What Really Matters for Middle School Readers: From Research to Practice: What Really Matters

Dick Allington is professor of literacy studies at the University of Tennessee. He is past-president of the International Reading Association and the National Reading Conference (now the Literacy Research Association). His research has been funded by the U.S. Department of Education and the National Institutes of Health. He has published over 150 scholarly papers and more than 10 books. His writing has been focused on translating research findings into educational practice.

The latest from well-known author and literacy expert Richard Allington is intended as the first step in preparing future teachers to provide early adolescents with high-quality literacy instruction. What Really Matters for Middle School Readers: From Research to Practice looks at the areas that struggling adolescents find most difficult--meaning, vocabulary, (especially for academic words), and inferential comprehension--and focuses on ways to foster accelerated growth. Dr. Allington stresses that through expanding the volume of high-success reading that students experience each day, as well as through the wide variety of additional classroom strategies and methodologies included in the text, middle school students can achieve a working literacy proficiency.

"I was absolutely riveted and engrossed in the material at the beginning of the first chapter...The information presented should be the very first in-service teachers receive at the beginning of the school year. Everything from the changing demographics to the lack of reading instruction in the middle years, to the effective teaching strategies should be sung from on high in every district of America." -- Theresa Barone, Derby Middle School

Dick Allington is professor of literacy studies at the University of Tennessee. He is past president of the International Reading Association and the National Reading Conference (now the Literacy Research Association). His research has been funded by the U.S. Department of Education and the National Institutes of Health. He has published over 150 scholarly papers and more than 10 books. His writing has been focused on translating research findings into educational practice.