Students in grades 3–6 need to use increasingly sophisticated comprehension skills and strategies as they read and build knowledge across disciplinary content areas. Grounded in research, this book presents effective practices for integrating literacy instruction with literature, science, and social studies. Chapters address text selection, vocabulary development, strategy instruction, discussion formats, writing to express and expand comprehension, assessment, and more. Ways to meet the needs of emergent bilingual and culturally diverse students are highlighted throughout. Ideal for preservice and inservice teachers and professional staff development, the book includes classroom vignettes, text boxes with easy-to-read instructional procedures, and curriculum resources. Helpful reproducible forms can be downloaded and printed in a convenient 8 1/2" x 11" size. See also the authors' related book on the primary grades: Developing Reading Comprehension: Effective Instruction for All Students in PreK-2.

Early literacy instruction typically emphasizes foundational skills--often at the expense of engaging young children in reading and supporting their comprehension of different types of texts. This book explains the essential elements of comprehension and shares a wealth of classroom-tested instructional practices. It presents developmentally informed strategies for scaffolding comprehension skills, using content to promote engagement, and implementing high-level discussions and writing tasks. Ways to teach and assess English learners and other diverse students are highlighted throughout. The book features explicit links to the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) as well as helpful reproducible forms. Purchasers get access to a Web page where they can download and print the reproducible materials in a convenient 8 1/2" x 11" size.

Fountas and Pinnell support teachers on the next leg of the literacy journey, addressing the unique challenges of teaching upper elementary students.

"Students in grades 3-6 need to use increasingly sophisticated comprehension skills and strategies as they read and build knowledge across disciplinary content areas. Grounded in research, this book presents effective practices for integrating literacy instruction with literature, science, and social studies. Chapters address text selection, vocabulary development, strategy instruction, discussion formats, writing to express and expand comprehension, assessment, and more. Ways to meet the needs of emergent bilingual and culturally diverse students are highlighted throughout. Ideal for preservice and inservice teachers and professional staff development, the book includes classroom vignettes, text boxes with easy-to-read instructional procedures, and curriculum resources. Helpful reproducible forms can be downloaded and printed in a convenient 8 1/2" x 11" size. Subject Areas/Key Words: upper-elementary reading methods, literacy, disciplinary literacies, struggling readers, teaching, teachers, content areas, disciplines, intermediate, academic vocabulary, literature, science, social studies, English learners, middle grades, assessments, emergent bilinguals, writing, classroom discussions Audience: Classroom teachers, literacy specialists and coaches, and staff developers in grades 3/n-/6; teacher educators and graduate students"--

"In this book, structured literacy is conceptualized as an umbrella term encompassing a variety of intervention methods, instructional approaches, and commercial programs. In addition to focusing on SL approaches to intervention, this book is organized around common poor reader profiles that have been identified in research. The chapters in this volume are written by experts who are well known as researchers but who are also highly skilled at writing for practitioners. Chapters were written with a strong foundation of research that is summarized, but with a concentration on translating research into practice, including case studies, sample intervention activities, and lesson plans. Each chapter includes application activities at the end to check for and extend readers' understanding"--

Recognizing the characteristics of children with learning disabilities and deciding how to help them is a problem faced by schools all over the world. Although some disorders are fairly easily recognizable (e.g., mental retardation) or very specific to single components of performance and quite rare (e.g., developmental dyscalculia), schools must consider much larger populations of children with learning difficulties who cannot always be readily classified. These children present high-level learning difficulties that affect their performance on a variety of school tasks, but the underlying problem is often their difficulty in understanding written text. In many instances, despite good intellectual abilities and a superficial ability to cope with written texts and to use language appropriately, some children do not seem to grasp the most important elements, or cannot find the pieces of information they are looking for. Sometimes these difficulties are not immediately detected by the teacher in the early school years. They may be hidden because the most obvious early indicators of reading progress in the teacher's eyes do not involve comprehension of written texts or because the first texts a child encounters are quite simple and reflect only the difficulty level of the oral messages (sentences, short stories, etc.) with which the child is already familiar. However, as years go by and texts get more complex, comprehension difficulties will become increasingly apparent and increasingly detrimental to effective school learning. In turn, studying, assimilating new information, and many other situations requiring text comprehension -- from problem solving to reasoning with linguistic contents -- could be affected. Problems with decoding, dyslexia, and language disorders have attracted more interest from researchers than have specific comprehension problems and have occupied more room in specialized journals. Normal reading comprehension has also been a favorite with researchers. However, scarce interest has been paid to subjects who have comprehension difficulties. This book is an attempt to remedy this situation. In so doing, this volume answers the following questions: * Does a reading comprehension problem exist in schools? * How important and widespread is the problem? * Is the problem specific? * How can a reading comprehension difficulty be defined and identified? * Does the "syndrome" have a single pattern or can different subtypes be identified? * What are the main characteristics associated with a reading comprehension difficulty? * When can other well-identified problems add to our understanding of reading comprehension difficulties? * Which educational strategies are effective in preventing and treating reading comprehension difficulties? * What supplementary information can we get from an international perspective?

Language Arts Warm-Ups: Expanding Vocabulary provides students with daily activities to get them warmed up for the lessons ahead and to review lessons learned. Each page features four warm-up activities that can be cut apart and used separately, making it easy to adjust each activity as needed. --Mark Twain Media Publishing Company specializes in providing engaging supplemental books and decorative resources to complement middle- and upper-grade classrooms. Designed by leading educators, this product line covers a range of subjects including math, science, language arts, social studies, history, government, fine arts, and character.

The Science of Reading: A Handbook brings together state-of-the-art reviews of reading research from leading names in the field, to create a highly authoritative, multidisciplinary overview of contemporary knowledge about reading and related skills. Provides comprehensive coverage of the subject, including theoretical approaches, reading processes, stage models of reading, cross-linguistic studies of reading, reading difficulties, the biology of reading, and reading instruction Divided into seven sections:Word Recognition Processes in Reading; Learning to Read and Spell; Reading Comprehension; Reading in Different Languages; Disorders of Reading and Spelling; Biological Bases of Reading; Teaching Reading Edited by well-respected senior figures in the field

Research-based Methods of Reading Instruction, Grades K-3: Grades K-3.

Use these fun, easy-to-use activities to tackle the most challenging aspect of reading! "Finally, someone has written a practical book filled with easy-to-read comprehension strategies. I will definitely use this book with teachers in my district to teach about and review comprehension strategies. The section on ′How Can We Learn More′ is also fantastic. Thank you, Kathleen Jonson." --Hazel Brauer, Literacy Coordinator Jefferson Elementary School District, Daly City, CA "This book is a comprehensive, well-organized guide to teaching reading comprehension. The clear, consistent layout of the lesson plans makes it easy for the teacher to locate and implement appropriate lessons quickly. The examples are very helpful and the templates allow a teacher to begin lessons immediately. The wide variety of lesson plans makes this guide truly useful for all grade levels." --Myra Gamble, Reading Specialist Spring Valley School, Millbrae, CA Comprehension is the final goal of reading, but because it involves several cognitive processes, it remains the most difficult facet of reading development to teach. Based on the recommendations of the National Reading Panel Report, 60 Strategies for Improving Reading Comprehension in Grades K-8 provides teachers with a ready-to-use toolkit of tried-and-true learning strategies designed to actively engage students in cognitive processes, including predicting, visualizing, making inferences, monitoring, synthesizing, and summarizing. Developed as specific instructional procedures with clearly delineated steps for implementation, these entertaining activities are effective in all types of classrooms. Each of the 60 strategies in the book includes: Grade-level recommendations Goals for each strategy Step-by-step instructions Graphics and examples of student work Directions for modifying strategies for different grade levels Literary expert Kathleen Feeney Jonson has created an exciting resource to help educators teach the most difficult piece of the reading process: comprehension. Offering a rare combination of fun and function, these strategies are sure to get students to listen, laugh, and most important, to learn.