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

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?”.