehension, we needed to design an investigative study to specifically address written conversation – dialogue. So we took it on, searching professional books for guidance…none gave us the road map we needed to launch an in-depth investigation. We knew this work had to come from our own experience as teachers, so we examined texts and thought long and hard about how writers write dialogue and how we would instruct children to read it with greater fluency. (p. 21)

This book has many strong points. First, the authors’ ability to reveal their thinking as they interact with their students and collaborate with each other to make instructional decisions – a process they call thoughtful planning and explicit teaching - is a powerful model for pre-service and in-service teachers alike. Secondly, the inclusion of student work samples and vignettes of student conversations allows readers the opportunity to observe student learning over the course of a year. Finally, Ruzzo and Sacco provide a structured model for reading and writing workshop that could be applied throughout the primary grades.

Pages: 248     Price: $25.00     ISBN: 0-325-00512-5

Reviewed by Whitney Donnelly, a PhD candidate at the University of California Davis. Her interests include the effects of testing and accountability policy on school organization; and the nature of collaborative work arrangements among adults in school settings.

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