Designing Meaning-Based Interventions for Struggling Readers

This highly practical book helps K–8 teachers implement effective reading interventions that support meaningful comprehension and engage students with interesting, age-appropriate texts. Andrew P. Johnson presents a range of strategies for addressing difficulties in the core areas of word identification, fluency, and comprehension. Packed with illustrative figures, the book provides guidance and tools for assessing reading problems, combining and adapting interventions for particular students, planning writing activities to enhance reading, aligning efforts within a response-to-intervention framework, and designing individualized education programs. Informed by current research, Johnson candidly targets "educational malpractice” and helps readers puzzle through the controversies surrounding dyslexia diagnoses and special education decision making.

Andrew P. Johnson, PhD, is Professor of Literacy Instruction and Distinguished Faculty Scholar at Minnesota State University, Mankato. He specializes in literacy instruction for students with intellectual and learning disabilities, response to intervention for reading and writing, strategies for the inclusive classroom, and advanced pedagogy. Prior to his university career, he taught in elementary, middle, and high school classrooms for 9 years. Dr. Johnson is the author of numerous academic articles, book chapters, and books related to literacy and learning, and hosts a podcast, The Reading Instruction Show.

Introduction
I. Background Information
1. Instruction and Interventions
2. Educational Research and Theoretical Models
3. Understanding the Reading Process
4. Coming to a Common Understanding
II. Elements of a Meaning-Based Intervention for Reading
5. How a Meaning-Based Intervention for Reading Works
6. Language Experience Activities
7. Word Work
8. Sight Words and Scope and Sequence Carts
9. Word Identification Strategies
10. Cloze and Maze Activities: Semantic Cueing
11. Writing for Reading
12. Fluency
13. Comprehension
14. Reading Practice (More, Please)
III. Diagnosing, Assessing, and Monitoring Progress
15. Standardized Tests
16. Diagnosing the Problem
17. Progress Monitoring
IV. Individualized Education Programs
18. Individualized Education Programs for Reading
19. Peer-Reviewed Research
V. Designing Reading Interventions
20. Response-to-Intervention Particulars
21. Scientifically Based Research
22. When the Gold Standard Is Un-Golden: A Review of Torgesen et al. (2009)
23. Evaluating Research
24. Students with Dyslexia
VI. Issues in Special Education
25. Problems in the Special Education World
Epilogue
References
Index