Less Is More

Less Is More is full of powerful ideas for teaching with short, provocative text. This book broadens and extends our available teaching tools and materials, and can help engage all students. It is a valuable resource for language arts teachers.
—Cris Tovani

Language arts teachers want all of their students to love literature and embrace the novels they assign. The classroom reality is that many students are not ready or motivated to immerse themselves in an entire novel. In order to reach and engage all students, teachers need to look beyond novels alone and embrace a richer variety of literature.

In Less Is More Kimberly Hill Campbell draws on research as well as her own classroom experiences to show how short texts engage a wide range of middle and high school students. She shares her discovery of the power of short texts to support her students' skills as readers, writers, and students of literature.

Kimberly shows how short texts can be integrated into the curriculum, without sacrificing required novels. Chapters examine different genres of short text, such as short stories, essays, memoir, and graphic novels. Each chapter provides reading, writing, and response strategies as well as a broad selection of short text resources that have proven effective with a wide range of students.

Customer Reviews:

A Must for Junior High-High School English Teachers!

By Tonja L. Ripple - March 5, 2008

I was a little skeptical about getting this book because I do not like to read this type of text. There are so many books like this out, and they all just seem to involve the latest "fad" of teaching. "Less is More" is not like that at all. This book is the one resource that will forever change my teaching style and my classroom. As a Middle School Teacher, I had been frustrated with being forced to teach short texts, partly because I felt like I didn't know "how" to incorporate standards in such short lesson plans. This book has so many good ideas and teaching methods to incorporate short texts into the classroom. If your curriculum insist you teach novels, or certain authors, Campbell has lists in the book of alternative shorter texts by the same authors as some of the great novelists. This book is amazing and I think every middle school or high school english teacher needs it for their classroom!

Less is More

By Christine B. Kingsbery - January 12, 2008

I wanted to be in this author's classroom. She gave practical and eloquent reasons for using short texts to access rigorous concepts and higher order skills. Using these texts gives teachers the opportunity to go deeper with student learning and the students with more frequent practice.

Less is More

By J. Arthur Mozley, Jr. - March 11, 2008

I am a student teacher and have found this book to be an invaluable resource in my classroom. This is such a refreshing alternative to the numbing onslaught of longer texts (novels) currently at the forefront of language arts curriculum. Why aren't we using shorter texts (short stories, essays, memoirs, poetry) more often? It is important for me, as a language arts teacher, to inspire in my students a love and appreciation of literature. I have recognized and acknowledged that an over-emphasis of longer texts has the tendency to do just the opposite. Less is More provides clear, intuitive ways to incorporate shorter texts into the curriculum with as much success as novels.
The book is a joy to read and is worth its price for the resources alone. As a student teacher in a teacher education program, I have waded through numerous "teacher resource" books. I have found none of them to be as applicable than Less is More. I would urge anyone reading this to have a "look inside".

AVAILABILITY
Merchant	Format	Price
Amazon US	Paperback	$4.87 - $20.00
eBooks.com	Digital (PDF)	$18.00
BookByte	Paperback	$18.50
eCampus	Paperback	~~$19.50~~ discount!