Educators often feel frustrated by their school's lack of comprehensive programs to address the needs of diverse learners. Many noted literacy experts believe that school programs for diverse learners will remain ineffectual until instruction involves teachers, specialists, administrators, and families in collaborative decision making, mediation, negotiation, and respect for differences.
"Collaboration for Diverse Learners" brings together several expert perspectives on achieving effective collaboration to accelerate the literacy development of diverse learners. You will find in this important volume many resources to guide your own decision making and development of successful collaboration programs: in-depth analyses of collaborative efforts, multiple ways to think about collaboration and its implementation, and examples of collaborative projects that are successfully in place in schools throughout the United States. You'll be especially inspired by the first-hand stories of educators, children, and families who present the possibilities for partnerships that advance the learning of all students.
Published by International Reading Association

Unlike any other work in the field of literacy education, this book offers readers a unique and progressive approach for preparing prospective and inservice teachers, and graduate students, to effectively teach the literacy skills to K-12 students that are needed for eventual college and career success. The book is not a traditional text on professional development that focuses on, "this is what teachers need to know and be able to do as literacy teachers." Rather, the book's focus is on engaging teachers, as adult learners, in professional learning that is collaborative, substantive, situated, dynamic, intense, and personal. These six themes are woven throughout the book, and are exemplified through real-life scenarios that follow elementary and secondary teachers from the Blue Falls School District as they explore and expand their own professional learning about effective literacy instruction, based on student assessment, teacher reflection, and problem solving. The reader is provided with useful tools for creating literacy teams, needs assessments, reflective book study groups, effective coaching practices, and more.

Tens of thousands of students begin each new school year with the hope that they will finally find the teacher who will help them succeed as readers, writers, and learners. This book shows how teachers can provide the type of differentiated instruction that struggling readers need by drawing on students' individual and cultural backgrounds, as well as the results of classroom-based diagnostic and progress-monitoring assessment measures. The authors include authentic examples and case studies from diverse primary and intermediate/middle school classrooms to show how instruction can be implemented and adjusted to accommodate students' individual differences--differences that are influenced by their schools and instructional backgrounds, their cultural and linguistic histories, their interests and activities, their reading and writing habits in and out of school, and their understandings and misunderstandings about texts, print, and digital media. Classroom teachers, reading specialists, reading coaches, and prospective teachers are invited to analyse and reflect about each case presented to help them provide the type of instruction that will change the trajectory for students who continue to fail in reading.

*From expert authors, a much-needed resource on implementing equitable, unbiased reading assessments. *Presents 28 formative assessment strategies that measure students' background knowledge, strengths, comprehension, decoding skills, and more. *Easy to use--features step-by-step methods, vivid examples, and 30 reproducible forms. *For any K-5 classroom: more or less diverse, resource rich or poor, native English speaking or multilingual.

*From expert authors, a much-needed resource on implementing equitable, unbiased reading assessments. *Presents 28 formative assessment strategies that measure students' background knowledge, strengths, comprehension, decoding skills, and more. *Easy to use--features step-by-step methods, vivid examples, and 30 reproducible forms. *For any K-5 classroom: more or less diverse, resource rich or poor, native English speaking or multilingual.