"The latest from well-known author and literacy expert Richard Allington is intended as the first step in preparing current and 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."--page [4] of cover.

"Includes book club study guide at the end of the book!"--Cover.

Reading development in grades 5 through 9 : problems and promise -- Decoding is not the problem (but that is what most remediation targets) -- "It's the words, man" : limited meaning vocabulary and how to improve it -- Read more, read better : addressing a major source of reading difficulties -- Reading with comprehension : understanding "understanding" -- Literate conversation : a powerful method for fostering understanding of complex texts -- Getting the gist of it all : summarization after reading -- Pulling it all together : effective instruction all day long.