Peter H. Johnston




Peter Johnston grew up and taught elementary school in New Zealand before coming to the United States to earn his Ph.D. at the Center for the Study of Reading at the University of Illinois. At the time his plans did not include staying in the United States let alone getting married and raising a family. Professor Emeritus at the University at Albany, he lives in Albany, New York, with his wife Tina. They have three children and two grandchildren on which to dote.

Peter's research and writing spring from his fascination with children's learning and, no less, teachers' teaching. His research explores the relationships among classroom talk, engagement, and children’s social, emotional and literate development. This focus is reflected in his books, Opening Minds: Using Language to Change Lives and Choice Words: How Our Language Affects Children's Learning. Perversely, he believes that education is not simply about delivering information to children. He thinks it is as much about building a just, caring society as growing intellectually, socially and emotionally healthy human beings and that attending to this larger goal will not detract from more pragmatic academic goals. Quite the reverse in fact, he believes that intellectually healthy classrooms cannot be achieved without there also being socially and emotionally healthy. His newest book, co-authored with six remarkable classroom teachers—Engaging Literate Minds, K-3: Literacy Teaching That Grows Children’s Social, Emotional, and Intellectual Lives—reflects this conviction. 

Asked to describe himself as a writer, Peter says that he "binges." While not recommended, this approach has resulted in a dozen books, some in multiple languages, and about eighty research articles. Recognition for his research includes the Albert J. Harris Award from the International Reading Association for his contribution to the understanding of reading disability and the State University of New York Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Research. Most recently, the Literacy Research Association honored him with the Oscar Causey Award for outstanding contributions to reading research and the P. David Pearson Scholarly Influence Award, citing his book Choice Words (now in four languages and over 250,000 copies in print) as having “demonstrably and positively influenced literacy teaching in classrooms and districts nationally.” Some of this, of course, along with grandchildren and his election to the Reading Hall of Fame merely reflect his antiquity and certify his "old fart" status beyond a reasonable doubt—a fact that is not lost on his children or his wonderful wife of 40 years, Tina.

Beyond his family and friends, research, reading, writing, singing, and humor sustain him. Failing that, a glass of New Zealand sauvignon blanc helps enormously.

Peter Johnston

 Twitter: @johnstonzpeter

Titles by Author (shown below):
3 products
Engaging Literate Minds
Engaging Literate Minds
Peter Johnston, Kathy Champeau, Andrea Hartwig, and Sarah Helmer
Paperback
$50.00 $37.50 Save $12.50
Choice Words
Choice Words
Peter Johnston
Paperback
$22.67 $17.00 Save $5.67
Opening Minds
Opening Minds
Peter Johnston
Paperback
$22.67 $17.00 Save $5.67
Peter Johnston, Kathy Champeau, Andrea Hartwig, and Sarah Helmer:::100050

Engaging Literate Minds

9781625311627

$50.00 $37.50 Save $12.50
Increasingly, educators are recognizing that for children to thrive intellectually they need socially and emotionally healthy classrooms. Conveniently, this is exactly what parents have always wanted for their children—classrooms that offer and grow positive relationships and behavior, emotional self-regulation, and a sense of well-being.

Using the guiding principles from Peter Johnston’s best-selling professional resources, Choice Words and Opening Minds, Peter and six colleagues began a journey to create just such classrooms—environments in which children meaningfully engage with each other through reading, writing, making, and discussing books.

Together, they bring you Engaging Literate Minds: Developing Children's Social, Emotional, and Intellectual Lives, K-3 where you’ll discover how these teachers struggled and succeeded in building such classrooms. Inside you’ll find the following:

  • Practical ways to develop a caring learning community and children's socio-emotional competence
  • Powerful teaching practices from real classrooms
  • Engaging ways to encourage inquiry and student agency
  • Suggestions on how to use formative assessment in everyday teaching practices
  • Helpful research behind the classroom practices and children’s development
  • Ways to help students inspire and support each other

Building a just, caring, literate society has never been more important than it is today. By embracing the ideas and teaching strategies in Engaging Literate Minds, you can help children to become socially, emotionally, and intellectually healthy. Not only do these classroom practices develop the skills to achieve district benchmarks and beyond, they help develop children’s humanity.

Engaging Literate Minds
Peter Johnston:::100050

Choice Words

9781571103895

$22.67 $17.00 Save $5.67

In productive classrooms, teachers don't just teach students math and reading skills; they build emotionally and relationally healthy learning communities. Teachers create intellectual environments that produce not only technically competent students, but also caring, secure, actively literate human beings. Choice Words: How Our Language Affects Children's Learning shows how teachers can accomplish this by using their most powerful teaching tool: language.

Throughout this book, author Peter Johnston provides examples of seemingly ordinary words, phrases, and uses of language that are pivotal in the orchestration of the classroom. Grounded in a study by accomplished literacy teachers, the book demonstrates how and what we say (and don't say) have surprising consequences for what children learn and for who they become as literate people. Students learn how to become strategic thinkers, not merely learning the literacy strategies, but adapting them to their lives outside of the classroom.

In addition, Johnston examines the complex learning that teachers produce in classrooms that is hard to name and thus is not recognized by tests, by policy-makers, by the general public, and often by teachers themselves, yet is vitally important. This book will be enlightening for any teacher who wishes to be more conscious of the many ways their language helps children acquire literacy skills and view the world, their peers, and themselves in new ways.

Choice Words
Peter Johnston:::100050

Opening Minds

9781571108166

$22.67 $17.00 Save $5.67

"Introducing a spelling test to a student by saying, 'Let's see how many words you know,' is different from saying, 'Let's see how many words you know already.' It is only one word, but the already suggests that any words the child knows are ahead of expectation and, most important, that there is nothing permanent about what is known and not known."
— Peter Johnston

Grounded in research, Opening Minds: Using Language to Change Livesshows how words can shape students' learning, their sense of self, and their social, emotional and moral development. Make no mistake: words have the power to open minds – or close them.

Following up his groundbreaking book, Choice Words, author Peter Johnston continues to demonstrate how the things teachers say (and don’t say) have surprising consequences for the literate lives of students. In this new book, Johnston shows how the words teachers choose can affect the worlds students inhabit in the classroom. He explains how to engage children with more productive talk and how to create classrooms that support students’ intellectual development, as well as their development as human beings.

Opening Minds