Literacy Lessons: Designed for Individuals - Part One

"Successful early literacy intervention must be designed for individuals and delivered by trained teachers in the first two years of school.""Literacy Lessons: Designed for Individuals," in two parts, provides administrators and specially-trained teachers with guidance for managing the early literacy intervention called Reading Recovery. It answers the questions of Why?, When? and How? individual literacy lessons for young children at risk can be highly successful.

This book is remarkable. It's an outstanding guidebook for training teachers. It is rich in presentations of theoretical concepts and clear rationales for early literacy intervention procedures. New procedures and more extended discussions of familiar procedures are carefully presented and clearly linked to research and theory. Familiar research on oral language development and current or newer research related to brain functioning and cognitive development are woven into discussions, and the frequent suggestions of additional reading are extremely helpful. Many aspects of this book are valuable. The arguments supporting the need for instruction designed for the idiosyncratic needs of each child at risk are important. The recurring references to individual instruction woven across the book reinforce those arguments. Sections such as What is 'reading' during the early lessons?, What does it mean to 'know' a letter? What does it mean to know a word? will facilitate good discussions and teacher understanding.

Both teachers and administrators will gain powerful insights about early literacy intervention for at-risk learners from the two texts. The potential effect on the education of young children is profound.

- Professor Mary Anne Doyle, University of Connecticut
Chair, Executive Board of the International Reading Recovery Trainers Organization.

A comprehensive review of Reading Recovery in the United States by five distinguished authors is available separately at the RRCNA Web site. Authors Maribeth Schmitt, Billie Askew, Irene Fountas, Carol Lyons, and Gay Su Pinnell share their knowledge and provide persuasive evidence for the power of an early investment in changing futures of children.

Marie Clay, FRSNZ, FNZPsS, FNZEI(Hon), Emeritus Professor, taught in primary schools and then at the University of Auckland where, for the next 30 years she introduced educational psychologists to ways of preventing psychological problems. She did post-graduate study in Developmental Psychology at the University of Minnesota on a Fulbright Scholarship and completed her doctorate at the University of Auckland with a thesis entitled "Emergent Literacy." Her 'Reading (and writing) Recovery' is an early literacy intervention, which is now implemented in five countries, and three languages. Literacy Lessons Designed For Individuals integrates what has been learned from that innovation with new research and theoretical advocacies. Shifts in early literacy learning can be monitored by teachers using her Observation Survey of Early Literacy Achievement in English, Spanish and French. A series of individual lessons can be delivered in those languages to about 150,000 children worldwide annually using a guidebook called Reading Recovery: Guidelines for Teachers in Training. Literacy Lessons Designed for Individuals is a similar guidebook which aims to make accelerated progress possible for a wider range of problems. Marie Clay was past-President of the International Reading Association, served on the editorial committees of professional journals, was a research consultant at home and abroad including UNESCO, chaired a Social Science Research Committee advising government on policies and research allocations, and worked internationally with problem-solving related to early intervention research and practice.