The Reading Strategies Book 2.0, the new, expansive, extensively researched edition of author Jennifer Serravallo’s trusted literacy guide for teachers, is officially available today. Written with today’s teachers and literacy landscape in mind, the skill progressions that organize each chapter make it easy to find strategies to target individual needs, supplement curriculum aligned to standards, and monitor progress. Each strategy page also provides classroom-ready prompts, lesson language with updated mentor texts, teaching tips with advice for differentiation, and hundreds of new classroom charts. Research links and citations woven throughout provide an evidence base for every idea and suggestion.
A True Research-Based Classroom Resource
The updated edition features over 700 unique citations from fields such as cognitive science, neuroscience, linguistics, education, and psychology. Research citations can be found on every page of the book. Each strategy page now includes a new Research Link feature that summarizes applicable and relevant research findings that inform the strategy.
The book opens with a robust, all-new Getting Started chapter, which leans on more than 150 studies to provide a crucial foundation and review of key topics relating to effective literacy instruction including: the research base for strategies, important research-based frameworks for reading instruction, how strategies fit alongside other important aspects of reading instruction such as phonics and knowledge-building, and how to provide effective feedback to readers. Each of the 13 brand-new chapter introductions review research relating to the focus of the chapter and why what’s covered in the chapter is a critical goal for reading instruction.
New If–Then, Skill Progression Organization
Strategies within each chapter in the new edition are now organized by skill progressions. Using an “if–then” structure, the new organization simplifies finding the right strategy, saving preparation and planning time and ensuring teachers choose a more targeted, effective strategy for each learner. Skill progressions also help teachers identify skills aligned to grade-level standards to use strategies to supplement curriculum, target skills for whole class lessons, or to help teachers identify patterns of need within the class to facilitate small group instruction.
New Lesson Language and Teaching Resources
The Lesson Language feature is incorporated throughout the book to show how a teacher might offer an explicit demonstration aligned to a strategy. These sections were completely re-written for The Reading Strategies Book 2.0 and feature a set of inclusive, diverse children’s, middle grade, and young adult expository and narrative texts.
New and revised Teaching Tips in each chapter offer advice for differentiation or provide background information to support teacher effectiveness. The new edition also features a classroom-ready chart or student work example for each strategy, and over 200 charts are brand new. The charts are clear, streamlined, easily replicable, and designed to be effective for a wide range of grade levels.
Higher Level Strategies
Reading Strategies 2.0 also includes new, higher-level strategies across chapters to support middle school students, advanced readers, and their teachers. Drawing from 8th and 9th grade standards, these new strategies support skills such as analysis and critique and content such as evaluating the validity of a source, understanding satire, or using allegories and archetypes to interpret a text and find its deeper meanings.
The Reading Strategies 2.0 is available for purchase on Amazon.com and on Heinemann.com. For more information about The Reading Strategies 2.0, visit hein.pub/rsb2. Download a sample chapter here. Order the spiral bound copy here.
Jennifer Serravallo is the author ofThe New York Times' bestselling The Reading Strategies Book 2.0 and The Writing Strategies Book. These and some of her other titles have been translated into Spanish, French, Italian, and Chinese. Her popular books and resources help teachers make goal-directed, responsive, explicit strategy instruction doable in every classroom. Her newest titles are The Reading Strategies Book 2.0; Teaching Writing in Small Groups; A Teacher’s Guide to Reading Conferences, and the assessment and teaching resource Complete Comprehension for Fiction and Nonfiction.
Jen is a frequently invited speaker at national and regional conferences. She and her team of literacy specialists travel throughout the US and Canada to provide full-day workshops and to work with teachers and students in classrooms. She and her team are also experienced online educators who regularly offer live webinar series and full-day online workshops.
Jen began her career in education as an NYC public school teacher. Now as a consultant, she has spent the last twenty+ years helping teachers across the country create literacy classrooms where students are joyfully engaged, and the instruction is meaningfully individualized to students' goals. Jen served as a member of Parents Magazine Board of Advisors for education and literacy, and is on the NYC Reads Advisory Council as the city works to bring Science of Reading, Writing, and Learning-based practices to every classroom.
Jen holds a BA from Vassar College and an MA from Teachers College, where she has also taught graduate and undergraduate classes.
Learn more about Jen and her work at Hein.pub/serravallo, on Twitter @jserravallo, or Instagram @jenniferserravallo.
