Best Books For New Teachers

These are some books that are specifically for New or Student Teachers. Pick one that fits you and order it to read before your first year. I promise it will help lots! Click on the books to learn more about them.

The First Days of School : How to Be an Effective Teacher

This is one I highly recommend that you get. It is great. I refer to it every August!

A First-Year Teacher's Guidebook, 2nd Ed.

Learning to Teach...not just for beginners (Grades K-8) First-Class Teacher : Success Strategies for New Teachers
Your First Year of Teaching and Beyond Teaching With Love and Logic : Taking Control of the Classroom
Survival Kit for New Teachers 101 Ways to Put Pizazz into Your Teaching An unusual book of 26 chapters filled with novel ways to provide you with a break from textbook teaching and put smiles on your students' faces. Hundreds of ideas and illustration, 50 TIMELY TIPS and a Teacher's Resource section packed with charts, graphs, calendars and pages for photocopying for instant use. Helpful for ALL elementary teachers.
Teach to Reach: Over 300 Strategies, Tips, and Helpful Hints for Teachers of All Grades Teach to reach your students; teach them to reach for the knowledge and wisdom you have to offer. These practical, inventive "tricks of the trade" will sharpen your teaching skills, enhance the learning environment, and make school more meaningful and fun for everyone. A rich and lively resource for any teacher, offering hundreds of classroom-tested suggestions. Best of the Mailbox Primary - You need one of thes books to pull out when you want to do something different or to spice up a lesson.

Below is a list of books that I have found very, very helpful as a first year teacher. These are the kinds of books that I have counted on year after year. They are not the kind of books that stay on my shelf... Check them out!

 

Strategies That Work : Teaching Comprehension to Enhance Understanding

This book tells how to teach your students to think while reading (through think-alouds) and gives many minilessons for teaching comprehension. This book is divided into three parts: Part 1, THE FOUNDATIONS OF MEANING, explains how research based comprehension strategies support and enhance student learning; Part 2, STRATEGY LESSONS AND MORE, focuses on strategy lessons, response options, and assessment practices; Part 3, RESOURCES THAT SUPPORT STRATEGY INSTRUCTION, numerous resources listing picture books to use for teaching each of the seven comprehension strategies. Throughout the book, the author's talk about "anchor lessons" and the importance of using the first lessons as a way for students to remember a specific strategy and apply it. The idea of anchor lessons really assist the student in learning and applying the strategies taught! This book teaches us that we want our students to come to realize how important their thinking is when they read. A must have for reading teachers!

Mosaic of Thought : Teaching Comprehension in a Reader's Workshop

I first read, Mosaic of Thought in a Literature Circle and I was impressed with the book and began using the terms with my students. Mosaic stresses that we need to teach children what good readers do when they read. Good readers make connections with the text. They make text to text connections, text to self connections, and text to world connections. Teachers need to model the connections they make while they read and encourage their students to do the same. This book really made me think about how I read and what I DO while I read. After reading Mosaic, I suggest you read Strategies That Work.

Phonemic Awareness : Playing With Sounds to Strengthen Beginning Reading Skills

This is one of those books I use over and over again with my K-3 reading groups. The kids love the activities and I am happy with what they are learning. To be good readers, children need to be able to hear the sounds that make words, change sounds in words to make new words, and see the relationship between sounds. This book supplies you with over 60 exciting lessons for just that. The lessons are easy to do and many you can do without any materials. The book does supply you with the needed reproducible manipulatives, picture cards, and word lists

One of my favorite and easy activities in the book is called Rhyme Away. You draw the given picture on the board and erase parts of the picture as you read clues to the class. The students have to finish a rhyme phrase and then erase that picture on the board. That is a Level 1 activity in the book. The activities range in Levels from 1 to 5. There are activities for rhyming, blending, syllable counting, sound matching, phoneme isolation, phoneme counting, phoneme substitution, phoneme deletion, and more!

This book gets my full approval and I am so happy to have found it.

Making Words : Multilevel, Hands-On Developmentally Appropriate Spelling and Phonics Activities

Word Building was introduced to me about three years ago. I have been teaching for two years now and have used word building as a part of my reading program. I am pleased with the progress that my 2-3 graders make with this program. They understand how spelling and reading are related. Also it teaches them that two or three letters when put together make one sound. I purchased this book in September. I have been very happy with it. If you are unfamiliar with this method, this book is all you need. At the start of the book it shows you step by step how to set up word building in your classroom. Pictures are included. You will find over 150 word building lessons. Letter tiles for you to copy, cut, and laminate are included. I now feel that word building should be a part of every k-3 reading program.

Phonemic Awareness Activities for Early Reading Success (Grades K-2)
A wonderful book filled with fun activities for the K-2 student. Activities in the book include; phoneme discrimination, rhyme and alliteration, oddity task, oral blending, oral segmentation, phonemic manipulation, and linking sound to spelling. What I like best about the book is that each activity offers a suggestion box with ideas to help children who are having difficulty with the activity. Also, the activities are easy to do, do not take much time, and lots of preparation is not needed. I often hear my students say, can we play Higglety, Pigglety, Pop (a game from the book). This is a great book to use with any reading program.
Reading Reflex - Click to learn more

If you are teaching reading to K-1 readers, or if you teach struggling K-4 readers, you must have this book... I REPEAT - MUST!!!! I just started using this book this year as a component of my reading program. I am amazed at all my K-1 students are learning. They are students with learning disabilities and they are reading at an average or an above average reading level. Also, this has been very helpful to my 2-3 students who are struggling with reading. I highly recommend this book for you to read and suggest to your parents. I have been very pleased with the hands-on lessons contained in the book. You will be happy with the price too!

Super Graphs, Venns, & Glyphs : Hundreds of Great Data Collecting Activities to Build Real-Life Math Skills

Grades 1-4 -Make data collection fun for your students with clothespin and bottle graphs, child-size Venn diagrams, and umbrella and lunchbox glyphs! This book is jam-packed with practical tips for introducing and teaching concepts (including actual teacher-student exchanges) and hundreds of activity ideas that connect math to reading, social studies, science, and other subjects. - 120 pages

Find a large resource of books for teachers here. Organized by topic!
HOME