Reading Instruction Books

I have found this book to be one that I don't ever want to misplace. Not only does it help one in actually reading chord rhythms, but also in finding new rhythms.

This is an interesting, engaging entry point into the analysis of visuals as communicative, or rhetorical, devices. Even ten years later, much of Kress and van Leeuwen's book is still relevant and easily extrapolated into the digital media. It provides, as a colleague of mine said, a useful toolbox for any critic.

Pressley's stated goal is to provide a "reader-friendly review of the research evidence pertaining to beginning reading, one that doesn't require [readers] to have technical background knowledge in reading research." In this he succeeds admirably. While the text is chock-full of references to studies and analyses, it is by no means a dry, dense tome. It is most definitely reader- and teacher-friendly.

As denoted in the subtitle, Pressley argues for balanced instruction. "Whole-language theorists," he writes, "had it about half-right with respect to the development of reading skills. Yes, authentic reading and writing are important in the development of literacy, but systematic instruction in skills is also very important." Both whole language and skills only instruction are incomplete models, notes Pressley. What is needed is a balance of the two.

Throughout the book and in numerous ways, Pressley makes several points that any teacher (no matter what his or her grade level or subject area) should keep in mind:

-reading is an extremely active process

-the point of reading is not to simply read the words but rather to construct meaning

-students can and should be taught comprehension strategies beginning even in the primary years

-effective reading instruction includes skills instruction, immersion in a rich literacy environment, and the explicit teaching of comprehension strategies

Readers will find a gold mine of information throughout the text. Especially helpful, for example, is an overview and discussion of an analysis that he and Peter Afflerbach did in 1995. The two reviewed studies published up to that point and constructed a summary of what good readers do. In short, good readers:

-overview the text

-are "clear about what they want to get from it"

-make a reading plan

-decide which parts of the text should be read first; which parts should be read with care

-relate their prior knowledge to what they are reading

-vary their speed

-stop to reread when necessary

-draw conclusions while reading (conclusions which might eventually change as they read further)

-"integrate ideas encountered in different parts of the text"

-look for cause and effect connections

-make many interpretations as they read

-form mental images

-use fix-up strategies when understanding breaks down

-create summary comments

-reflect on the text

Unlike some books of this type, Reading Instruction That Works is not simply an overview of current reading research. Rather, Pressley includes much discussion of what the research means to the individual classroom teacher. There are, for example, two especially helpful (and inspiring) sections on outstanding teachers. Pressley takes the reader into real classrooms and offers a fly-on-the-wall perspective of what is happening in both exceptional as well as typical classrooms. It is certainly an eye-opening, and ultimately encouraging, discussion.

One particularly cogent chapter of the book is titled "Before Reading Words Begins." If you have ever wondered what phonemic awareness is and how to develop it in your students, you will come away from this chapter informed and motivated. Here Pressley notes, "Many kindergarten and grade-1 children lack the awareness that words are streams of sounds that can be disentangled and that sounds can be assembled to produce words." In other words, they lack phonemic awareness. "Fortunately," writes Pressley, "phonemic awareness can be developed through instruction, with clear benefits to subsequent acquisition of reading skills."

One section that teachers of disadvantaged, at-risk children will identify with is a discussion concerning weak readers' failures to make inferences. Pressley notes, " . . . inferential skills depend in part on the possession of prior knowledge related to text. Poor readers are often very deficient in their knowledge of the world relative to good readers." One reason--although certainly not the only reason--poor readers are deficient in their knowledge of the world is because they are poor readers. They do not learn as much content from reading as their peers who are better readers. It is an unfortunate cycle. Comprehension depends of prior knowledge. Poor readers are not absorbing that knowledge from texts because they are poor readers. Thus, as Pressley notes, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

One point that our study group found especially fascinating is "rather than trying to sound out an unfamiliar word, poorer readers rely on textual and picture cues and clues to make a guess about a word's meaning . . . Although such students might process the letters somewhat and use some letter-level information in making their guess, their processing of the letter cues is much less complete than it could be, with the picture and semantic-contextual cues given priority." This, we agreed, was something that we had witnessed over and over in our classrooms. So, while semantic-contextual cues are helpful for determining the meaning of the word, "[l]etter-level cues," notes Pressley, "are the primary means of recognizing words."

It is impossible to do justice to this wonderful work in a brief review such as this. We strongly encourage you to get the book for yourself and spend some time reading and reflecting upon it. Highly recommended. A rock-solid, impressive work.

Reviewed by the Education Oasis Staff

Defining whole-language or for that matter the skills-emphasis approach to literacy has been as elusive to many in the teaching profession as the recovery of the lost ark. In Michael Pressley's newest book Reading Instruction That Works: The Case for Balanced Teaching, he makes a gallant attempt and a plea to stop the confusion and start the process of a constructivist "balanced approach" to literacy. It is a must read for any professional who desires to understand the current trends that have shaped literacy programs across the country in the last thirty years. Pressley shakes his ink-stained finger at whole-language zealots and skills-based robotrons with commendable due process as he clearly explains the foundational constructs that have developed in each "camp" over the years, and the political feuding it has caused and will likely continue over the next decade. But Pressley goes further by logically and diplomatically identifying the roots of the literacy controversy and lack of proper teacher training that stems from instructional deficits on the university level. He makes his case for a balanced approach to literacy with the idea that taking the best of both literacy philosophies will lead to an end of the squabbling and result in much more time focusing on the imperative instructional needs of children. Simple as this sounds, it is not. Frank Smith: "A word can not be recognized until its meaning has been comprehended....The first alternative is-to skip over the puzzling word. The second alternative is to guess what the unknown word might be. And the final and least preferred alternative is to sound out the word." (page 66, Reading Without Nonsense)

Ken Goodman: "Reading is a psycholinguistic guessing game." (Pages 115-16, The Reading Process: Cycles and Strategies)

Constance Weaver: "It's not necessary. Just as they learn patterns of oral language, so most children will unconsciously learn common phonics patterns." (Page 197, Reading Process and Practice)

What do all of the whole-language princes and their queen have in common? That is a rhetorical question that requires little thought, indeed. What has been stated has resulted in a credibility problem-one that is not readily admitted nor easily abandoned by the promoters of an incomplete philosophy. On the other hand, Pressley is quick to point out with another ink-stained finger the shortcomings of a skills-emphasis approach without regard to comprehension. Reading and comprehension are two very distinct features of literacy and must be addressed as Pressley states:

The skills-emphasis model...fails because the skills that are the focus of the skills-emphasis enthusiasts, especially decoding skills, are not all there is to literacy. The skills-emphasis model is an incomplete model of literacy development, one that does not even acknowledge as important many defensible whole-language practices that are embraced by those who control the elementary schoolplace- elementary teachers. (Page 268, Reading Instruction That Works: The Case for Balanced Teaching)

Pressley goes on to identify what happens in excellent classrooms and provides mountains of research evidence and sources from his personal longitudinal studies to decades old research that is still verifiable. He also manages to include a nice child development abstract and a well-summarized appendix of "Landmarks in Development of Literacy Competence from 0 to Beyond the Elementary Years". As a final kick in the "hoo-haa," Pressley includes a Dave Letterman style "Ten Dumb and Dangerous Claims about Reading Instruction" that would almost be funny if they were not so pathetically damaging. He does make a good case for reading instruction that works-balanced reading and comprehension practices that need to be implemented by all teachers who instruct children in literacy as a matter of course.

I bought this book for a class. I found the book to be very informative. It will definitely help me improve my teaching ability of reading. I am pleased with this book. It is worth keeping.

I had the good fortune to buy this book several years ago at a used book store before I had any exposure to the field of art history. It was my mistake not to read it thoroughly when I first got it; as I became more familiar with the art covered in this volume as well as the secondary literature, I realized that it contains some of the best essays written by some of the best minds to have worked on the problems of art history. Among the exceptional essays collected in this volume: Otto Demus on Byzantine mosaics, Katzenellenbogen on the Romanesque tympanum at Vezelay, Panofsky on Jan van Eyck, Millard Meiss on Sienese painting, Beazley on Greek art, Rhys Carpenter on classical architecture. These are masterpieces of art history, judged by the amount of information they compress and their continued relevance in a field where so much of what's written ages poorly if at all.

I was pleased to come across this book during my research for my master's thesis on music and artificial intelligence. Although there are a number of books on the subject, they tend to be collections of previously published articles or conference papers and are intended for an audience that already knows the subject of AI fairly well. This book, however, is not a compilation of articles, but a collection of chapters by various authors who were commissioned to write new material for the book. The result is a book with good introductory material in the field of AI and music, covering composition, analysis, knowledge representation, connectionism, and even music education/intelligent tutoring systems. At the end of each chapter, there is a bibliography pointing the reader towards more sources on that particular topic. I also think this would make a good textbook for an introductory class on AI and music for undergraduates (upper division) and graduate students that would appeal to all majors: theory and composition, musicology, and music education (and perhaps to a lesser extent, performance majors). I only wish this book had been available when I first began my research for my thesis - it would have made life a lot simpler! I highly recommend this book as the first book for any reader interested in this subject.

I was assigned to read this book for one of my education grad classes. There have been many books I've resold once the class was completed; this one, however, is a keeper! This was an amazing book. Anyone interested in education should find this a fascinating read. Those of us who believe students deserve better instruction will be amazed how many top-notch researchers came to similar conclusions 100 years earlier. Sometimes the accounts could be frustrating when reading how little has changed regardless of the quality research that has been in existence. When strong and blatantly obvious research supports that students perform better in student-centered classes rather than teacher-centered, lecture-based classes, why is it that so many schools (especially middle and secondary) still operated in the outdated model? I highly recommend this book to anyone who still has hope for improving the future of our children's education.

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn did not edit this book

This book will challenge your musicality, but the time you spend with it is well worth it. Rhythm is so simple, yet very difficult for some kinds of musical artists to incorporate into their music-making (of course, I'm talking about vocalists). I like the approach presented here, and Bruce Arnold is a responsive author. He even sent me a replacement disc for a damaged CD that came with the book.