Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) is wildly popular
up and down the local and state education hierarchies. It’s easy, quick, and an
approved Reading First assessment tool. So what’s not to like? Everything. In The Truth About DIBELS you’ll find out why teachers,
administrators, and reading researchers nationwide are emphatically resisting
the insidious influence of DIBELS. Well-known education writers—including
P. David Pearson, Robert Tierney, Sandra Wilde, and Maryann Manning—tell you how
DIBELS hurts students and teachers and why impairs learning and teaching. They
present chapters that: If DIBELS is creeping into your classroom, school, district, or state—or if
it’s already taken over—read The Truth About DIBELS. Then use its
accompanying CD, loaded with a complete anti-DIBELS PowerPoint presentation, to
show colleagues, policy makers, or parents that when it comes to reading
assessment, DIBELS just doesn’t work. For Kylene Beers, the question of what to do when kids can't read surfaced
abruptly in 1979 when she began teaching. That year, she discovered that some of
the students in her seventh-grade language arts classes could pronounce all the
words, but couldn't make any sense of the text. Others couldn't even pronounce
the words. And that was the year she met a boy named George. George couldn't read. When George's parents asked her to explain what their
son's reading difficulties were and what she was going to do to help, Kylene, a
secondary certified English teacher with no background in reading, realized she
had little to offer the parents, even less to offer their son. That defining
moment sent her on a twenty-three-year search for answers to that original
question: how do we help middle and high schoolers who can't read?
The purpose of this web page is to improve the quality of reading instruction
through the study of the reading process and teaching techniques. It will
serve as a clearinghouse for the dissemination of reading research through
conferences, journals and other publications. Click on the following links
to search for developments in literacy, professional materials, research
and critical issues.
Balanced Literacy
Interesting Research
Interactive Lessons
VirtuaLiterature
Professional Organizations and Publications
Book Publishers and Authors
Keep Informed
Recommended Books......
DIBELS is the worst thing to happen to the teaching of reading since the
development of flash cards.
—P. David Pearson
Methods
that Matter by Harvey Daniels and Marilyn Bizar
Here are practical and proven ways of organizing time, space, materials,
students, and activities that embody new standards while creating genuinely
student-centered classrooms. Illustrated by stories from two dozen teachers
at a wide variety of grade levels, the book clearly describes six fundamental,
recurrent activities:integrative units, small group activities, representing-to
learn, classroom workshop, authentic experiences, and reflective assessment.
Is whole language the cause of the problems that beset our schools?
Is the debate between whole language and phonics a cover-up fro control
of what and how students learn? Is it appropriate that legislators, lobbyists,
textbook publishers, and private interest groups evaluate and promote research
on teaching and learning? Is the attack on whole language supported by
research that is valid? These questions have come out of the reading wars.
And teachers must be articulate and knowledgeable defendants in the debate
if they are to retain control of their profession. In Defense of Good Teaching
is an alarming and enlightening book and, as the dispute broadens to affect
teaching math and bilingual education, it is an important book.
Beyond
Traditional Phonics by Margaret Moustafa
You Can Make a Difference is neither a political treatise nor a
philosophical theorem. Written from the real-life perspective of real teachers,
it is a useful guide for educators, parents, administrators, curriculum
coordinators, union members, and anyone involved in the grass-roots politics
of education. Even accidental activists will find encouragement: "You may
not even want to be taking this action on," say the authors, "but you're
doing it because you believe it's right. You Can Make a Difference is written
to help you learn quickly what to do, how to be effective as you become
involved politically, and how to maintain some balance as you stay involved."
Available Now...Highly Recommended
New legislation will transform American public education. Basic to the No Child Left Behind Act and the Put Reading First program is a new and substantial federal intrusion into local curriculum control and teacher autonomy. This intrusion is masked in the legislative mandate for "evidence-based", or "scientific", reading instruction. Beyond the distortions of the findings of the National Reading Panel Report that undergird the new federal initiatives, there are other federal mandates, past and current, that have also impeded improving reading instruction—and worse, the public education system—through privatization, teacher disempowerment, and a systemic business model.
In this timely and important book, nationally-recognized reading researcher Richard Allington tracks and questions the 30-year campaign that has focused on testing, accountability, and federalization of education. He and other educators, including Jim Cunningham, Michael Pressley, Elaine Garan, and Patrick Shannon, have contributed articles that provide an overview of past and recent federal education policies, including the NRP Report and associated legislation and policy making, with analyses of the premises of the new national reading plan. By showing how these premises are manufactured—that is, not reliably supported by the research—they explain why this plan is an unwarranted federal encroachment into local educational decision making.
Misreading Reading by Gerald Coles
This important book examines the studies of leading researchers who have
testified in various hearings and promoted policy and legislation on behalf of
skills-emphasis learning, especially those financed by the National Institute of
Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). No other book has systematically and
comprehensively analyzed this work. Coles not only identifies each claim, he
analyzes the research that backs it up.
What Really Matters for Struggling Readers by Richard Allington
In What Really Matters for Struggling Readers, nationally recognized
scholar Dick Allington offers easy-to-understand interpretations of research
that support three important principles: Children need to read a great deal to
become proficient readers, offering summaries of research on the subject, the
text shows how to monitor the amount of reading and create interventions that
expand reading activity. Children need access to appropriate books, exploring
the research on the subject, the text contains suggestions for designing schools
where books are available and appropriate for all children. Children need to
develop fluent reading to become proficient readers, reviewing the research on
reading fluency, the text provides instructional models and methods for
fostering fluency.
Resisting Reading Mandates by Elaine Garan
Teachers today are in a stranglehold as a glut of mandates and standards
restrict our ability to make decisions in our own classrooms. In many schools,
scripted, regimented commercial programs further erode our power to view our
students as individuals with unique talents and needs. Even the words we use to
"teach" are no longer our own as we read our way through the tightly scripted
manuals. How demeaning it is to be told that the curriculum is now "teacher
proofed."
In addition to district and state mandates, the federal government has joined
in the attack as monies are distributed or withheld based on schools' compliance
with the smoky, "scientific" research that is robbing us of our power to think
and act. In this book, Elaine Garan dejargonizes the research and takes us
behind the curtain, using her own research and analysis of the issues and
applying them to us as real teachers in real classrooms in an easy-to-read
format we can use. Garan takes on the National Reading Panel Report,
specifically the research summarized in the phonics subgroup report, and robs it
of its power by meticulously documenting its basic flaws. In the process, she
enables us to respond to the "research says" claims with solid arguments of our
own, using the NRP's very own words. Furthermore, her book reveals the true
findings of the NRP's report on commercial programs and isolated phonics
instruction and the strong financial links that are connected to its "science."
As Dick Allington says in the foreword to this book, improving teaching and
learning in the real world of schools and classrooms is difficult enough without
government-sponsored misallocation of effort and funding.
Garan's purpose, however, is not to produce a research book, but a handbook
for empowerment. She gives us all—teachers and administrators alike—the tools we
need to stand up and talk back. What Garan proposes is to triumph over outside
forces with the truth.
Feeding students a steady diet of fiction is all too common in the classroom.
Yet informational literacy is critical to success in school and beyond. In
Make It Real, Linda Hoyt provides a practical, classroom-friendly guide
to unlocking the treasures of informational text. What's more, she demonstrates
that reading and writing nonfiction can overcome the gender gap, allowing girls
and boys to share interests in any subject from bugs and magnets to gardens and
cake baking. Hoyt explains the use of a range of instructional strategies, including
shared and guided reading and writing, to help students understand and use
nonfiction material to answer questions about the world around them. She shows
teachers how to make texts more attainable, scaffold vocabulary, and deal with
content-specific words. Her simple suggestions help you get started and maintain
your course: having students write about the visuals in their texts, infusing
informational texts into guided reading, then using these texts to teach reading
strategies
A child may be a great decoder, but that's only one step toward becoming a
fluent reader. Reading implies thinking and understanding, and teachers can help
children develop strategies for comprehension. Children need to know how to make
connections and ask questions, how to visualize and infer, how to extract
important ideas and to synthesize information if they are to become fluent
readers. Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis show how teachers can model these
strategies by thinking aloud and coding the text, lifting text onto the overhead
and reasoning through it in class discussions, and bringing in their own books
to model how adults use these strategies. All the while teachers give students
long blocks of time to practice these strategies independently in their own
reading. Contents
With all the controversy and confusion over "best practice" issues in
teaching reading, someone with the necessary experience, the ability to take the
long view, and most of all a level head is essential to set things straight.
This is where Regie Routman steps in: giving clarity, support, specific
demonstrations, and confidence to teachers so they can teach reading in a manner
that is consistent with research and learning theory and respectful of students'
needs, interests, and abilities. In Reading Essentials, she realistically
describes how to achieve these goals—and get high test scores too.
This easy-to-read text will guide K-3 teachers as they develop a reading and
writing program for all their students. An apprenticeship approach to literacy
emphasizes the role of the teacher in providing demonstrations, engaging
children, monitoring their understanding, providing timely support and,
ultimately, withdrawing that support as the child gains
independence. Contents
Make it Real by Linda Hoyt
In The Company of Children by Joanne Hindley.
In schools of every description, teachers are working to turn their classrooms into
reading-writing workshops. TheyÌre filling bookcases with the best of childrens literature,
and students are tucking writersÌ notebooks into their bulging backpacks.
This new look calls for meaningful change in teaching practice, but many questions
about implementing literacy workshops remain. In this clear and practical book, Joanne
Hindley takes a hard look at how to make every minute count and offers specific
suggestions for creating rigorous, efficient, and successful reading and writing workshops.
Grounding her story in the lives of her third graders, Joanne tackles difficult issues and offers thoughtful direction and ideas you
will appreciate:
How to manage a productive workshop setting in a crowded classroom.
How to launch writerÌs notebooks with your students.
How the study of one genre can help you manage the reading/ writing workshop.
Where to get ideas for mini-lessons for the reading/writing workshop.
Guidelines to help you improve your conferring with individual readers and writers.
How to assess student progress in a process-oriented classroom.
In the Company of Children is a treasure trove of fresh ideas and strategies that teachers-inservice and preservice-will draw on
and adapt for their own classrooms.
Contents
Introduction 1. Supportive Settings and Caring Communities Part One: The Writing Workshop 2. The WriterÌs Notebook: Not
Just for Kids 3. Mini-Lessons: A Time for Rigorous Whole-Class Instruction 4. Lifting the Quality of Student Writing 5. Conferring
Toward Published Writing 6. The Power of Picture Books: A Whole-Class Genre Study 7. The Potential of Notebooks for Younger
Writers Part Two: The Reading Workshop 8. The Reading Workshop: What It Looks Like and Why 9. Mini-Lessons: Taking
Our Cues from Children 10. Learning from Our Conferring and Record-Keeping 11. Responding to Literature: Getting Beyond
I
Liked the Book 12. Inviting Students and Parents in on Assessment Epilogue: Telling Our Stories / Appendixes / Bibliographies
Full of practical suggestions to help students think when they
read, Strategies That Work gives teachers:
Key features of Strategies That Work are
the Appendixes that include:
Strategies That Work focuses on
instruction that is responsive to kids' interests and learning needs. When
readers use these strategies while reading, they enjoy a more complete,
thoughtful reading experience. Engagement is the goal. When kids are engaged in
their reading they enhance their understanding, acquire information, and
remember what they read. And best yet, they will want to read more!
Reading Essentials by Regie Routman
Drawing on authentic classroom examples - student writing
samples, class schedules, photographs, and rich transcriptions of teaching and
learning interactions - the authors illustrate instruction that is aimed at
children's learning zones. As children become more competent readers and
writers, the instructional interactions are adjusted to accommodate their
higher-level learning.
Here is a wealth of in-depth information,
specific strategies, and organizational formats in literacy areas such as:
No detail
is lost. The authors also cover such practical matters as establishing routines
and organizing the classroom environment, including rotation schedules for
meeting with small groups of children, lists of materials for establishing
literacy corners, and literacy corner activities designed to provide the
children with opportunities for independent practice.
With
Apprenticeship in Literacy you can achieve a balanced literacy program
that works for all your students.
Introduction 1. The Right to Literacy 2. A
Cognitive Apprenticeship Approach to Literacy 3. Learning to Read 4. Guided
Reading 5. Assisted Writing 6. Independent Writing 7. Developing Phonetic Skills
8. Establishing Routines and Organizing the Classroom 9. A Day with Angela and
Her First Graders 10. Supplementary Literacy Lessons with Carla 11. Working
Together / Appendix / References / Index
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