The nation's focus on the literacy skills of students--especially boys--has produced many notions of reform. School districts reorganized and changed curricula to meet the needs of struggling readers and writers. In New York City, where this author was teaching, "Balanced Literacy" (a reading and writing workshop) had been implemented in…

This book, designed by teachers for teachers, contains activities and assessment ideas for developing a classroom spelling program individualized to meet the needs of each child. The book discusses the traditional methods of teaching spelling versus today's research-based methods. Noting that in the classrooms discussed, spelling has been…