In her best-selling book, "Teach Them All To Read", Elaine McEwan provides a great discussion of the most current reading research regarding how students learn to read so educators can make informed decisions about instruction. Research about reading has given us insight into the skills on which we need to focus our efforts to improve reading and comprehension. Now we can identify the skills that require reinforcement and intervene with explicit, thoughtful instruction. The activities in "The Reading Puzzle" series will help the teacher accomplish this goal. "The Reading Puzzle" series provides instructional tools teachers can use immediately as part of the reading curriculum. "The Reading Puzzle" series contains 10 books for Kindergarten through Grade 8 centered on the skills identified by the National Reading Panel as critical to reading success.Each of these books in the series helps unlock one piece of the reading puzzle and contains standards-based, ready-to-use activities that can be used to supplement any reading program.
The books include: "Phonemic Awareness, Grades K-3"; "Phonics, Grades K-3"; "Vocabulary, Grades K-3"; "Fluency, Grades K-3"; "Comprehension, Grades K-3"; "Word Analysis, Grades 4-8"; "Spelling, Grades 4-8"; "Vocabulary, Grades 4-8"; "Fluency, Grades 4-8"; and, "Comprehension, Grades 4-8". These activity books contain ready-to-use activities that make it easy to put McEwan's highly-successful strategies into practice. The strategies and activities will support struggling readers and enhance existing skill to encourage improvement in all students' reading skills.The objective of reading instruction in grades K-3 is not only to enable students to read fluently and independently, but most importantly, to read with comprehension. By understanding what they've read, students are better able to remember, communicate, and apply the information they've gained through reading. This book addresses the strategies that proficient readers need in order to unlock the meaning of written material. These include: activating prior knowledge; making connections; inferring; predicting; visualizing; questioning; monitoring and clarifying; searching and selecting; and, summarizing.It is also important for the teacher to model the strategies.
The scaffold approach of 'I do it, We do it, You do it' enables students to develop into independent readers. Other ideas and tools in this book include graphic organizers, visual prompts, and activities to engage and stimulate young readers. Finally, reading comprehension empowers students, giving them the ability to explore virtually any topic or subject in which they are interested. This book can help the teacher instill the joy of reading, which in turn can lead to a lifetime of fulfillment and success.
