Professional Recommended Texts on RTI

Recommended Texts on RTI

(Click on each thumbnail to retrieve article or go to publisher's web site.)

		...	*What Really Matters in RTI*, Richard Allington Grades K-8 Provides a complete review of what is critical to accelerating the development of struggling readers. Presents educators with a framework for how we might design RTI programs such that struggling readers will develop their reading proficiencies to match those of their achieving peers. Includes numerous websites that provide teacher-friendly information, strategies, and tools for accelerating reading development.
			RTI: The Best Intervention Is a Good Book, Lois Bridges, Scholastic Classroom Books This article explores the importance of establishing a positive feedback loop in which kids have access to tons of books, develop a love of reading, are given time to read, and interact with informed and knowledgeable teachers. Bridges warns against the reading spiral where kids aren’t reading because it is hard and get worse because they aren’t reading.
			Responding to RTI, Chad Greene, Education Week In this interview Richard Allington, author of several books on reading policy and instruction, discusses why he thinks RTI is possibly “our last, best hope” for achieving full literacy in the United States and explores how RTI has and should be conceptualized and implemented in schools.
			*Moving Forward with RTI*, Mary Howard Grades 1-5 Provides teachers with flexible literacy activities to help them move ahead with RTI and implement effective differentiated instruction in a variety of settings—including whole-group, guided practice, small-group, partner work, and independent learning. Helps teachers ensure that all their students are on-task with meaningful, high-level work while the teacher works with small groups.
			RTI From All Sides, Mary Howard Grades K-8 Highlights practical and manageable interventions that are just right for kids and right for the educators who serve them.
			*RTI in Literacy Responsive and Comprehensive*, Peter Johnston Offers research-based intervention and assessment strategies. Demonstrates the importance of professional development and teacher expertise. Shows how existing practice can fit into an RTI approach.
			Response to Intervention (RTI): What Teachers Need to Know, Eric M. Mesmer, Heidi Anne E. Mesmer, The Reading Teacher This article gives an overview of RTI—what it is and how it looks. The authors explain the theory and rationale for RTI, explain the steps involved for students suspected of having learning disabilities, and a vignette of an actual child’s road through the RTI process.
			*The RTI Daily Planning Book, K-6*, Gretchen Owocki Grades K-6 Shows exactly what to assess and how using reproducible rubrics, data charts, and class checklists for ongoing assessment, gauge readers’ progress and point toward follow-ups. Includes streamlined strategies linked to assessments by if-then strands which help you meet wide-ranging needs efficiently. Also includes ideas for grouping that increase your instructional flexibility and help you avoid unnecessary interruptions.
			Responding to RTI, Chad Greene, Education Week In this interview Richard Allington, author of several books on reading policy and instruction, discusses why he thinks RTI is possibly "our last, best hope" for achieving full literacy in the United States and explores how RTI has and should be conceptualized and implemented in schools

Recommended Texts on the Teaching of Reading

		...	*When Kids Can't Read*, Kylene Beers Grades 6-12 A handbook filled with practical strategies that teachers of all subjects can use to make reading skills transparent and accessible to adolescents. Blending theory with practice throughout, Kylene Beers moves teachers from assessment to instruction – from describing dependent reading behaviors to suggesting ways to help students with vocabulary, fluency, comprehension, word recognition, response to text, and more.
			*The Café Book*, Gail Boushey & Joan Moser Grades 1-5 The CAFE system, is an acronym for comprehension, accuracy, fluency, and expanding vocabulary. This framework provides a structure for conferring with students, a language for talking about reading development, and a system for tracking growth and fostering student independence.
			*The Daily Five*, Gail Boushey and Joan Moser Grades 1-5 Explores a series of literacy tasks which students complete daily while the teacher meets with small groups or confers with individuals
			*Units of Study for Teaching Reading, Grades 3-6*, Lucy Calkins et al Grades 3-6 Includes a set of guides, each outlining in a reading workshop unit of study (similar format to the writing guides published several years ago). Many of the units are aligned with the LDT units of study.
			*Word Callers*, Kelly Cartwright Grades 1-5 An assessment and intervention that uses word and picture cards to measure and support readers’ sound-meaning flexibility. Identify inflexible readers, provide straightforward engaging lessons with wordplay, word and picture cards, comprehension strategies, and more to support the transition from word callers into full-time meaning makers.
			*Growing Readers*, Kathy Collins Grades K-2 Describes the structure of the independent reading workshop and other components of a balanced literacy program. Outlines a sequence of possible units of study for a yearlong curriculum. Explores several units of study in depth.
			*Reading for Real*, Kathy Collins Grades K-2 Explores the practice of reading clubs with the very youngest readers. Presents ideas for implementing reading clubs during reading workshop in a balanced literacy framework through which students become not only capable of reading but rather readers with a high sense of engagement, purpose and joy.
			The Continuum of Literacy Learning, Grades PreK-8, Second Edition: A Guide to Teaching, Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell Grades Pre-K-8 This text is organized in six continua which provide grade level expectations and are designed for planning group instruction. The seventh, the Guided Reading continuum, describes texts at each level and lists specific behaviors and understandings that are required at each level for students to demonstrate thinking within, beyond, and about the text.
			*When Readers Struggle: Teaching That Works*, Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell Grades K-3 Filled with specific teaching ideas for helping children who are having difficulty in reading and writing. Focuses on small-group intervention and individual interactions during reading and writing. Illustrates how to closely observe readers to make the best possible teaching decisions for them as well as how to support struggling readers in whole-class settings.
			*Comprehension and Collaboration* by Stephanie Harvey and Harvey Daniels Grades K-12 Studies the intersection of comprehension, collaboration, and inquiry and serves as a guide for teachers who want to realize the benefits of well-structured, student-led, cross-curricular projects. Features examples from Mamaroneck classrooms and a chapter on Internet research written by district assistive technology teacher Andrew Hess.
			*Reading with Meaning*, Debbie Miller Grades K-2 Leads the reader through the course of a year from creating a collaborative, and caring environment to teaching comprehension strategies for primary aged children. Includes specific examples for setting up a classroom library, strategy lesson for teachers students how to infer, ask questions, make connections, determine importance, create mental images and synthesize information.
			Comprehension Through Conversation, Maria Nichols Grades K-6 Demonstrates how purposeful talk increases comprehension, encourages critical thinking and creates literate habits of mind. Shows specific ways to use conversation as a scaffold that bridges prior knowledge to more advanced reading skills and techniques as well as to big ideas such as themes.
			*Comprehension; Strategic Instruction for K-3 Children*, Gretchen Owocki Grades K-3 Shares practical ideas for supporting comprehension through whole class and small group instruction, literature circles, partner reading and independent reading. Includes graphic organizers, evaluation tools, instructional charts and many examples of the language that effects teachers use to engage students in talk about books.
			*First Grade Readers*, Stephanie Parsons Grades K-2 Outlines seven units of study for the reading workshop many of which align with LDT units of study. Includes ideas for planning and organizing materials; techniques for modeling reading to students; guidance on minilessons, conferences, and mid-workshop teaching points; differentiation for advanced and struggling readers, checking in strategies to assess what students know and have learned.
			The Next Step in Guided Reading: Focused Assessments and Targeted Lessons for Helping Every Student Become a Better Reader, Jan Richardson Grades PreK-6 A very user-friendly road map to effective guided reading lessons. Organized by reading level (Pre-Emergent to Proficient), each section discusses reading behaviors and detailed lessons for each reading level. This text also includes targeted assessments, data analysis that pinpoints specific strategies students need, the use of guided writing to support the reading process, and word work to support word analysis at each level. The appendix details reading and writing behaviors expected at each reading level pre-A to J as well as word study components correlated to each level.
			*Conferring with Readers*, Jen Serravallo and Gravity Goldberg Grades 3-8 Covers a host of key areas including assessing students’ reading, facilitating effective reading conferences (transcripts included), provides samples of teacher record keeping forms, data and plans for follow up instruction, an amazing resource.
			*Teaching Reading in Small Groups*, Jennifer Serravallo Grades 1-6 Explores how to use formative assessment to group students with common needs, differentiate for individuals even when they are in a group, use strengths of individual conferences while working with multiple students--even if they are not reading the same book. Also discusses how to help readers get into texts and get more out of them, learn vital strategies that help them read more challenging texts, and talk about books with rigor.
			Where’s the Glitch: How to Use Running Records with Older Readers, Grades 5-8, Mary Shea Grades 5-8 This text helps teachers identify why readers stumble and presents strategies designed to get them back on track and reading well. Modified running records are used to pinpoint where readers struggle with comprehension, to determine their current reading level, and to assess the specific skills they already possess. Shea then describes how to use that information to plan interventions that integrate instruction in literacy skills with content area studies.
			*Still Learning to Read*, Franki Sibberson Grades 3-6 Offers a teacher's perspective on building reading instruction into the packed school day, and matching instruction and texts to the specific needs of older readers. The book presents many sample lessons, descriptions of classroom routines, stories taken from the authors' reading workshops, planning forms, assessment and conference strategies, detailed descriptions of how to use readers' notebooks flexibly, sample lessons for specific skills instruction, and more.