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Wally's Stories

**** By Vivian Gussin Paley. What a great book this is. Paley is a teacher of kindergarten at the University of Chicago lab schools, and this book chronicles some of her observations of five year olds in her classroom. It's funny, informative, insightful, and a quick read. Her method in the classroom centers on storytelling. Some stories are from books, some are written by the kids; all are acted out by the kids. By telling stories, the children learn way more about language and life than through something more traditional (i.e. boring). Paley recorded the whole day, every day, transcribing the tape that night. She uses may transcriptions in the book, and they're all interesting. If you're interested in education, especially the education of young children, this is an absolute must-read. For everyone else, it's interesting and fun. We gave this book to my mom for Christmas this year, and I'm so glad we did. Reading it aloud is great, too.

Posted by Joe on January 10, 2002 07:55 PM