Secondary ELA Resources

Comprehensive, authoritative, and designed for practical utility, this handbook presents evidence-based approaches for helping struggling readers and those at risk for literacy difficulties or delays. Chapters include clear descriptions of effective interventions for word recognition, spelling, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, and writing, complete with concrete examples and teaching scripts.

Nonfiction books for children--from biographies and historical accounts of communities and events to works on science and social justice--have traditionally been most highly valued by educators and parents for their factual accuracy. This approach, however, misses an opportunity for young readers to participate in the generation and testing of information.  The first book-length work to theorize children's nonfiction as nonfiction from a literary perspective, A Literature of Questions carefully explains how the genre speaks in unique ways to its young readers and how it invites them to the project of understanding. At the same time, it clearly lays out a series of techniques for analysis. By looking at a text's willingness or reluctance to let children interrogate its information and ideological context, Sanders reveals how nonfiction can make young readers part of the project of learning rather than passive recipients of information.

In Raising Kids Who Read, bestselling author and psychology professor Daniel T. Willingham provides practical solutions for engendering a love of reading that lasts into adulthood. Intellectually rich argumentation is woven seamlessly with entertaining current cultural references, examples, and steps for taking action to encourage reading. The three key elements for reading enthusiasm--decoding, comprehension, and motivation--are explained in depth in Raising Kids Who Read. Most books on the topic focus on early childhood, but Willingham understands that kids' needs change as they grow older, and the science-based approach in Raising Kids Who Read applies to kids of all ages.