Making the Most of Your Core Reading Program: Research-Based Essentials

Enhance the effectiveness of your core reading program

“Many children need more than a core reading program can offer. We hope our book puts a few more tools in your toolbox and that you’ll be equipped to give every single reader a shot not just at proficiency, but at a lifetime love of reading.”
―Peter Dewitz and Jonni Wolskee

You want to reach every reader, but what if your core reading program can’t stretch that far? Making the Most of Your Core Reading Program shares teaching that extends your core program to meet everyone’s needs, especially when purchasing a new program is not in the budget.

Peter Dewitz and Jonni Wolskee don’t advocate moving out of your core reading program. Instead they offer an instructional blueprint for remodeling it with research-driven, classroom-tested strategies. Responding to the most common needs of teachers using core programs, they offer proven ways to:

• increase flexibility in lesson planning
• help whole-group lessons reach all students
• differentiate word study through small-group instruction
• build fluency, knowledge, and enthusiasm
• enhance vocabulary instruction
• boost readers’ prior knowledge
• support comprehension via small groups.

Peter and Jonni also include sample lesson plans, planning guides, ways to extend understanding, and other supports, ideal for individual practitioners, teams, or schools.

“Teachers are the key to reading instruction, not the materials that come in the box,” write Peter Dewitz and Jonni Wolskee. “So many teachers want to do better but are butting up against the limitations of their core program.” Now with Making the Most of Your Core Reading Program you can finally reach every reader―even if your core program can’t.

Peter Dewitz is coauthor with Jonni Wolskee of the Heinemann title Making the Most of Your Core Reading Program. He has decades of experience and the goal of giving the best possible support to teachers in any classroom context. “We’ve written this book,” write Peter and Jonni, “to help teachers in core programs feel more confident about making decisions that benefit all readers.” Peter is a researcher who has studied core programs, a professor, and a staff developer with public schools, especially Reading First schools. During this work and the research he has published on it, he came to understand that following a core reading program with fidelity usually shortchanged struggling readers, bored the best readers, and often turned reading instruction into a mind numbing routine for students and teachers alike.

Jonni Wolskee is coauthor with Peter Dewitz of the Heinemann title Making the Most of Your Core Reading Program. She has decades of experience and the goal of giving the best possible support to teachers in any classroom context. “We’ve written this book,” write Jonni and Peter, “to help teachers in core programs feel more confident about making decisions that benefit all readers.” She is a very successful kindergarten/first grade teacher and reading specialist who is a veteran of core reading programs. She hopes that her experiences—with when to follow the program, when to modify it, and even when to ignore it—will help other teachers to think of their core program as a toolbox and Making the Most of Your Core Reading Program as a guide to using them most effectively.