Reading Essentials: The Specifics You Need to Teach Reading Well

If you expect kids to just pick up reading on their own, then this book may be of some use. If you actually want to teach kids how to read, particularly that 30% or so that struggle with it, then go get some science and look elsewhere. Had to read this joke of a book in my teacher "certification" process being taught only whole language by a zealot. Education is dismal in the US....

...along with Frank Smith (READING WITHOUT NONESENSE), Brian Cambourne (READ AND RETELL), Ralph Fletcher (A WRITER'S NOTEBOOK), and James Gee (SOCIAL LINGUISTICS AND LITERACIES).This one represents the most "classroom friendly" of the bunch which might (in some eyes) put it a slight step ahead of the other heavyweights mentioned above.Each subheading alone gives a lesson about how to teach reading/literacy in a classroom (especially an early childhood one). Punctuated by pictures within short chapters, Routman allows the reader to absorb each chapter as a separate entity (similarly to James Gee's and Sonia Nieto's books).I would highly recommend this book for early childhood literacy experts (and everybody else) because it offers many guidelines (especially Chapter 8) on how best to instill the basic skeleton for emergent literacy.Bravo, Regie.

The title is fitting: there are many essential specifics in this book for guiding young students into becoming independent readers. I'm only half-way through reading it, and have already found many things that I plan to use next year. I believe every teacher should read it.

This book is in excellent condition!

Everything was fine.

Great book and good value!

Very easy read with inspiration and goals to bring into the classroom

I purchased this book via the Kindle. The book itself has good content and is easily readable. My issue with the kindle version is that it didn't translate the text well. The printed text has many boxed off portions I believe. What will happen is that they get cut off on my kindle. I can get the content of these "boxed" portions if I turn the audio on and listen to it, but it will not show up fully on my kindle screen. Because these boxes are all throughout the text, it is very frustration to try to read this text on the Kindle. I love the kindle for its convenience and for taking notes in the text (and also for there being just one less book entering my book-full house!) and was looking forward to having a textbook on my kindle. I would not recommend the Kindle version of this book though.