Literacy Moments to Report Cards

David Greig is the author of Sequential Core Basics: A Checklist of
English Literacy Skills with Corresponding Worksheets.

This book is the result of ethnographic research in which the author
“immersed [herself] in the world of children” to discover how they
actually come to read and write. The author has used stories gathered
directly from the classroom to develop a method for assessing and
evaluating reading and writing. From these stories, which she calls
“literacy moments,” a series of checklists emerged that can be used
by teachers (or others) to conduct ongoing evaluation of children’s
learning.

The author provides a detailed description of the child-centred,
whole-language paradigm that informs her approach, then develops the
checklists for evaluating language learning within the context of a
child-centred paradigm. Report cards for reading and for writing are
also included. The checklists covering 10 areas of reading and writing,
however, are the greatest strength of this book—invaluable concrete
tools that can be utilized by teachers working within a number of
pedagogical paradigms.

The debates surrounding education today so often merely pit one
theoretical school against another. It is always refreshing and
ultimately beneficial to students when teachers can get their hands on
books that rise above the debates and provide real tools that help them
really teach. The checklists in this book do just that.