The Florida Center for Reading Research

The Florida Center for Reading Research website is an extremely helpful website that provides essential resources for developing and implementing reading interventions. Due to the school psychologist's often frequent role in RTI, this website can be very beneficial to their role in working with struggling readers. This resource was introduced to me by my practicum supervisor who referred to it routinely while she worked in school districts in both South Carolina and Indiana.

As the website reads, the Florida Center for Reading Research was established in January 2002 and is jointly administered at Florida State University by the Learning Systems Institute and the College of Arts and Sciences. Listed as a component of the center's mission is to "conduct basic research on reading, reading growth, reading assessment, and reading instruction that will contribute to the scientific knowledge of reading and benefit students in Florida and throughout the nation."

The site allows the school psychologist to easily search for evidence-based reading resources based upon grade level. While some of these ideas are designed for teachers working with students in centers, they can easily be modified for a school psychologist to use either one-on-one with a struggling student or in a small group of readers. A search can be made across all five core areas of reading (i.e., phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension). Most of these resources can be searched and viewed free of charge. I currently am working on a reading intervention at my practicum placement and have found this site to be helpful in planning!

Reading Rockets!

Another very helpful website is Reading Rockets  which gives resources for individuals trying to teach children to read and help those who are struggling with reading.  It is broken down into tabs for parents, teachers, principals, librarians, and other professionals.  There is a link under “other professionals” for school psychologists which provides many resources.

Included in this section there is a free 90 page toolkit developed by Reading Rockets and NASP that contains many resources.  There are also video modules available that are paired with elements from the toolkit.  There are also related articles and new information on the right side of the page that will allow school psychologists to look into a more specific subject and stay updated on current issues.

A great article for School Psychologists and reading achievement.

Here is a link to an article from NASP (National Association of School Psychologists) that focuses on students and reading achievement.  It stresses the importance of reading achievement, how school psychologists can assess district needs and student needs, and how to provide workshops for parents, teachers, and administrators, and more.

School Psychologists and Student Reading Achievement

A note about the authors

Welcome to our blog!

Before an introduction to the actual blog itself... Let us tell you a little bit more about ourselves. We are Erin and Lindsay and are both currently pursuing our education specialist degrees in the school psychology program at Ball State University. After obtaining our master's degrees in school psychology this past June, we have begun our practicum experiences within Indiana elementary schools while still continuing to take courses at the university.

Through both coursework and practical experiences, we have both become very familiar with the Response to Intervention (RTI) process and the ups and downs it has played on the field of education over the past few years. As we prepare to become school psychologists, we have come across several resources that can help schools work to increase reading achievement for their student body.

The purpose of this blog is to provide fellow school psychologists with different resources to help teachers, parents, and students improve reading. Since school psychologists are such an integral part of reading interventions and the RTI process, this blog will lend a single place they can come to find helpful information and tools. We both look forward to sharing the knowledge, resources, tools, and practical experiences we have encountered in our experiences in the career thus far. We also hope to provide additional findings from recent media sources on literacy improvement, as well as questions/testimonials/concerns of other faculty members and school psychologists we encounter on a daily basis.