All Info About Reading

 Parents and teachers alike will find this book to be a great resource in many ways.  Whether you are teaching in the intermediate grades and are searching for some guidance about appropriate reading skills to work on, or are working with older readers who are not developing their skills in the usual time frame, you will find answers and suggestions in this book.  Unlike many more scholarly works, this one is rife with practical, hands-on suggestions.  It explains the development of the reading process fully and in ways that a nonprofessional can grasp easily.  The text is clear and easy to read, and the book will be a great help to homeschooling parents or those who feel they need to take a hand in their children’s reading instruction for whatever reason. 

Wiley Blevins carefully explains the concepts within the scope of the book, including exactly what phonics is, how children learn about phonics, the methods generally used in phonics instruction, and how to teach the necessary skills.  The book includes many actual lesson plans, lists of words that fit with different phonics concepts, and a complete outline of how to fit phonics into the larger area of word attack skills.  A student who masters the skills outlined in this book will be well on the way to being a competent reader. 

In addition to the detailed lesson plans and activity ideas, Blevins has included many, many helpful references.   The reader is steered toward more detailed works about language development, word analysis, and more.  Blevins also reviews and assesses several common reading programs with proven successful track records, including the Wilson System, the Lindamood program, and five other programs.  Simple assessments that parents or other adults can give are also included so that concerned parents can quantify their child’s strengths and weaknesses and be better informed when talking to teachers.

Teaching Phonics and Word Study in the Intermediate Grades is clearly written and easy to read.  The author has made great use of titles and subtitles, graphic organizers, bulleted lists, and insets of information, clarifying and distilling most concepts so that the reader can easily skim and find relevant information rather than reading cover to cover if that is preferred.  I highly recommend Teaching Phonics and Word Study in the Intermediate Grades!  This resource book by Wiley Blevins calls itself a “complete sourcebook,” and that’s certainly true.

Sound interesting?  Check it out at Amazon.com!

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