A Balanced Approach to Beginning Reading Instruction: A Synthesis of Six Major U.S. Research Studies

By John E. Cowen

If you are an educator of young children, you're likely to have participated in the ongoing dialogue about the reading wars - the historical debate about the best way to teach reading. You can address... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 087207515X
• ISBN13: 9780872075153
• Release Date: April 2003
• Publisher: Intl Literacy Assn
• Length: 120 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.3" x 6.0"

Customer Reviews

A great reference for Reading Teachers

I never would have picked up this book had it not been assigned reading for my class. However, once I got into it, I really appreciated what it was setting out to do. Cowen tracks the six major reading research studies conducted since the 1960's that report their findings on what methods/approaches improve reading performance. The nice thing about it is he has done the work to cull through all the detailed research and presents in a succinct format the basic and most important aspects and findings of each study. There is a list in this book of the fifteen elements to a good reading program developed by a group of successful classroom teachers. I loved that! I found myself agreeing whole-heartedly and making mental notes of what to tweak in my classroom for next year. Not only do these studies recommend what practices cultivate successful readers, but also how much time the research says should be devoted to those practices in the classroom. This is really a must read for beginning reading teachers in any grade as well as seasoned teachers looking for meaningful/applicable professional development. Its 80 pages that will really give you a big pictures of the trends in reading instruction and the consensus among researchers and classroom teachers about best practices. One of the greatest aspects of this book is that Cowen presents all this data in a way that validates the classroom teacher. He actually addressed in his introduction that one of the biggest problems in public policy regarding education is that the classroom teacher is seen and treated as the problem and not the solution. He has high regard for the work of classroom teachers, and points out that all of the six studies show that the most important predictor of a child's reading success is their classroom teacher. The methodology and the materials are a distant second. This would be a great book for a curriculum coordinator to use for inservice training.