Voices and Values
Key Features
1. Readings that celebrate human values.
The book contains forty essays chosen for their celebration of significant human values. For example, in the first selection, "Bird Girl," an author describes the guilt he feels for doing nothing when his high school classmates behaved cruelly toward a student who was different. The story becomes a plea for the importance of courage-speaking up in defense of another-and the need for kindness. Other essays-in a style that never preaches-cover such values as gratitude, personal growth, fairness, responsibility, love and compassion, common sense, and moderation.
2. High-quality activities.
Accompanying each essay is a series of activities - prepared by two authors who have themselves been teachers - that will help students improve their reading, thinking, and writing skills. Following is the sequence of activities that follows each selection:
- First Impressions:
Three freewriting topics encourage students to come to terms with what they have read. - Words to Watch and Vocabulary Check:
To build students' vocabularies, challenging words from the selection are defined in a "Words to Watch" section that precedes the reading selection; following the selection, other words that may be unfamiliar to students appear in a vocabulary-in-context activity. - Reading Check:
Ten comprehension questions involve four key skills: finding the central point and main ideas, recognizing key supporting details, drawing inferences, and understanding the writer's craft. - Discussion Questions:
Four provocative questions stimulate further thought about the selection and its topic. These can also be used as alternative writing assignments. - Paragraph Assignments and Essay Assignments:
Two paragraph assignments and two essay assignments conclude the activities for each selection. Sample topic sentences and thesis statements, along with specific suggestions for providing support, help students succeed on the writing assignments. (Including the three "First Impressions" topics and the four discussion questions, there are eleven possible writing topics for each of the forty readings!)
3. Versatility.
The book can be used as a core text in a reading course; as a reader in a writing course covering paragraphs, essays, or both; or as an anthology in an English course studying the essay as a genre.
4. Handy supplements.
An annotated Instructor's Edition of the book includes answers, making the book very easy for teachers to use. An Instructor's Manual contains a full answer key, teaching suggestions, suggested answers to the discussion questions that follow each reading, and ten guided writing assignments.
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