Amy Donnelly
Book Review
May 16, 2010

Summary
Collaboration for Diverse Learners: Viewpoints and Practices provides an overview of different techniques in collaborating with other teachers, with educational specialists, and with families and the community. Much of this book focuses on how to support literacy instruction for students with limited reading and writing skills, students with mild to moderate disabilities (such as learning disabilities in reading), and how to get parents involved in the process. This book also talks about models of co-teaching and effective ways to work on teams in schools. Many examples and anecdotes are used in the book from schools and teaching programs across the country. The book also includes strategies that could be implemented in the classroom or school community.
Evaluation
The International Reading Association is the publisher of Collaboration for Diverse Learners: Viewpoints and Practices, so much of this book talks about literacy, especially reading. The book is relatively current. It was published in 2000. The editors of the books are both professors of language and literacy, so they know the topic very well and are also very knowledgeable about different educational theories, which are sprinkled throughout the book. Strategies that are discussed in this book include doing jigsaw activities to support reading development, Readers’ Theater, Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR), having workshops to teach parents who are linguistically diverse how to read to their children, using peer tutoring in the classroom, and other such strategies. The strategies covered in this book and how these strategies were implemented in schools is definitely an area of strength of this book.
A lot of the information presented in this book has been presented in other sources, including during our class readings. Much of this book would not be new information, especially for teachers who have been teaching for multiple years. For teachers who have taught for a few years, new information might include the examples of how these strategies and theories have been applied in classroom, which could be useful.