The First-Year Teacher's Survival Guide: Ready-To-Use Strategies, Tools & Activities for Meeting the Challenges of Each School Day

by Julia G. Thompson

Book Overview

The best-selling First Year Teacher's Survival Kit gives new teachers a wide variety of tested strategies, activities, and tools for creating a positive and dynamic learning environment while meeting the challenges of each school day. Packed with valuable tips, the book helps new teachers with everything from becoming effective team players and connecting with students to handling behavior problems and working within diverse classrooms. The new edition...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0787994553
• ISBN13: 9780787994556
• Release Date: June 2007
• Publisher: Jossey-Bass
• Length: 433 Pages
• Weight: 2.92 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 8.5" x 10.9"

Customer Reviews

Great for pre-service teachers!

I purchased this book along with Wong's First Days of School, and I actually prefer this survival guide. I am a career-changer, currently enrolled in a Master's program, and I am going to be teaching my first class this fall. In grad school I've learned content, content, content and some pedagogy, but nothing about the day to day activities and challenges that I am going to face as a first year teacher! I felt completely clueless about what to expect and what I should be doing to prepare myself. (And I didn't want to wait until the first day of school to find out!) This book has provided invaluable guidance. It has worksheets, self-quizzes and a lot of suggestions that have helped me build confidence and gain a little better clue as to what I should be expecting. If you have been teaching for a while, a lot of it may appear to be common sense, but for those of us new to the profession, it has a lot of great tips and solid common sense suggestions that I have found extremely helpful.

Finally a truly comprehensive guide!

I gained an enormous amount of insight, strategies and techniques from this book. As a student who is about to start her teaching internship, I really liked this book. It involved classroom management, classroom planning, dealing with administration and parents as well as making time for your personal life. This is one of the most comprehensive resources I've seen so far. I highly recommend it.

One of My Favorites

I am a third year teacher. When I was a student teacher I found this book, and it helped me tremendously! When I was awarded my first teaching career I unfortunately lost the book in all the moving that I had to do so I bought it again and reviewed some things in the book. Then I moved back to my home city. Unfortunately, I lived in an area that was devasted by Hurricane Katrina, and I lost the book again so now I am buying it a third time. I love the book enough to buy it 3 times and I would buy it a fourth if I had to. I love the way the author explains things. When I first started teaching, I was horrible with organization, but the author has made me a pro at it. I think this should be a must have for any new teacher, and for a school district to buy for their first timers.

When you need help right NOW!

This book has been helpful for the new teachers I mentor, and for *me*. It's overflowing with practical and immediately useable ideas and activities. One of my mentees didn't want to give it back to me--I had to buy another for my own use. :) These are not necessarily novel ideas, but the sections are comprehensive. As an experienced and successful teacher, I found this book ideal for trying out some new strategies and especially for remembering others that I hadn't tried for a while. New teachers I worked with found strategies they were comfortable with--and the assurance that need to use different strategies with different students is normal for ALL teachers.

Great New Teacher Guide!

This is a great book for new teachers who want concreted examples and ways of doing things. There are reproducible pages in every chapter, and many of them are ideal for elementary and high school. This book is a definate must for teacher's who want a guide that really goes over everything and gives concrete pages to reproduce! This book takes you step by step including a checklist of important questions to have answered before you walk into the door. There are so many great ideas in here, you have to check it out for yourself!