What Really Matters for Struggling Readers: Designing Research-Based Programs

Richard L. Allington

What Really Matters for Struggling Readers, Third Edition

Nationally recognized scholar and author Richard Allington once again delivers a concise and balanced introduction to reading remediation and intervention programs, showing teachers how to use a variety of best practices with children who are struggling readers in order to transform them into proficient readers. This new edition includes the latest findings on reading achievement and instruction, reading volume as it relates to reading proficiency, reader-text match, fluency development, comprehension strategies, and instruction for struggling readers. Its emphasis is on explaining what the research says, why it works, and how to use this information to provide intensive, expert reading instruction for all children. The continued focus on helping teachers design reading remediation and intervention programs around well-established reality and research-based components is framed within the confines of the No Child Left Behind Act. Paired with Dick's book What Really Matters in Response to Intervention, educators have the best tools for helping every student learn to love reading.

In their well-known and much welcomed thought-provoking style, Pat Cunningham, Dick Allington, and others bring you the best research-based instructional advice available. Each of the brief and inexpensive books in the What Really Matters series features what Pat and Dick know about one aspect of teaching and learning to read independently with understanding. To learn more about the series see the inside front cover.

“This is an accessible, readable, and engaging affirmation for practicing teachers, reminding them of their importance in literacy programs and offering ideas for their continued growth and ever-developing repertoire of effective strategies and approaches...I commend Allington for this faith in teachers as decision-makers.”

- Denise H. Stuart, Ph.D., The University of Akron, Curricular and Instructional Studies, Akron OH

“A strength of using Allington’s book is reading friendliness. As I read his book, I felt like I was having a conversation with him.”

- Dr. Stacey Leftwich, Rowan University, Department of Reading, Glassboro, NJ

Richard L. Allington is a past president of the International Reading Association and of the National Reading Conference. He has written more than 100 published papers and reports on reading difficulties, and is the author or coauthor of What Really Matters in Response to Intervention, What Really Matters in Fluency, Classrooms That Work, and Schools That Work. Dick is a former classroom teacher, reading specialist, and federal programs director who has studied and written about reading intervention including his influential article in the Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, “If They Don’t Read Much, How They Ever Gonna Get Good?”

What Really Matters for Struggling Readers delivers a concise and balanced introduction to reading remediation and intervention programs and the topic of struggling readers.

The Third Edition of What Really Matters for Struggling Readers continues to focus on helping teachers design reading remediation and intervention programs around well-established reality- and research-based components framing them within the confines of the No Child Left Behind Act.

Nationally recognized scholar and author Dick Allington offers easy-to-understand interpretations of research that support three important principles of effective instructional design and shows teachers how to use a variety of best practices with children who are struggling readers.

What's New to this Edition?

• New emphasis on the role of literate conversation as a powerful tool for building comprehension proficiencies.

• Summary of what went wrong with Reading First and why it should never have happened.

• Newest federal legislation (RTI) PROVIDES A UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY to finally get reading instruction for struggling readers right and to eliminate kids labeled LD or struggling readers.

• Strong focus on what we know and why it is time to use this knowledge and teach every child to read well.

Richard L. Allington is a past president of the International Reading Association and of the National Reading Conference. He has written more than 100 published papers and reports on reading difficulties, and is the author or coauthor of What Really Matters in Response to Intervention, What Really Matters in Fluency, Classrooms That Work, and Schools That Work. Dick is a former classroom teacher, reading specialist, and federal programs director who has studied and written about reading intervention including his influential article in the Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, “If They Don’t Read Much, How They Ever Gonna Get Good?”.