Assessing and Addressing Literacy Needs: Cases and Instructional Strategies

Designed to help preservice and inservice teachers use assessments to identify problems and employ appropriate strategies to help their students become better readers, this text includes 12 case studies that detail children′s literacy struggles. The cases are embedded within a framework of research-based instructional interventions related to best practices in literacy instruction. The core chapters of the book are organized around six essential elements in learning to read―emergent literacy, word identification, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, and engagement―and include a review of the literature, assessment strategies, instructional interventions, a section on Intervening With Technology, and two detailed case reports.

Barbara Combs is Professor of Teaching & Learning and Associate Dean for Teacher Education in the College of Education and Human Development at University of North Dakota. She publishes regularly in leading Education journals (primarily in the area of literacy) and is author or editor of four books published by the Foxfire Fund, an educational and literary organization that advocates a learner-centered, community-based educational approach.