Note: This is the loose-leaf version of Understanding Reading Problems and does not include access to the Pearson eText. To order the Pearson eText packaged with the loose-leaf version, use ISBN 013384661X.

The market-leading, dependable guide for assessing literacy at every stage of development and implementing corrective instruction.

In this widely popular book, classroom teachers get up-to-date coverage of reading processes, their assessment, and their corrective instruction, including thorough treatment of reading and writing at every stage of development. The new edition provides updated coverage of the Common Core State Standards and the imperative to teach English learners. Included are an overview of essential reading processes—acquiring emergent literacy concepts, word recognition, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension, as well as spelling and writing—and a review of the stages of literacy development—emergent, beginning reading, building fluency, reading to learn and for pleasure, and mature reading. Thorough explanations and detailed procedures for assessing and teaching emergent literacy look at phonological awareness, phonics and word knowledge from beginning to advanced levels, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension of narrative and informational text. Teaching techniques range from the Response to Intervention framework to strategies for individual students, including those whose home language is not English. Diagnostic and week-to-week monitoring procedures, as well as formal assessments and testing terminology are covered in detail, and a full chapter covers laws and policies affecting children with special needs, as well as other physical and cognitive factors that impinge on students’ literacy growth. 

Jean Gillet has been an elementary reading specialist in central Virginia. She has also served as a classroom teacher, staff development specialist, and university educator. Her professional interests include the diagnosis and correction of reading difficulties, children’s developmental spelling, and children’s writing. Jean’s extensive published work includes topics such as including contributing to classroom instructional materials on writing and spelling. The coauthor of several textbooks for teachers on language arts, reading, writing, and spelling, she received her doctorate from the University of Virginia.

Charles Temple teaches courses in literacy, children’s literature, and storytelling at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. He trained as a reading clinician at the McGuffey Reading Center at the University of Virginia where he earned his Ph.D. He has co-authored many textbooks for teacher education, including All Children Reading, Children’s Books in Children’s Hands, The Beginnings of Writing, and The Developmental Literacy Inventory.  Temple has worked on literacy and democratization projects on five continents, and currently volunteers as a teacher trainer and children’s book editor in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Tanzania. He plays banjo and guitar, and is a children’s book author.

Codruca Temple teaches courses in literacy, applied linguistics, and teaching methods for English Language Learners at the State University of New York at Cortland, where she oversees certification programs for teachers of foreign languages and programs for TESOL, preschool through grade 12.  She earned her doctorate in English Education and Linguistics at Syracuse University. She is coauthor of The Beginnings of Writing. Charles and Codruca Temple have five children and two grandchildren between them. They enjoy reading, writing, sailing, traveling, and walking their dog Jackie along Seneca Lake in Geneva, New York.

Alan Crawford is Emeritus Professor of Education at California State University, Los Angeles. A Past President of the California Reading Association, he has done extensive teaching, consulting, and writing on teaching reading in the elementary school, especially for English language learners. Alan has written curriculum for teaching reading in Spanish and serves on the Editorial Review Board of Lectura y Vida. He served as IRA’s representative to UNESCO for many years and was a Senior Literacy Specialist at UNESCO in Paris during International Literacy Year (1989-90). He is a director of Critical Thinking International and frequently presents workshops on a volunteer basis for international development projects in Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Africa.