Every Young Child a Reader

This resource will help K –2 teachers revitalize and restructure their classroom literacy instruction based on Marie Clay’s groundbreaking and transformative literacy processing theory. Clay’s theories have created literacy success for more than 2 million struggling first-grade readers in the United States and internationally through the Reading Recovery® program. This practical volume gives primary grade teachers specific suggestions for using these principles and includes rich, robust instructional examples to ensure that all children meet new and rigorous standards in all facets of literacy learning. Replete with explicit depictions of classroom practice, the book addresses the following critical aspects of K–2 literacy instruction:

• Teaching foundational skills in brief skills lessons and as children learn strategic activity to read and write text.
• Teaching for children’s fast progress in increasingly complex literacy tasks.
• Understanding the role of complex, instructional, familiar, and easy texts in reading instruction.
• Teaching for knowledge building, comprehension, and writing for narrative and informational text.

Reader-friendly chapters include:

• Focus questions to target readers’ anticipation of topics discussed.
• Illustrative examples of powerful teacher-student interaction.
• Connections between Clay’s comprehensive theory of children’s literacy development, literacy standards, and children’s fast progress to literacy proficiency.

Sharan A. Gibson is professor emeritus of literacy education and trainer emeritus of teacher leaders for Reading Recovery®. Barbara Moss is professor emeritus of literacy education. Both are faculty members in the School of Teacher Education, San Diego State University.

" In Every Young Child a Reader: Using Marie Clay’s Key Concepts for Classroom Instruction, authors Sharan A. Gibson and Barbara Moss explore reading and writing instruction with a goal of providing practicing K–2 teachers with pragmatic tools to support the literacy development of the youngest readers. Gibson and Moss offer a concise framework and draw together research around critical components of early literacy development."

—Teachers College Record

“Gibson and Moss connect word knowledge with the most foundational of skills, explaining how conceptual knowledge and vocabulary help even the youngest students make sense of texts when they try to us multiple sources of information to figure out unfamiliar words.”

—Illinois Reading Council Journal

"This book is highly recommended for the many suggestions and recommendations involving children's behavior. This is an important subject and is approached in a similar manner."

—M. G. Paregian

"These writers challenge us to implement differentiated teaching in classrooms to meet the instructional needs of individuals, and they have provided a rich source of information to help us do it."
—From the Foreword by Gay Su Pinnell, professor emeritus, The Ohio State University

“Each chapter contains information on how primary teachers can apply Marie Clay’s understandings of literacy development for effective, differentiated teaching. The combination of Clay’s research and theory with the authors' understanding of these principles in today’s classroom is what sets this book apart.”
—Lisa Lenhart, director, Center for Literacy Curricular & Instructional Studies, The University of Akron

“A powerful and intensive early intervention, like Reading Recovery®, can help accelerate the learning of many students who enter school with little literacy knowledge or confusion that interferes with classroom learning. Gibson and Moss provide a resource for classroom teachers to support the continued learning of all their students, especially those who need an aware and skilled teacher to keep them on track across the primary grades as they construct a self-extending processing system for reading and writing.”
—Robert M. Schwartz, professor, Oakland University, and trainer of teacher leaders, Reading Recovery® Center for Michigan

“This text combines Marie Clay’s literacy processing theory with relevant topics and best practices that build and strengthen early literacy classroom instruction. This comprehensive and well-designed book will be an excellent professional development resource for classroom teachers, Reading Recovery® teachers, literacy coaches/specialists, and site administrators.”
—Kathleen Brown, Reading Recovery® teacher leader, Long Beach Unified School District, CA

"This book is a must read for classroom teachers passionate about helping all students become strategic, independent, and enthusiastic readers and writers. It is brimming with practical application, including examples of explicit teacher language and instructional interactions with students. Dr. Gibson and Dr. Moss have expertly described how to apply Marie Clay's complex theory of literacy processing to daily instruction in K-2 classrooms. I am eager to use this book with my colleagues as we work to transform early literacy learning in our primary classrooms."
—Terry MacIntyre, Reading Recovery teacher leader, Boulder Valley School District, CO