Building Classroom Reading Communities

"Merges research-based Retrospective Miscue Analysis with adapted Socratic Circle discussions, thus empowering all elementary readers to collaboratively identify and verbalize reading strategies, individually experience ownership and control as readers, and effectively build both literacy and language confidence and competence within a united classroom community."
—Marjorie R. Hancock, Professor Emerita of Elementary Education
Kansas State University

Help your students learn from each other and become skillful, confident readers!

How can teachers ensure that each child becomes a better reader? Building Classroom Reading Communities presents a successful approach for motivating students as individual readers while encouraging peer-to-peer learning. By showing how to use Retrospective Miscue Analysis (RMA) and Socratic Circles together, the authors help teachers create a sense of community in the classroom and promote achievement for every student.

The authors show how RMA—which develops students′ comprehension and fluency by analyzing their mistakes as they read aloud—can be used to provide a window into each student′s progress. The interactive discussion techniques used in Socratic Circles then extend learning in small groups and classwide. Teachers, literacy coaches, and others will find:

• Assessment strategies and step-by-step guidance to implementing RMA and Socratic Circles
• Insights on improving student skills in vocabulary, language structure, comprehension, and other key areas
• Flexible, adaptable techniques for readers of all abilities
• Numerous vignettes showing the use of RMA with Socratic Circles in the classroom

Discover a fresh approach to teaching literacy that is well-grounded in theory and practice!

Rita A. Moore, a former Title I reading teacher and high school language arts teacher, is a professor of education and associate dean at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon. She and her colleague Victoria N. Seeger have worked continuously together since 2001 on research including professional development schools, classroom research for teachers, and RMA, from which they have coauthored several articles. In addition to Reading Conversations: RMA with Struggling Readers Grades 4-12 (2005), coauthored with Carol Gilles, Moore has written Classroom Research for Teachers: A Practical Guide (2004) and has published over 30 articles in peer-reviewed journals on topics related to literacy education and the preparation of preservice teachers.  Moore  holds a master’s degree in reading from Southwest Missouri University and a PhD in literacy education from the University of Missouri-Columbia. She is dedicated to the notion that the integral and often seamless connectivity between language and literacy defines us as human beings and empowers us as learners. Victoria N. Seeger is a former classroom teacher. A veteran public school teacher of 14 years, Seeger is now a literacy coach for a large school district in Topeka, Kansas, as well as an adjunct instructor at Washburn University in Topeka. She and her colleague Rita A. Moore have worked continuously together since 2001 on research including professional development schools, classroom research for teachers, and RMA, from which they have coauthored several articles. Additionally, Seeger contributed to the book Reading Conversations: RMA with Struggling Readers Grades 4-12 (2004) coauthored by Rita Moore and Carol Gilles. Seeger regularly conducts professional development workshops on literacy strategies and curriculum development in the Seaman 501 School District in Topeka. She has also served as consultant to preservice literacy education classrooms through the University of Montana-Western. Seeger holds a master′s degree in education from Washburn University and will finish her PhD in literacy curriculum and instruction from Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas, in the fall of 2009. She is dedicated to the notion that the integral and often seamless connectivity between language and literacy defines us as human beings and empowers us as learners.