Weaving together the latest knowledge and best practices for teaching children to read, this indispensable text and professional resource provides a complete guide to differentiated instruction for diverse learners. Uniquely integrative, the book places the needs of English language learners and students with disabilities front and center instead of treating them as special topics. Accessible chapters on each of the core components of literacy clearly demonstrate how to link formal and informal assessment to evidence-based instruction. Special features include Research Briefs, Tech Tips, Internet Resources, Reflection and Action Questions, and dozens of reproducible student activities and assessment tools.

This book shows that the sounds of the early modern stage do not only signify but are also significant. Sounds are weighted with meaning, offering a complex system of allusions. Playwrights such as Jonson and Shakespeare developed increasingly experimental soundscapes, from the storms of King Lear (1605) and Pericles (1607) to the explosive laboratory of The Alchemist (1610). Yet, sound is dependent on the subjectivity of listeners; this book is conscious of the complex relationship between sound as made and sound as heard. Sound effects should not resound from scene to scene without examination, any more than a pun can be reshaped in dialogue without acknowledgement of its shifting connotations. This book listens to sound as a rhetorical device, able to penetrate the ears and persuade the mind, to influence and to affect.

How sound leaves a fundamental imprint on who we are. Making sense of sound is one of the hardest jobs we ask our brains to do. In Of Sound Mind, Nina Kraus examines the partnership of sound and brain, showing for the first time that the processing of sound drives many of the brain's core functions. Our hearing is always on--we can't close our ears the way we close our eyes--and yet we can ignore sounds that are unimportant. We don't just hear; we engage with sounds. Kraus explores what goes on in our brains when we hear a word--or a chord, or a meow, or a screech. Our hearing brain, Kraus tells us, is vast. It interacts with what we know, with our emotions, with how we think, with our movements, and with our other senses. Auditory neurons make calculations at one-thousandth of a second; hearing is the speediest of our senses. Sound plays an unrecognized role in both healthy and hurting brains. Kraus explores the power of music for healing as well as the destructive power of noise on the nervous system. She traces what happens in the brain when we speak another language, have a language disorder, experience rhythm, listen to birdsong, or suffer a concussion. Kraus shows how our engagement with sound leaves a fundamental imprint on who we are. The sounds of our lives shape our brains, for better and for worse, and help us build the sonic world we live in.

Sounds-Write is a systematic synthetic phonics approach that has been successfully used to teach students to read and spell for the last two decades. This volume brings together twelve case studies – written by practitioners – of implementation of the Sounds-Write programme in different settings and geographical contexts (Europe, US, Australia). Through them, the authors share their experiences and evidence-based evaluations of the programme, as well as recommendations on how to make the most of what Sounds-Write has to offer.

Backed by 25 years of research into reading, this proven and practical method is prepared by two of the nation's foremost experts. Featuring fun, easy-to-understand lessons, diagnostic tests, instructional exercises, games, and step-by-step lesson plans for parents, "Reading Reflex" provides all the tools for teaching a child to be an excellent reader. Illustrations.