Books by James T. Charnock
Mt. Horeb: The Little White Schoolhouse on Little Deer Creek, is a brief history of James Charnock's schooling in Street, Maryland, where he walked the dirt road to the little one-room schoolhouse called Mt. Horeb from 1946 to 1948, when the school closed. Mr. Charnock never forgot his first-, second-, and fourth-grade teacher, Miss Constance Smith, with whom he had kept in contact. He has always been interested in history and was delighted with Miss Smith's suggestion that Mt. Horeb's past be looked into and shared. This volume has three focuses: 1) The nostalgic remembrances of an early Maryland one-room school by those who attended and taught there (with interesting data and old-timey pictures), 2) a brief, succinct, and eye-opening history of small schools in America, and 3) easy-to-read research briefs that support returning to smaller, local-community schools today.
The Creative Teacher, a teachers' guide filled with student activities in writing, public speaking, researching, dramatizing, and more. This is the second edition of the 2005 publication, A Non-Workbook, Non-Textbook Approach to Teaching Language Arts. The numerous practical approaches make this book a worthy addition to your teaching library. You will be impressed with how simple and fun teaching language arts can be!
Book Reviews
"At your fingertips you'll find a wealth of sample lessons giving you explicit ideas for the teaching of writing interviews, letters, narratives, book reports and several other mandatory writing styles, including how to research just like the professionals. Non-traditional assessment rubrics for both the teacher and student are included. As part of his innovative approach to teaching language arts, the author includes lessons on storytaking: An approach that couples upper and lower grade students for a mutually fulfilling writing experience. (Yes, you may have heard of this, but you have to read of his unique approach.)
For those middle school students still struggling with decoding skills, Charnock's fun and practical list of phonics rules will certainly be helpful. Beyond that, all students (and adults) who enjoy vocabulary building--even if they once thought they didn't enjoy it--will certainly be "flabbergasted" by his collection of interesting words to play with.
We know from research and our gut that learning is always more interesting when you're enjoying a game. The Non-Textbook approach gives directions for constructing and playing several exciting games to enhance your students' language arts knowledge and experience.
Student opinions about various activities, along with samples of their writing, help make the success of this approach believable. Pupils are quite frank about what they liked and didn't. And the exceptional writing samples speak for themselves.
As a language arts teacher of various elementary grades, I find James Charnock's book packed with motivating ideas that will inspire students to enjoy the beauty of the English language. I can't recommend this guide highly enough for teachers. This is sure to be (to use another of his fun vocabulary words) a real "humdinger" for both you and your students!"
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-Patricia Finch, Amazon User Review