Resource Book Review: Inside Out

Inside Out: Strategies for Teaching Writing, 3/e by Tom Liner

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


The first two words which comes to mind are "comprehensive" and "practical."

I wasn't wowed so I gave it 3 stars, but it doesn't exclude it from being a pretty darn smart buy if you don't have a lot of money to buy writing texts or or time to read too many of them, Dan and Dawn Kirby's "Inside Out" is probably a good place to start. 

It offers summaries of all of the good stuff presented by Attwell, Murray, Graves, Elbow, and Ray (among others) and presents these well-supported ideas buttressed by several exercises or lessons for your classes.

I like that there are several alternatives for using a journal, assessing student writing, writing about literature, and so on. Any teacher should feel as though they can find some useful and easily adaptable ideas in this text.

The most useful chapters for me may not be for someone else--which is what makes this book a strong consideration for your resource shelf. From theory to practice, you get a little bit of everything.

If you are the type (like me) who prefers to go deeper into any one area then you should look elsewhere. This is a well-crafted catch-all idea book which will certainly get some wear and tear over the years because you will access it for ideas.  That alone makes it worth the thirty dollars it lists for currently on Amazon.com.

If you have a limited out-of-pocket budget for books or resources for your classroom this may be the best place to start.

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