Essentials of Teaching Children to Read, The: The Teacher Makes the Difference

With an emphasis on the teacher's role in literacy development, this book focuses on seven pillars of effective reading instruction and gives educators the background knowledge they need in order to understand why they do what they do in teaching reading.

In keeping with what research tells us, that it is the teacher who makes the difference in effective reading instruction, this guide urges educators to become capable literacy teachers by thinking deeply about their teaching decisions in order to understand and meet the literacy needs of every student. The emphasis is on the essential nature of the teacher's role in literacy instruction, while asserting the primacy of the role of teacher quality and effectiveness as the key to successful literacy instruction.

The authors present five pillars of effective reading instruction-Teacher Knowledge, Classroom Assessment, Evidence-Based Teaching Practices, Response to Intervention (RTI), and Family and Community Connections-and add two new pillars to this edition: Motivation and Engagement and Technology and New Literacies. The seven pillars provide a logical and consistent structure for closely examining the essential elements that well-prepared literacy teachers know, understand, and are able to implement in classrooms. Teachers are encouraged to use the seven pillars to ground their thinking about future teaching in order to successfully develop and perform their vital roles in helping all children become successful readers and writers.

D. Ray Reutzel is the Emma Eccles Jones Distinguished Professor and Endowed Chair of Early Literacy Education at Utah State University. He has taught kindergarten, first grade, third grade, and sixth grade. Dr. Reutzel is the author of more than 190 refereed research reports, articles, books, book chapters, and monographs published in The Elementary School Journal, Early Childhood Research Quarterly, Reading Research Quarterly, Journal of Literacy Research, Journal of Educational Research, Reading Psychology, Literacy Research and Instruction, Language Arts, Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, and The Reading Teacher, among others. He has received more than $7.5 million in research and professional development funding from private, state, and federal agencies including the Institute of Education Sciences and the U.S. Department of Education.

 

Dr. Reutzel is the past editor of The Reading Teacher and Literacy Research and Instruction. He is author or coauthor of several chapters published in the Handbook of Classroom Management, the Handbook of Research on Literacy and Diversity, and the Handbook of Reading Research (Vol. IV). Dr. Reutzel received the 1999 A.B. Herr Award from the College Reading Association for outstanding research and published contributions to reading education. Dr. Reutzel was given the John C. Manning Public School Service Award from the International Reading Association in May 2007 for his many years of working in schools with teachers and children. Dr. Reutzel has also served as past president of the College Reading Association/Association for Literacy Educators and Researchers and as a member of the board of directors of the International Reading Association from 2007 to 2010. He was elected into the Reading Hall of Fame in 2011.

 

Dr. Robert B. Cooter, Jr., currently serves as Ursuline Endowed Professor and dean of the Annsley Frazier Thornton School of Education at Bellarmine University in Louisville, Kentucky. Dr. Cooter served from 2006 to 2011 as editor of The Reading Teacher, the largest circulation literacy education journal worldwide. His research is focused exclusively on the improvement of literacy acquisition for children living in poverty. In 2008 Dr. Cooter received the A.B. Herr Award from the Association of Literacy Educators and Researchers for contributions to the field of literacy. Earlier in his career Dr. Cooter served as an elementary classroom teacher and Title I reading specialist. In public school administration, Dr. Cooter served as the first “Reading Czar” (or associate superintendent) for the Dallas Independent School District. He was named Texas State Champion for Reading by the governor for development of the acclaimed Dallas Reading Plan for some 60,000 children. Dr. Cooter later designed and served as principal investigator of the Memphis Striving Readers Program, a $16 million middle school literacy research project funded by the U.S. Department of Education. In 2007 Dr. Cooter and colleagues J. Helen Perkins and Kathleen Spencer Cooter were recipients of the Urban Impact Award from the Council of Great City Schools for their work in high poverty schools.

 

Dr. Cooter has authored or coauthored over 20 books in reading education and more than 60 journal articles. His books include the bestselling Strategies for Reading Assessment and Instruction, used at over 200 universities; The Flynt-Cooter Comprehensive Reading Inventory, a norm-referenced classroom reading assessment with English and Spanish versions; and Perspectives on Rescuing Urban Literacy Education: Spies, Saboteurs, and Saints. Robert Cooter lives in Louisville, Kentucky, and enjoys family time on their houseboat, Our Last Child, with his bride, grandchildren, and golden retrievers. Robert sometimes plays Hammond B-3 organ in reunion concerts with The George Washington Bridge Band, a Nashville-based rock group he cofounded and toured with during the 1960s and 70s.