How to Teach Reading to Elementary and Middle School Students: Practical Ideas from Highly Effective Teachers

How to Teach Reading to Elementary and Middle School Students: Practical Ideas from Highly Effective Teachers  is a strategy-based text that successfully combines ideas from the classrooms of highly effective teachers with the latest findings from reading research.  The integration of skilled practice with reading theory provides practical, useful techniques for teaching reading to students across a wide range of achievement levels. 

The text strongly emphasizes information for developing early reading and spelling abilities, including techniques for nurturing phonemic awareness and emergent writing.  Conveying the best practices for teaching reading throughout the elementary and middle school years, instructional ideas presented in this book are designed to ensure continued growth in reading skill – in word identification, including use of  phonics and structural analysis; in sight vocabulary and meaning vocabulary development; in reading fluency;  and in comprehension of narrative and informational based text.  Suggestions for assessment of reading progress are integrated throughout the book and a full chapter comprehensively treats a wide variety of useful assessment techniques.

How to Teach Reading to Elementary and Middle School Students focuses on developing highly successful readers at various achievement levels in real-life classrooms.  The author’s acclaimed research findings on highly effective and influential teachers help this text to stand out among similar books on the market.  These findings form the basis for instructional strategies developed throughout the book.

    Bob Ruddell has been a reading teacher for over four decades.  His research has examined the characteristics of  reading teachers who are highly effective and influential in the lives of their students.  The ideas and instructional strategies for teaching reading found in this book are a distillation of these teaching experiences and research findings.

          He has successfully combined his work in public schools with his university teaching and research and  has worked with students and teachers in schools ranging from the inner city to rural areas.  He has also lectured and conducted workshops for teachers in each of the 50  states, as well as in England, Sweden, Germany, Australia, Canada, and the Ivory Coast.   He has taught a wide range of courses in reading and language development working with teaching credential students, and M.A., Ed.D. and Ph.D. students at Berkeley.  He is Professor Emeritus of the Language, Literacy, and Culture Faculty Group at the University of California, Berkeley.

          Dr. Ruddell received his MA degree from West Virginia University and George Peabody College for Teachers and his Doctorate from Indiana University.   He is the recipient of the International Reading Association’s William S. Gray Citation of Merit, recognizing lifetime achievement and leadership contributions to the field of reading and literacy development.  He received the Oscar S. Causey Research Award from the National Reading Conference recognizing his research on effective and influential teachers.  Bob also received the Crystal Apple award from the California Reading Association for his high quality teaching and research work.   He has been President of the International Reading Association’s  Reading Hall of Fame, and has served on the IRA Board of Directors.  He is senior editor (with Normal Unrau) of Theoretical Models and Processes of Reading (International Reading Association). Professor Ruddell’s articles have appeared in the Reading Teacher and Language Arts, as well as in a variety of research journals and yearbooks.  His research and teaching interests are focused on the study of comprehension and critical thinking, word identification skills, reader motivation, and the ways in which highly effective and influential teachers develop these skills with their students. 

          Bob and his wife, Sandy, enjoy travel throughout the United States and internationally.  They especially enjoy visits from their three grandchildren ― Rebecca, Grace, and Madeline.  Bob delights in conversation with his former students, and he relaxes with suspense and mystery novels, and a good round of golf.  He can be reached at  rruddell@berkeley.edu .