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

Why is preparation so critical for reading teachers? Because research tells us that it’s the teacher who makes the difference in effective reading instruction. Capable literacy teachers think about their teaching decisions, and they understand and meet the needs of individual students. The new edition of The Essentials of Teaching Children to Read: The Teacher Makes the Difference emphasizes the teacher’s role in literacy development, pointing out the five pillars of effective reading instruction–teacher knowledge, assessment, effective practice, differentiated instruction and family/home connections. Chapters on phonics, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, assessment, and programs and standards are organized around these pillars for a concise look at the teacher’s role in the most important aspects of literacy education.

New to this edition….

Teacher Knowledge

• Presents all the background knowledge, research, and foundational information you need to recognize evidence-based instruction

Assessment

• Offers full sections in each chapter that look specifically at the ways evaluation and assessment drive instruction
• Chapter sections built to a complete chapter on assessing student needs.

Effective Practice

• Provides practical strategies that explain how to sequence instruction to develop critical literacy skills and strategies

Differentiated Instruction

• Points out ways to differentiate instruction to meet the individual needs of students, adapting your instruction to help every student succeed in literacy
• Features Getting to Know English Learners provide research-based applications to help you meet the needs of students whose first language is not English

Family/Home Connections

• Explains how teachers can connect with parents to keep them informed about their children’s learning and provides suggestions to guide parents in helping their children become successful readers and writers.

Dr. D. Ray Reutzel is the Emma Eccles Jones Distinguished Professor and Endowed Chair of Early Childhood Education at Utah State University. Ray is a former Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at Southern Utah University; Associate Dean of Teacher Education in the David O. McKay School of Education; and former Chair of the Department of Elementary Education at Brigham Young University. While at BYU, he was the recipient of the 1992 Karl G. Maeser Distinguished Research and Creative Arts Professor Award and was an integral part of developing BYU’s nationally celebrated Public School Partnership, the field-based Elementary Education program, the Center for Improvement of Teacher Education and Schooling (CITES) and the Utah/CITES Balanced Literacy initiative as a part of the U.S. and Utah’s Goals 2000 funding. He has served as technical assistant to the Reading Excellence Act and the Reading First federal reading reform projects in the state of Utah. Several years ago, he took a leave from his university faculty position to return to full-time, first-grade classroom teaching in Sage Creek Elementary School. Ray has taught in Kindergarten, 1^st grade, 3^rd grade, and 6th grade.

Dr. Reutzel is the author of more than 165 refereed research reports, articles, books, book chapters, and monographs published in Early Childhood Research Quarterly, Reading Research Quarterly, Journal of Literacy Research, Journal of Educational Research, Reading Psychology, Reading Research and Instruction, Language Arts, Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, and The Reading Teacher, among others. He has received more than $5.5 million in research/professional development funding from private, state, and federal funding agencies. He was recently awarded a $1 million research grant as principal investigator under the Teacher Quality Research Program of the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education.

He is the past editor of Reading Research and Instruction, the journal of the College Reading Association. He is co-author, with Robert B. Cooter, Jr., of The Essentials for Teaching Children to Read, Second Edition, Teaching Children to Read: The Teacher Makes the Difference, Fifth Edition, and Strategies for Reading Assessment and Instruction: Helping Every Child Succeed, Third Edition published by Pearson Professional & Career. He has written a professional book titled, Your Classroom Library: How to Give It More Teaching Power, with Parker C. Fawson. He is or has been a reviewer for The Reading Teacher, Reading Research Quarterly, Reading Psychology, Journal of Educational Research, Early Childhood Research Quarterly, Reading Research and Instruction, Journal of Reading Behavior, Journal of Literqacy Research, and The Elementary School Journal.

Dr. Reutzel received the A.B. Herr Award from the College Reading Association in 1999 for Outstanding Research and Published Contributions to Reading Education. He was the e4ditor of the International Reading Association’s professional elementary section journal The Reading Teacher from 2002-2007. He was awarded the Researcher/Scholar of the Year Award by the College of Education and Human Services at Utah State University in May, 2004. He was elected Vice-President of the College Reading Association in April of 2005 and served as that organization’s President in 2007. Dr. Reutzel was recognized as a recipient of the College of Education’s 2006 Distinguished Alumni Award at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, Wyoming and is the D. Wynne Thorne Outstanding University Research Award recipient from Utah State University in April 2007. Dr. Reutzel was given the John C. Manning Public Sc