Customer Reviews

Complete Reading Disabilities Handbook: Ready-to-Use Techniques for Teaching Reading Disabled Students

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
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An excellent book, especially for a beginning special educator or elem. teacher. A main weakness is that it is voluminous and spiral bound -- heavy but easily ripped! I chose it one semester as required text for a reading methods class I teach to sp. ed. teacher candidates and it is so huge that I told them to bring it to class only on identified weeks. For a professional library, it contains a wealth of all kinds of information on the reading process, assessment & remediation.

This book may be large; still, it is filled with resources galore! The chapters speak for themselves and are entitled; What are Reading Disabilities?, General Guidelines and Materials for Diagnosing Reading Disabilities, Ready-To-Use Materials for Diagnosing Disabilities in the Word-Identification Techniques, Ready-To-Use Materials for Diagnosing Disabilities in Comprehension and basic Study Skills, Ready-To-Use Strategies and Activities for Correcting Disabilities in Word-Identification Techniques, and Ready-To-Use Strategies and Activities for Correcting Disabilities in Comprehension and Basic Study Skills.

Each of the above chapters are filled with wonderful ready to use assessments and remediations. Some of my favorite goodies in the book include; Emergent Literacy Behavioral Checklist, Primary Checklist For Teacher Observation of a Child's Reading Skills, the explanation of Running Records, the Graded Word Lists, the tests for Assessing Sight-Word Recognition in Context, and the games included for teaching different reading skills.

I use a variety of the many tests in this book as a pre-assessment at the start of the year and a post assessment at the end of the year. The book was well worth the money for me and is used often in my K-3 Resource Room.

Although this is a great resource it is a bit bulky. Even so, I wouldn't want less material. I appreciate the reproducible sheets so much. I don't have a lot to say that others haven't already said. I do want to recommend another set of books to use directly with the children. It is four Dolch sight word books by Betsy B. Lee. These don't look that much like little kid books and they are even used in middle school and the lower grades. Look up the author's name at amazon.

Complete Reading Disabilities Handbook: Ready-to-Use Techniques for Teaching Reading Disabled Students. This is an excellent handbook both for the specialist teacher and the mainstream class teacher who wish to help students who have a reading disability. The author Wilma Miller outlines for us the nature of reading disabilities and how best we can diagnose those disabilties. In the chapters of the book she goes on to provide us with ready to use strategies and activities for correcting disabilities in word-identification and comprehension. The book is practical and most useful. I would strongly recommend it to all interested in helping students with reading disabilities.

This handbook has mounds of helpful information and reproducible activity sheets, but can be overwhelming to sift through as there are no clear chapters or boundaries. Speaking as a dyslexic occupational therapist who works with children who are dyslexic, this book's format is slightly overwhelming at times. Additionally, the activities have "grade levels" written at the top of them which may cause esteem or confidence issues with the children who are likely reading below their grade levels.

This is such an excellent resource. As a former teacher and current mother who schools her children at home I have found this book useful. There is an introduction with examples of what has been done in the past and some of the types of students some of the reading methods this author has tried. There are many many resources available within this book. There are charts. There are analysis tools and more. There is a lot of information about some of the types of problems a person having reading difficulties might be having and specific ideas for each problem. For example, reading comprehension is different from oral reading is different from decoding etc. And each problem has it's own solution or set of suggested solutions that might help that specific problem.

Well worth the money.
Enjoy.