School Psychologists and Reading Achievement
School psychologists play a critical role in the lives of children who are struggling to learn. Increasingly, school psychologists are leaders in developing and carrying out assessment and placement decisions that impact students from the beginning of their school careers. School psychologists can also help schools reduce the number of students who lag behind grade level, and increase the number of successful readers.
Reading Rockets is pleased to present the following resources in partnership with the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP). These resources provide background information and tools to help you make a difference in the reading achievement of students.
Click below for:
"Reading Rockets is a proactive effort to prevent reading problems before they begin. It's a great asset for the practicing school psychologist."
— Kathryn Hargrove, school psychologist
A toolkit for school psychologists
Download a free toolkit for school psychologists created by Reading Rockets and NASP.
The 90-page kit contains resources to help you get more involved in the development of comprehensive, research-based, reading programs in your school district; apply evidence-based strategies to your assessments of students with reading difficulties; help students become good readers; and keep more kids from unnecessarily entering special education.
- Download the entire kit (1.6MB PDF)*
The toolkit has also been divided into sections for easier downloading.
- Section 1: Getting Started (261K PDF)*
- A Few Ideas to Get You Started
- Reading Rockets in Action
- Reading Rockets Resources
- Ordering Additional Reading Rockets Materials
- Section 2: Research-Based Reading Instruction (548K PDF)*
- Ensuring That Children Have the Opportunity to Learn to Read, from Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children
- Excerpt from Preventing Early Reading Failure by Joseph K. Torgesen
- Early Screening is at the Heart of Prevention, from American Educator, Fall 2004
- Research-Based Assessment Tools
- Section 3: Workshops for Teachers (568K PDF)*
- Workshop 1: The Roots of Reading
- Workshop 2: Sounds and Symbols
- Workshop 3: Fluent Reading
- Workshop 4: Writing and Spelling
- Workshop 5: Reading for Meaning
- Section 4: Workshops for Parents (588K PDF)*
- Workshop 1: The Roots of Reading
- Workshop 2: Finding the Right Book
- Workshop 3: Reading as Dialogue
- Workshop 4: Preventing Reading Difficulties
Video modules
The following videos are referenced within the toolkit.
Additional articles
- Articles A-Z: Assessment and Evaluation
- School Psychologists and Student Reading Achievement
- Research-Supported Assessment-Intervention Links for Reading and Writing
- Strategies for Conducting Outcome Evaluations of Early Intervention Literacy Programs
- Best Practices in Planning Interventions for Students with Reading Problems (470K PDF)*
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