home :: about the guides This section explains the ways in which the fieldguides that correspond to the books in your classroom library can be used to guide and enrich your reading instruction. From Lucy Calkins and the Authors of the Field Guides: First, we carefully selected books and honed their arrangements to create the classroom libraries of our dreams. Then, we began writing teaching advice to go with the chosen books. We told the authors of these bits of advice, "Write a letter from you to others who'll use this book with children. Tell folks what you notice in the book, and advise them on teaching opportunities you see. Think about advice you would give a teacher just coming to know the book." The insights, experience and folk wisdom poured in and onto the pages of the guides. A written guide accompanies many of the books in the libraries. These guides are not meant to be prescriptions for how a teacher or child should use a book. Instead they are intended as resources, and we hope thoughtful teachers will tap into particular sections of a guide when it seems fit to do so. For example, a teaching guide might suggest six possible minilessons a teacher could do with a book. Of course, a teacher would never try to do all six of these! Instead we expect one of these minilessons will seem helpful to the teacher, and another minilesson to another teacher. The teaching guides illustrate a few principles that are important to us... a. Teaching One Text Intensely in Order To Learn About Many Texts b. Suggesting Classroom Library Arrangements c. Aiding in Conferring d. Providing a Resource for Curriculum Planning e. Reminding Us, or Teaching Us, About Particular Book Basics f. Showcasing Literary Intricacies in Order to Suggest a Reader's Thinking g. Providing a Community of Readers and Teachers Bibliography Web site and technical design: Jun Group, Inc.
	A Field Guide to Your Classroom Library, Lucy Calkins and the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project, Heinemann © 2002, Teachers College, Columbia University; http://www.heinemann.com/fieldguides