Time for Meaning: Crafting Literate Lives in Middle & High School

by Randy Bomer

Book Overview

Time for Meaning brings a bold curriculum to the writing workshop, a curriculum that honors literary thinking and the study of literature. Randy Bomer speaks eloquently and honestly about his own experiences in the classroom: his successive stages of revision, his growth from a good to a better teacher. He encourages inquiry into more reflective practice, inviting you to examine your ways of thinking, your relationship to the "subject of English,"...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0435088491
• ISBN13: 9780435088491
• Release Date: July 1995
• Publisher: Heinemann Educational Books
• Length: 234 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 7.4" x 9.5"
• Age Range: 12 to 17 years
• Grade Range: Grades 6 to 12

Customer Reviews

A meaningful read

Randy Bomer's book Time for Meaning explores strategies that will help middle and high school English teachers teach writing in a way that is effective and meaningful. It covers a variety of topics that will guide new teachers as well as provide new ideas for veteran teachers. Throughout the book, Bomer explains how to make time spent teaching writing in the classroom meaningful. He argues that often teachers feel constrained by the lack of time they are given to address all aspects of the English curriculum, and this leads to feelings of frustration and guilt. The solution is simple; Bomer states, "this book is about doing with our time what is essential" (2). By framing his book in this way, Bomer is able to provide strategies and theory that will help teachers make the most of their time in the classroom. Bomer uses the theme of time to explore strategies as well as teaching theory. He covers a variety of topics including writer's notebooks, genre studies, nonfiction, and memoir. He analyzes problems students have, such as writing good fiction, and responds with tactics and solutions for addressing these problems. Following each topic chapter is a short essay that asks questions and poses problems that encourage teachers to analyze their theory of teaching. These essays present abstract ideas about teaching and give anecdotes about the author's experiences. These interludes provide a way for teachers to constantly keep their teaching theory in mind as they read the topic chapters and learn new strategies. In this way, Bomer effectively combines method with theory and creates a powerful experience for his readers. I read this book for a writing instruction course and found that many of Bomer's ideas have worked their way into my teaching philosophy. Time for Meaning is a valuable resource for English teachers and I recommend adding this book to your library.

An enjoyable, educational, and easy read.

"Crafting literate lives..." is part of the subtitle to Randy Bomer's "Time for Meaning"; by the end of the book the reader knows exactly what is meant by this. Through twelve delightfully narrated and easily navigatable chapters, Bomer shares with the reader some of the strategies he's developed over his expansive teaching career. Among the many topics discussed in the book are ideas on how to: engage students - both in and out of class through the use of writers' notebooks and how to make literature appealing to students. One of the subjects stressed and referred back to, various times, is the idea of the writers' notebook. The entire third chapter is dedicated to the idea. Bomer explains that though his initial expectations were a little unrealistic for the students, the notebooks "gave them a way to bring the writing to the site of their thinking, rather than forcing them to summon up their thoughtfulness in the service of a written performance in school" (63). Additionally, on page 52, he gives a list of possible topics for types of notebook entries and uses examples of his own students work scattered throughout the chapter to emphasize the point that writing assignments can stem from entries in the writers' notebook. Bomer also addresses a common problem in many classrooms in the chapter, " A Place in the Conversation" he hits the nail on the head, explaining that a great number of students are uninterested in literature--they view it as old and boring. He says, "What we as teachers value about reading creates the nature of reading in our classroom," going on he says, "If we want our students to take literature personally, we have to talk up that value and then put our time and practice where our mouth is." (107-108). He uses this as an example to explain that if students are feeling passionate about what they're reading, then they'll be more passionate about what they're writing and thus more apt to produce higher quality work. Overall, as a student and someday teacher, I found the insights and illustrations (charts, excerpts, etc) to be very helpful. Randy Bomer's experience as a teacher and now teacher of teachers has paid off. The only thing more beneficial than reading this book, I can imagine, would be instruction from Bomer himself.

An Amazing Guide to Teaching Writing

This book's subtitle is "Crafting Literate Lives in Middle & High School" and the book is the perfect guide for precisely that. Randy Bomer's years of teaching writing shine through, yet he makes it clear that through following his advice, it is possible for any of us, whether a new teacher or old, to be a successful writing teacher. The book thoroughly covers the experience of teaching writing and creating a writing workshop; it covers building a successful writing environment, using writers' notebooks as a key tool in the classroom, working with different genres, learning to be a skilled teacher, and managing your interactions with people other than students. There is a chapter for almost every concern a teacher might have about their students. However, the book does not overwhelm the reader: each chapter is concise and plainly written, and there is a helpful and informative table of contents that even has chapter summaries to help out readers looking for specific subjects. Someone hoping to learn to be a better writing teacher needs to look no farther than Randy Bomer. There is no doubt that Bomer has several years of experience teaching writing, considering the examples he uses, and no doubt that he is a great teacher. On every page, there are examples from his teaching career that illustrate his points. He states on page 164, "When students are looking for notebook entries that might be important in a memoir, I frequently ask them, 'If you were to pick just one entry that really showed who you were, showed what your life is like, which one would it be?'" Then he goes into detail about a conversation he had with a student, Ellie, whom he asked that exact question. The conversation leads Ellie to figure out exactly what she wants to write for her memoir. Examples like this show his talent for teaching, while they also do a great job in teaching us, his reader. His example in his chapter "Fiction," where he shares a conversation he had with his students as they collaborated to create a character in an exercise, was especially brilliant. He asked questions of his students such as, "So what? What's important about that?" and "What is he [the character] afraid of?" It showed me exactly how to encourage students to look beyond a character's physical attributes and plot situation to really create a well-rounded, full character. I could see myself, in the classroom, having a similar conversation with my students. Bomer makes it seem easy, but more than that, he makes it seem possible for anyone who has learned his concepts to follow his lead. I even truly believe I too learned about writing, just from reading his book. Another great aspect of the book is the many ideas for teaching process. My favorite ideas came from the chart on page 73 titled, "Some questions to ask in writing conferences during the move from notebooks to projects." The chart has a column with possible situations teachers might encounter when conferencing

A Warm, Personal, and Innovative Teaching Manual

Randy Bomer's Time for Meaning is an important resource for all middle and high school teachers, new teachers as well as experienced teachers, and English teachers as well as teachers of all other subjects. New teachers will find Bomer's book at once comforting and informative. He not only gives teaching strategies, but he also understands, and writes eloquently, about how new teachers will feel, including a chapter called, "the extracurricular life of an English teacher," in which he focuses on teacher's fears and the need to balance a personal life with your teaching career. Bomer dedicates pages to explaining the nerves he felt on his first days of teaching, in such a way that it will not only comfort future teachers, but also help them to avoid making the same mistakes. In the very first line Bomer writes, "I lean against the chalk rail and watch [the students] come in. I know it's a mistake to lean this way" (3), it is a mistake, of course, because he will be covered with chalk; being covered with chalk is a small problem, but this opening line is representative of how Bomer addresses all the problems in the classroom in a warm and personal way. For new teachers and experienced teachers alike Bomer offers interesting strategies to teach writing, including exercises to bend genre, and semester long projects, like a writer's notebook. He also includes strategies to help students write stories and their own memoirs. Most importantly, as the title suggests, Bomer offers ways to give student writing meaning, through sharing and classroom publication, which is perhaps the most important way to help students make quality work. Although English teachers will find much to work with, this book is not only for English teachers. Time for Meaning works as a manual for new teachers of writing, and there is information here that can be useful to teachers of every subject. Teachers of all subjects are finding that they must help students write better in their field, and many of these teachers have never been asked to teach writing. The chapter on more formal writing, "A Place in the Conversation," can be useful for history teachers, or the chapter titled, "Making Sense of Non-Fiction" can be useful for science or math teachers. Time for Meaning can help the teacher who has had no experience teaching writing. As a future teacher I found this book to be informative, clear, comforting, and rich with innovative ideas. This is one book I will not be selling back to the bookstore come summer.

A good next step

Time for Meaning is a good book to read once you are familiar with the writing and reading workshop techniques of Linda Rief, Nancy Atwell, and Lucy Calkins, for Bomer pitches much of his book as a variation on their techniques and refers back to their work throughout. His book is a thoughtful supplement to and expansion of the standard texts on workshops and portfolio-based teaching.Bomer's honesty is refreshing -- he admits that many of the standard techniques he tried to put to use in his classroom didn't work well, and he tells us how he came to adapt and revise other teachers' tools to fit the needs of his students. Especially helpful is his understanding of older adolescents, a group which is frequently not addressed by writers such as Rief and Atwell, who are middle school teachers.Bomer's chapter on writers' notebooks, and how to get students to use them productively, is worth the price of the book alone. How many teachers have tried to implement journals and notebooks, only to find them awkward and frustrating for the students? Bomer has a number of useful ideas on how to integrate them into a full curriculum, how to motivate students to use them as valuable tools, and how to encourage students to write in a variety of styles.Also helpful are the chapters at the end which discuss the teaching of genres, both for reading and writing. Bomer covers the major genres in depth, offering a number of helpful ideas and practices.The biggest weakness of the book is that it doesn't offer enough discussion of assessment. So many authors of books about teaching writing forget that one of the greatest hurdles any teacher faces is how to turn all the fascinating projects you do in a term into letter and number grades to please the administration and parents. Bomer discusses assessment briefly, but a more in-depth and practical discussion would have made his book not merely valuable, but indispensible.