Reading Diagnosis for Teachers: An Instructional Approach (4th Edition)

Rating:
Summary: User-friendly for the classroom teacher
Review: Trained as a reading specialist in the 80s, I have always worked as a classroom teacher. This year I am at a school that has no reading speicialist. I panicked at first trying to interpret numbers from standardized tests. The scores did little except to confirm that there was in fact a reading problem. Then I found Reading Diagnosis for Teachers: An Instructional Approach. It is a user-friendly guide for informally diagnosing and treating reading difficulties. It gave me just the boost I needed to organize and plan instructional programs for students who are struggling in social studies because of reading problems. Through oral reading and comprehension questions, which are part of most lessons I teach, I was able to zero in on a student's area of difficulty. His vocabulary knowledge was more than adequate and his comprehension seemed adequate when someone else did the reading. The informal evaluation led to the conclusion that his problem was with print skill, or what we used to call decoding. The book is filled with a wide variety of case studies on students of all ages. Several times I found myself seeing my students! As money for spcecialists seems to be dissipating, it is imperative that classroom teachers be able to diagnose and provide for the needs of all students. In many middle schools reading is no longer taught. This is unfortunate because the demand in the content area subjects requires proficient readers. This book is a valuable resource for classroom teachers and is filled with suggestions that can be implememted today!