Choice Words

How Our Language Affects Children's Learning

By: Peter H. Johnston

Narrated by: Peter H. Johnston

Length: 3 hrs and 1 min

Publisher's summary

In productive classrooms, teachers don't just teach children skills, they build emotionally and relationally healthy learning communities. Teachers create intellectual environments that produce not only technically competent students, but also caring, secure, actively literate human beings.

Choice Words shows how teachers accomplish this using their most powerful teaching tool: language. Throughout, Peter Johnston provides examples of apparently ordinary words, phrases, and uses of language that are pivotal in the orchestration of the classroom. Grounded in a study by accomplished literacy teachers, the book demonstrates how the things we say (and don't say) have surprising consequences for what children learn and for who they become as literate people. Through language, children learn how to become strategic thinkers.

In addition, Johnston examines the complex learning that teachers produce in classrooms - which is hard to name and thus is not recognized by tests, by policy-makers, by the general public, and often by teachers themselves, yet is vitally important.

This audiobook will be enlightening for any teacher who wishes to be more conscious of the many ways their language helps children acquire literacy skills and view the world, their peers, and themselves in new ways.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2004 Peter H. Johnston (P)2007 Stenhouse Publishers

Critic reviews

"Choice Words is perhaps the most powerful and teacher-friendly book ever published." (Instructor Magazine)

Good Basic Language to Consider

Lots of good ideas for important ways to talk to kids. Ideas include using choice words to develop positive identify, curiosity, collaboration, and confidence. Enjoyed stories to help explain use of choice words, but would have liked more. Some parts more wordy and hard to process concepts.

Great Insights

This book offers excellent insights for creating a classroom of genuine learners. I especially liked the chapter on developing agency in our students.

Quick listen, valuable information

Purposeful, precise, and insightful. Choice words offers a closer look at how language can allow students to deepen their learning and offer a model for their own language development. Pairs greatly with other educational reading.

where is the reference guide?

Lots of good stuff to think about but was unable to find the reference guide the description says to download. The author also refers to it frequently. It would have helped me digest and retain the information.

I wanted to like this.

Very theoretical. Not so practical. I love every idea in theory but it helped 1% in my daily interactions. Emotion Coaching is much more user friendly.

Must Read for Every Education Professional

Although his references are primarily geared toward Elementary classrooms, I found that for the upper grades, the information is extremely pertinent. The author zones in on those crucial 21st century skills that we as Educators need to be able to impart to our students. In order to create true literate and critical thinking individuals , we need to not only teach them how to read write and do the math, but to navigate critical thinking and integration of knowledge. The choices of the words that we use and the way that we deliver make that difference. This is my second reading. I intend to make this my reference before the beginning of every school year.

Interesting and Helpful

Particularly in our society today, this is a necessary read for ALL teachers at ALL LEVELS.
Teaching kids to think for themselves, feel comfortable with their thinking, AND be able to not only listen, but truly hear and value what their classmates are saying.

If education as a whole could move in this direction, I believe we would have far less divisiveness in societies all around the world.

Check it out at the library or don't

This book wasn’t for you, but who do you think might enjoy it more?

I can't think of one person, maybe someone from Australia. It was written by someone from there and it has that tone to it. It uses too many words to say something so simple.

What could Peter H. Johnston have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

Used less words and written a version for America.

How could the performance have been better?

The audio performance was fine