Handbook of Reading Interventions

Rollanda E. O'Connor, PhD, is Professor of Education at the University of California, Riverside. She taught reading in special and general education classrooms for many years and has conducted numerous intervention studies in special and general education settings, explored procedures to predict in kindergarten and first grade which children are likely to develop reading difficulties, and followed the reading progress of children who received early intervention. Her longitudinal studies of intervention and assessment led to the development (with Patricia F. Vadasy) of Ladders to Literacy, a collection of phonological and print awareness activities and scaffolding suggestions for children at risk for reading problems, and the book Teaching Word Recognition: Effective Strategies for Students with Learning Difficulties. Dr. O'Connor's current research includes evaluating the effects of early, continuous intervention across the first 4 years of schooling and developing research-based interventions for students with reading difficulties in the intermediate grades.Patricia F. Vadasy, PhD, is Senior Researcher at the Oregon Research Institute in Seattle, Washington. Her background is in early reading acquisition and instruction, instructional design, and intervention research. Dr. Vadasy oversees a research team engaged in research on effective school-based literacy interventions for at-risk and struggling students. She has published findings on her grant-funded intervention research widely in peer-reviewed journals. She is the lead author (with Rollanda E. O’Connor) of the Sound Partners code-oriented supplemental tutoring program.

"This is a gem of a book that accomplishes the most difficult task of both providing a research base for the interventions and describing them in meaningful ways for practicing teachers. What makes this book exceptional is that each chapter is packed with instructional practices that are proven to enhance student outcomes."--Sharon Vaughn, PhD, Executive Director, Meadows Center for Preventing Educational Risk, and Manuel J. Justiz Endowed Chair in Education, The University of Texas at Austin"In this timely volume, well-established researchers summarize what is known about how to improve students' reading performance and provide specific ideas for applying this knowledge in schools. It is a valuable resource for educators seeking to use research-based interventions in developing effective literacy programs. The Handbook is unique in its range--preschool through secondary levels--and its comprehensiveness. It addresses content-area instruction; various factors affecting comprehension; writing; the older reader; and more, and presents actual lessons that illustrate instructional strategies. It could serve as a text for a graduate course on working with struggling readers."--Rita M. Bean, PhD, Department of Instruction and Learning (Emerita), University of Pittsburgh"The editors have done some of the seminal research on response to intervention (RTI) in reading. This volume opens up new dimensions to what RTI in literacy can be and how it can be expanded to include comprehension, vocabulary development, writing, and study skills. It should have a profound effect on the field."--Russell Gersten, PhD, Director, Instructional Research Group, Los Alamitos, California-

• 1. Introduction, Patricia F. Vadasy and Rollanda E. O'Connor2. Phoneme Awareness and the Alphabetic Principle, Rollanda E. O'Connor3. Preschool Foundations for Reading and Writing Success, Theresa A. Roberts4. Phases in Reading Words and Phonics Interventions, Louise Spear-Swerling5. Morphemic Approaches for Reading Words, Terezinha Nunes and Peter Bryant6. Teaching Spelling to Students with Learning Difficulties, Michael M. Gerber and Catherine Richards-Tutor7. Making Vocabulary Interventions Engaging and Effective, Margaret G. McKeown and Isabel L. Beck8. Fluency Problems: When, Why, and How to Intervene, Roxanne Hudson9. Main Idea and Summarization Instruction to Improve Reading Comprehension, Asha K. Jitendra and Meenakshi Gajria10. Metacognition to Improve Reading Comprehension, Janette K. Klingner, Ann Morrison, and Amy Eppolito11. Teaching Narrative and Expository Text Structure to Improve Comprehension, Joanna P. Williams and Lisa S. Pao12. Peer-Mediated Approaches, Mary Abbott, Charles R. Greenwood, Jay Buzhardt, Howard P. Wills, and Barbara Terry13. Supplemental Reading Instruction by Paraeducators and Tutors: Recent Research and Applications, Patricia F. Vadasy14. On the Comprehension and Production of Written Texts: Instructional Activities That Support Content-Area Literacy, Ralph P. Ferretti and Susan De La Paz15. Cultural Aspects of Teaching Reading with Latino English Language Learners, Michael J. Orosco and Rollanda E. O'Connor16. Teaching Older Students to Read, Rollanda E. O'Connor and Vanessa Goodwin