This page contains:

Materials Relevant to Testing Reading or Reading Inventories

TPRI Training Packet -
Includes Student Administration Booklets per grade (K-2), Student Record Sheets, manipulates needed to administer inventory, Teacher Packet is copyright 1998, 1999, Texas Education Agency (TEA). For a copy, contact TEA. http://www.tea.state.tx.us/ or 1701 North Congress Ave. Austin, TX 78701-1494. Voice: (512)463-9734

PALS website -
http://curry.edschool.Virginia.edu/curry/centers/pals/ -the Virginia Department of Education invited schools in Virginia to participate in a reading intervention program. The University of Virginia's Curry School of Education was tasked with developing a reading screening tool to identify students who might be helped with special reading instruction. The tools of the intervention were called Phonological Awareness and Literacy Screening tools (or PALS). Their website allows teachers to input student scores (each teacher must log in with their unique password). The sites also includes information about what PALS is, their goals, how to participate, and more.

CARS website -
http://cars.uth.tmc.edu - the University of Texas - Houston (a health sciences center) does both teaching and research. The department of Pediatrics in the Medical School has a group called the Center for Academic and Reading Skills. This group has updated the TPRI (Texas Primary Reading Inventory) for use in evaluating children's developmental reading skills in grades K-2. Their site introduces an array of faculty and staff who focus on children's learning and reading skills. The site includes research information for teachers and parents alike.

Dr. Jack Fletcher, Ph.D. -
Dr. Fletcher is a professor in the Department of Pediatrics, Director of the School Problems Clinic, and among the faculty at the Center for Academic and Reading Skills at the UT Houston. He collaborates on several NIH grants for research on reading problems, attention problems, and on children with brain injuries, including traumatic brain injury, spina bifida, and cerebral palsy. In his 20 years of research, Dr. Fletcher has authored over 120 research articles and over 60 chapters in books. He presently serves on nine editorial boards.

Dr. Barbara Foorman, Ph.D. -
Dr. Foorman received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley’s School of Education and joined the UT Houston as a Professor of Pediatrics and Director of the Center for Academic and Reading Skills (CARS). For the past 15 years, Dr. Foorman has studied the role of phonological and orthographic processing in learning to read and, in the past 10 years, on the role of instruction in learning to read. She has received several National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) grants and is recognized internationally as a scholar in the areas of reading and language development.

Angeliki Mouzaki -
Angeliki Mouzaki received her M.Ed. from Southern Illinois University. She has coordinated and developed procedures for observing teachers participating in the NICHD Early Interventions research project, assisted in the revision of the TPRI, and organized materials and training on the TPRI for teacher trainers. Her doctoral dissertation study examines the effectiveness of an early intervention program in the prevention of reading difficulties as it is implemented within a public school setting. She anticipates completely her doctorate in Educational Psychology /Individual Differences, at the University of Houston in December 1999.

Quantitative Reading Inventory II (1998). Lauren Leslie and Joanne Caldwell. Addison Wesley Longman:New York

Teaching Our Children to Read: The Role of Skills in Comprehensive Program (1996). Bill Honig. Corwin Press:Thousand Oaks, CA

Materials Relevant to Instructional Development (teaching reading, evaluating reading, reading tools, reading resources speaking properly)

Reading Online (http://www.readingonline.org) -
There are several articles worth reading about the Texas Reading Initiative. For instance:

Louisa Moats, Ed.D. -
Dr. Moats is Harvard Graduate specializing in reading and writing instruction and the identification and treatment of learning disorders. She is a member of the Graduate Faculty of the University of Vermont, is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Dartmouth Medical School, and servers as a national board member of both the Orton Dyslexia Society and the International Dyslexia Association. Dr. Moats has worked as a consultant and licensed psychologist and has authored several books and numerous journal articles dealing with language learning disabilities. She is considered among the experts in the fields of language learning and disabilities.

"The Missing Foundation in Teacher Education: Knowledge of the Structure of Spoken and Written Language" (1994). Louisa Cook Moats. Annals of Dyslexia, Vol. 44. Vermont:The Greenwood Institute.

Teaching Reading IS Rocket Science: What Expert Teachers of Reading Should Know and Be Able to Do (1999). Louisa Moats. (For copy, contact Dr. Moats at: homeschool@greenwoodinstitute.org)

Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children. Catherine Snow, Susan Burns and Peg Griffin (1998). National Academy Press:

Materials Relevant to Delivery of Online/CD Courseware to Elementary Teachers in Texas

Needed: a copy of the CD or the URL to the website.
Plus, in order to play the CD or access the URL:

  • CD will require a Netscape Navigator included. The CD should be able to run on:
    • Intel Pentium, with at least 15 MB RAM, 16-bit sound card, 4MB video RAM, CD player, and a mouse, track ball or drawing pad. RealMedia must be installed.
    • MAC must be a PowerMac, with speakers, mouse and RealMedia installed.
  • For web access to the URL, these are also needed
    • A local computer will be required to have a copy of Netscape Navigator 4.5 or higher or Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher, and RealMedia (Note: all three are freeware for educational use.) and have Internet access active.

For production of the courseware. The following programs or comparable programs will be needed:

  • Computer to place programs on and create WWW pages, graphics, audio and video files. (The latest P3 will be able to handle all of the requirements below, but I strongly suggest using a separate computer for digitizing and conversion to MPG and RealMedia.)
  • Dreamweaver for layout of the pages and JavaScripting
  • Photoshop or Corel Suite for creation of the graphics
  • Video camera for capture of video of teachers and students
  • Video player and monitor for playing video to convert files for web
  • MPegWorks by FutureTel (1.8 or later) to digitize video or audio as MPG files
  • additionally CoolEdit ('96 or later) is needed to strip off the video and save the audio.
  • RealProducer Plus G2 for converting audio and video MPG files to RM files
  • SAMBA or FTP to move files from local computer to web server
  • web server (physical box) running web server software.

Interview Notes

Multiple interviews and e-mail exchanges with Angeliki Mouzaki:

Angeliki was very interested in developing information to teach the TPRI methods. As a trainer of the trainers, she was intimately aware of the most common errors teacher make in administration of the TPRI. As one of the team members in revising the TPRI, she had the knowledge of what information is covered in the inventory, how it is used to derive scores and what intervention strategies were available. She lacked only the conversion of some ideas into written English, her homeland being Greece. Ever willing to provide guidance and information, she would be able to develop much of the text needed for the CD.

Ms. Mouzaki provided pages of resources and prioritized them according to a novice's need for understanding the focus of the TPRI. She also e-mail what type of questions teachers need assistance on in diagnostic decision making and sample questions for the TPRI quiz. She, further, gave information on contact names for TPRI expertise with questions on intervention strategies and case studies.

Information about Angeliki Mouzaki, her bibliography and participation with revisions to the TPRI are found at this site where she is a research associate at the Center for Academic and Reading Skills-UT Houston.
http://cars.uth.tmc.edu/people/a_mouzaki.html

Interview with Dr. Jack Fletcher:

Dr. Fletcher responded to questions about case studies, providing guidance on the most common reading problems, their psychological and developmental characteristics. He noted that sometimes inventories and research look for problems and find none and that should be included in the case studies. He listed the problems he would place as case studies as: a false positive (That is, the screening showed the child in the developing stage, but he inventory scores showed the child to be "developed" and need no further intervention.), a child needing phonemic awareness building, a dyslexic child, and child needing to develop word recognition skills.

Information about Dr. Jack Fletcher, his bibliography and research are found at this site where he is among the faculty at the Center for Academic and Reading Skills- UT Houston.
http://cars.uth.tmc.edu/people/j_fletcher.html

Interview with Barbara Foorman

Dr. Foorman speaks of the teaching of reading as a science. Her concern is focused on the education of teachers and getting to teachers the knowledge of how to teach reading (what works and what does not) and tools (such as games and manipulatives) to involve the students in learning reading and developing skills in stages. We discussed the benefits of putting the slide presentations from the training workshops online for teachers to review before training and as a brush up. Simplicity of use, clarity of design, and content intensive pages were the focuses she emphasized.

Information about Dr. Barbara Foorman, her bibliography and research are found at this site where she is among the faculty at the Center for Academic and Reading Skills-UT Houston
http://cars.uth.tmc.edu/people/b_foorman.html

Conversation with Dr. Louisa Moats

Dr. Moats was gracious in pronouncing phonemes used in the TPRI and noting which were difficult to segment from other words. She explained that locality (linguistics) is sometimes a factor in testing reading skills, especially if the child and teacher have different accents or

Information about Dr. Louisa Moats, her bibliography and research are found at this site where she is among the faculty at The Greenwood Institute.
http://www.greenwoodinstitute.org/institute/inhistory.html