Strengthen student literacy achievement in middle and high schools! In response to the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), raising literacy levels in secondary schools has taken on a new urgency. Recognized literacy author, Elaine K. McEwan, focuses her revised second edition on enhancing the "five big ideas" for raising reading achievement with seven cognitive strategies of highly effective readers and more than twenty research-based "teaching for learning" tips to infuse into daily content instruction. Featuring reflection and discussion questions for reinforcement, this indispensable guide demonstrates how to improve students′ literacy with these five teacher-friendly strategies: Focus on changing what you can change Teach the students who can′t read how to read Teach every student how to read to learn Motivate all students to read more, to read increasingly more challenging books, and to be accountable for what they read Create a reading culture in your school With new programs designed for adolescent learners, this update provides suggestions and developmental tools to effectively strengthen reading curriculum and instruction. Reading specialists, special education teachers, literacy coaches, intervention specialists, and central office administrators can also use this essential tool for evaluating middle and high school reading programs and formulating school and district improvement goals.

All the latest research on fluency plus dozens of practical lessons and ready-to-use fluency-priming tools, including partner poems, word ladders, and more!

The redoubtable Grandma--this book is a sequel to Grandma Drove the Snowplow--is at it again. After all her hard work collecting the towns garbage and plowing the roads, Grandma deserves a day off--and what better day than Labor Day. All she has to do is sit back and enjoy a nice boat ride with her littlest grandson Billy while her sons catch the lobsters for the town Lobster Bake. But what happens when the waves get choppy, the fog rolls in, and all the boats are in difficulty? Can Grandma take the helm and get the lobsters back to shore in time? More great fun as our intrepid heroine is again placed at the center of small town life and in the middle of a local celebration.

This second edition enhances the "five big ideas" for raising reading achievement with seven cognitive strategies and more than twenty "teaching for learning" tips for daily instruction.

Reading fluency has been identified as a key component of proficient reading. Research has consistently demonstrated significant and substantial correlations between reading fluency and overall reading achievement. Despite the great potential for fluency to have a significant outcome on students’ reading achievement, it continues to be not well understood by teachers, school administrators and policy makers. The chapters in this volume examine reading fluency from a variety of perspectives. The initial chapter sketches the history of fluency as a literacy instruction component. Following chapters examine recent studies and approaches to reading fluency, followed by chapters that explore actual fluency instruction models and the impact of fluency instruction. Assessment of reading fluency is critical for monitoring progress and identifying students in need of intervention. Two articles on assessment, one focused on word recognition and the other on prosody, expand our understanding of fluency measurement. Finally, a study from Turkey explores the relationship of various reading competencies, including fluency, in an integrated model of reading. Our hope for this volume is that it may spark a renewed interest in research into reading fluency and fluency instruction and move toward making fluency instruction an even more integral part of all literacy instruction.

Describes factors that cause some students to have low reading achievement & others to have high reading achievement, and discusses what educators can do to increase reading achievement. For reading researchers & grad students in reading research.

This is the first book to examine in-depth the crucial role of the speed of information processing in the brain in determining reading fluency in both normal and dyslexic readers. Part I explains fluency in reading from both traditional and modern perspectives. Fluency has historically been viewed as the outcome of other reading-related factors and has often been seen as a convenient measure of reading skills. This book, however, argues that fluency has a strong impact on other aspects of reading and plays a central role in the entire reading process. Part II deals with the determinants of reading fluency. Chief among these is the speed of information processing in the brain. Using both behavioral and electrophysiological evidence, the book systematically examines the features of processing speed in the various brain systems involved in reading: visual-orthographic, auditory-phonological, and semantic and shows how speed of processing affects fluency in reading. Part III deals with the complex issues of cross-modal integration and specifically with the need for effective synchronization of the brain processes involved in reading. It puts forward the Synchronization Hypothesis and discusses the role of the Asynchrony Phenomenon as a major factor in dyslexia. Finally, it summarizes research on manipulating reading rate by means of the Acceleration method, providing evidence for a possible intervention aimed at reducing Asynchrony. Key features of this outstanding new book include: *Expanded View of Fluency. Reading fluency is seen as both a dependent and an independent Variable. Currently available books focus on reading rate solely as the outcome of other factors whereas this volume stresses that it is both an outcome and a cause. *Information Processing Focus. Fluency itself is determined to a large extent by a more general factor, namely, speed of processing in the brain. The book presents wide-ranging evidence for individual differences in speed of processing across many subpopulations. *Brain Synchronization Focus. The book posits a new theory arguing that effective reading requires synchronization of the different brain systems: visual orthographic, auditory-phonological, and semantic. *Research-Based Interventions. Interventions to enhance fluency and, thereby, reading skills in general are presented in detail. *Author Expertise. Zvia Breznitz is Head of the Department of Learning Disabilities and Director of the Laboratory for Neurocognitive Research at Haifa University in Israel, where she has been researching this topic for over a decade. This book is appropriate for researchers and advanced students in reading, dyslexia, learning disabilities, cognitive psychology, and neuropsychology.