PRFFACV，<br >Much has changed in the four years since this book was first published. The<br >pendulum that was still over on the "literature-based， process writing" side has<br >swung all the way over to the "phonics" side without even a pause in the mid-<br >dle. Legislatures and school boards all over the nation are mandating the type<br >and amount of phonics that must be taught--to children they have never seen<br >in classrooms they have never entered. It is frightening (and disheartening) to<br >those of us who lived through the last pendulum swing to see it happen yet<br >again--and even more violently. We want to---and indeed do sometimes--<br >stand up and say， "We have done this before!"<br > We have watched whole schools teach phonics as the first and only<br >approach allowed and seen some children become very good readers and other<br >children not learn to read at all. We have used materials in which almost all the<br >words were decodable and watched some children turn into "word callers"--<br >wonderful oral readers with little or no comprehension. We have watched chil-<br >dren spend their reading time doing phonics worksheets and not ever realizing<br >that reading is about books.<br > In the late sixties， the Beatles sang， "All you need is love." Today we are<br >bombarded with an "All you need is phonics" message. You do need love---but<br >love is not all you need. Life is just not that simple. Children do need phonics， but<br >phonics is not all they need. Teaching children to read is just not all that simple.<br > If there is one thing we are sure of it is that there is no simple solution--<br >no quick fix. Children come with their own personalities. Children do not all<br >learn in the same way. Until they start cloning children as they have recently<br >cloned Dolly the sheep， successful teachers of reading will have to provide<br >children with a variety of literacy experiences. The pendulum swings because<br >people keep looking for the one best way to teach children to read and refuse<br >to accept the fact that any parent of two children knows， "You can t do things<br >exactly the same way and get the same results when the two children have very<br >different personalities." The question of the best way to teach reading is the<br >wrong question and you can t ever arrive at the right answer when you keep<br >asking the wrong question!<br > In this second edition of Classrooms That Work， we have tried again to pull<br >together the best of what we currently know works for classroom teachers. We<br >directed the book to classroom teachers because， while we believe special<br >teachers play a role in the literacy development of the children that they teach，<br >classroom teachers have the most number of hours with and the greatest<br >responsibility for all their children. We wanted this book to be a positive<br >