A handbook for teachers for helping children learn to read and write with the phonics approach.

This volume is designed to prevent and correct most word-level reading difficulties. It trains phonemic awareness and promotes sight vocabulary acquisition, and therefore reading fluency.

A supplemental text for the Reading Methods course. What classroom activities really help children in kindergarten through fifth grade become fluent readers? Developed with experienced classroom teachers, Fox provides numerous hands-on teaching activities that have been tested, over and over, in real classrooms with real children. They're solidly based in research; presented in the order in which children achieve fluency; and, tailored to the literacy abilities of the children at whom they are targeted. Fox's developmental view of fluency combines theory, research, and practice; and her thoughtful teaching guides pull it all together.

Experts are raving about this "must-have" resource for primary teachers that includes dozens of fun activities to help children listen to language and play with sounds. Activity cards can be cut out and laminated to create a handy reference file of fun ideas. A wide selection of reproducibles (picture cards, word cards, and manipulatives) is included.

Practical, effective, evidence-based reading interventions that change students' lives Essentials of Understanding and Assessing Reading Difficulties is a practical, accessible, in-depth guide to reading assessment and intervention. It provides a detailed discussion of the nature and causes of reading difficulties, which will help develop the knowledge and confidence needed to accurately assess why a student is struggling. Readers will learn a framework for organizing testing results from current assessment batteries such as the WJ-IV, KTEA-3, and CTOPP-2. Case studies illustrate each of the concepts covered. A thorough discussion is provided on the assessment of phonics skills, phonological awareness, word recognition, reading fluency, and reading comprehension. Formatted for easy reading as well as quick reference, the text includes bullet points, icons, callout boxes, and other design elements to call attention to important information. Although a substantial amount of research has shown that most reading difficulties can be prevented or corrected, standard reading remediation efforts have proven largely ineffective. School psychologists are routinely called upon to evaluate students with reading difficulties and to make recommendations to address such difficulties. This book provides an overview of the best assessment and intervention techniques, backed by the most current research findings. Bridge the gap between research and practice Accurately assess the reason(s) why a student struggles in reading Improve reading skills using the most highly effective evidence-based techniques Reading may well be the most important thing students are taught during their school careers. It is a skill they will use every day of their lives; one that will dictate, in part, later life success. Struggling students need help now, and Essentials of Understanding and Assessing Reading Difficulties shows how to get these students on track.

This highly regarded teacher resource synthesizes the research base on word recognition and translates it into step-by-step instructional strategies, with special attention to students who are struggling. Chapters follow the stages through which students progress as they work toward skilled reading of words. Presented are practical, evidence-based techniques and activities that target letter- sound pairings, decoding and blending, sight words, multisyllabic words, and fluency. Ideal for use in primary-grade classrooms, the book also offers specific guidance for working with older children who are having difficulties. Reproducible assessment tools and word lists can be downloaded and printed in a convenient 8 1/2" x 11" size. New to This Edition *Incorporates the latest research on word recognition and its connections to vocabulary, reading fluency, and comprehension. *Chapter on morphological (meaning-based) instruction. *Chapter on English language learners. *Instructive "Try This" activities at the end of each chapter for teacher study groups and professional development.

Early Reading Instruction is a comprehensive analysis of the research evidence from early writing systems to computer models of reading. In this book, Diane McGuinness provides an innovative solution to the "reading war"—the century-old debate over the efficacy of phonics (sound-based) versus whole-word (meaning- based) methods. She has developed a prototype—a set of elements that are critical to the success of a reading method. McGuinness shows that all writing systems, without exception, are based on a sound unit in the language. This fact, and other findings by paleographers, provides a platform for the prototype. Other elements of the prototype are based on modern research. For example, observational studies in the classroom show that time spent on three activities strongly predicts reading success: learning phoneme/symbol correspondences, practice at blending and segmenting phonemes in words, and copying/writing words, phrases, and sentences. Most so-called literacy activities have no effect, and some, like sight word memorization, have a strongly negative effect. The National Reading Panel (2000) summarized the research on reading methods after screening out thousands of studies that failed to meet minimum scientific standards. In an in-depth analysis of this evidence, McGuinness shows that the most successful methods (children reading a year or more above age norms) include all the elements in the prototype. Finally, she argues, because phonics-type methods are consistently shown to be superior to whole-word methods in studies dating back to the 1960s, it makes no sense to continue this line of research. The most urgent question for future research is how to get the most effective phonics programs into the classroom.