Effective Instruction for Middle School Students with Reading Difficulties: The Reading Teacher's Sourcebook

Reading problems don't disappear when students enter middle school-recent studies show that nearly a quarter of today's eighth graders aren't able to read at a basic level.* This book arms language arts teachers with the lessons, strategies, and foundational knowledge they need to resolve older students' reading difficulties and increase their chances for academic success.

Ideal for use with struggling readers in Grades 6-8, this book clearly lays out the fundamentals of effective teaching for adolescents with reading difficulties. Teachers will discover how to

• select and administer assessments for comprehension, fluency, and word recognition
• use assessment results to plan individualized instruction
• apply research-supported instructional practices
• develop flexible grouping systems so students get the targeted instruction they need
• set manageable short-term learning goals with students
• keep the pacing of instruction quick and energetic so students stay engaged
• give appropriate positive and corrective feedback
• monitor student progress over time
• promote generalization of new reading skills
• provide effective interventions within a school-wide Response to Intervention framework

To help teachers incorporate evidence-based practices into their classroom instruction, they'll get more than 20 complete, step-by-step sample lessons for strengthening adolescents' reading skills. Easy to adapt for use across any curriculum, the sample lessons provide explicit models of successful instruction, with suggested teacher scripts, checklists for planning instruction, key terms and objectives, strategies for guided and independent practice, tips on promoting generalization, and more.

With this practical guide to high-quality instruction, middle school teachers will help struggling readers develop the skills they need to master complex academic content and succeed inside and outside the classroom.

With 20+ step-by-step sample lessons that improve

• Fluency
• Comprehension
• Word recognition
• Vocabulary

*National Center for Education Statistics, 2011

Carolyn A. Denton, Ph.D., is Associate Professor in the Children's Learning Institute, part of the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston. A former teacher, she conducts research in schools focused on reading intervention, response to intervention models, coaching as a form of professional development, and reading comprehension. Her current projects include a study of reading comprehension in middle and high school students, a study of interventions for elementary-age children who have both attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and severe reading difficulties, and a project developing a Tier 2 first-grade intervention that targets both decoding and comprehension. She has served as the head of the Texas Adolescent Literacy Project, an initiative of the Texas Education Agency focused on the development of intervention approaches for struggling middle school readers. Dr. Denton is the coauthor of three other books, including a reading intervention program for the early grades and two books on the role of the reading coach, as well as numerous articles and book chapters. She has made presentations and provided training to teachers, administrators, coaches, researchers, and university faculties throughout the United States and in Europe and Hong Kong.

Sharon Vaughn, Ph.D., H.E. Hartfelder/Southland Corp. Regents Chair in Human Development and Executive Director, The Meadows Center for Preventing Educational Risk, University of Texas at Austin, Sanchez Building, 1912 Speedway, Austin, Texas 78712

Sharon Vaughn is the executive director of The Meadows Center, an organized research unit at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the recipient of the American Education Research Association Special Interest Group Distinguished Researcher Award, the International Reading Association Albert J. Harris Award, the University of Texas Distinguished Faculty Award, and the Jeannette E. Fleischner Award for Outstanding Contributions in the Field of Learning Disabilities from the Council for Exceptional Children. She is the author of more than 35 books and 250 research articles. Vaughn is currently the principal investigator on several research grants from the Institute for Education Sciences, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and the U.S. Department of Education.

Jade Wexler, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor in the Department of Counseling, Higher Education, and Special Education at the University of Maryland, College Park. Dr. Wexler has almost 15 years of experience as a teacher and researcher in the field of special education. She earned her Ph.D. in Special Education (Learning Disabilities and Behavior Disorders) in 2007 from the University of Texas at Austin, where she remains a fellow in the Meadows Center for Preventing Educational Risk Dropout Prevention Institute. She has extensive experience directing large-scale studies (funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Institute of Education Sciences, the Meadows Foundation, and the Greater Texas Foundation) investigating high-quality interventions for students with significant reading difficulties and students at risk for dropping out of school. Her current research focuses on investigating effective practices for adolescents with reading difficulties, including those in the juvenile justice system. She also investigates methods to decrease dropout rates and increase school engagement for students at risk for dropping out of school.

Deanna Bryan began her teaching career working with children with severe disabilities. While teaching in a life skills classroom, she met a student that she believed could learn to read. She began tutoring this student one on one and this is where her passion for teaching reading began. Ms. Bryan spent most of her teaching career working with middle school students. She was a public school special education reading teacher for 9½ years before going to work for the Vaughn Gross Center for Reading and Language Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. At the Vaughn Gross Center, she worked as a research assistant and then as an instructional coach. She was also a member of the development team for the Texas Adolescent Literacy Academies. Ms. Bryan believes middle school teachers are special and feel they are called to work with this unique age group. She hopes that this book will serve these teachers well. Ms. Bryan currently resides in Austin, Texas, with her husband and two children.

Deborah Reed, Ed.D., is Assistant Professor in the Department of Teacher Education at the University of Texas at El Paso. She has spent 19 years working with adolescents as a middle and high school teacher, technical assistance provider, and researcher. While at the Meadows Center for Preventing Educational Risk, Dr. Reed served as Principal Investigator of the Texas Adolescent Literacy Academies, which resulted in the training of more than 21,000 content area and intervention teachers. She has also assisted the Florida Center for Reading Research and the IRIS Center at Vanderbilt in developing teacher-friendly resources for addressing adolescent literacy issues in both general and special education settings. Her publications have appeared in Scientific Studies of Reading, Reading Psychology, Preventing School Failure, Research in Middle Level Education, Learning Disabilities Research and Practice, Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, Learning Disability Quarterly, and Educational Assessment.