Every Young Child a Reader : Using Marie Clay's Key Concepts for Classroom Instruction

This resource will help K –2 teachers revitalize and restructure their classroom literacy instruction based on Marie Clay’s groundbreaking and transformative literacy processing theory. Clay’s theories have created literacy success for more than 2 million struggling first-grade readers in the United States and internationally through the Reading Recovery® program. This practical volume gives primary grade teachers specific suggestions for using these principles and includes rich, robust instructional examples to ensure that all children meet new and rigorous standards in all facets of literacy learning. Replete with explicit depictions of classroom practice, the book addresses the following critical aspects of K–2 literacy instruction:

• Teaching foundational skills in brief skills lessons and as children learn strategic activity to read and write text.
• Teaching for children’s fast progress in increasingly complex literacy tasks.
• Understanding the role of complex, instructional, familiar, and easy texts in reading instruction.
• Teaching for knowledge building, comprehension, and writing for narrative and informational text.

Reader-friendly chapters include:

• Focus questions to target readers’ anticipation of topics discussed.
• Illustrative examples of powerful teacher-student interaction.
• Connections between Clay’s comprehensive theory of children’s literacy development, literacy standards, and children’s fast progress to literacy proficiency.

Sharan A. Gibson is professor emeritus of literacy education and trainer emeritus of teacher leaders for Reading Recovery®. Barbara Moss is professor emeritus of literacy education. Both are faculty members in the School of Teacher Education, San Diego State University.