Education Dean Ray Reutzel publishes new book, two new journal articles on literacy topics

University of Wyoming College of Education Dean Ray Reutzel continues his long history of distinguished contributions to literacy education scholarship with the recent release of a new book and two new journal articles.

Reutzel is co-author of the book, Young Meaning Makers: Teaching Comprehension, Grades K-2, released this summer by Teachers College Press. Part of a Common Core State Standards in Literacy series, the 176-page book features

• “A practitioner-friendly model for teaching comprehension of informational and narrative texts in the early grades.
• “Guidance for how to create a classroom environment that supports oral language acquisition.
• “Instructional strategies, including teaching children to understand text structures, key details, and main ideas of a story or information text.
• “A standards-based series of formative comprehension assessments.”

Reutzel’s co-authors are Cindy D. Jones, Sarah K. Clark and Sandra L. Gillam.

Reutzel, Jones and Clark collaborated on a recent article for The Elementary School Journal. Titled “ Teaching Text Structure: Examining the Affordances of Children’s Informational Texts,” the article appears in in Vol. 117, Number 1 (dated September 2016). The article describes findings from a content analysis of random samplings of informational texts for children. Findings showed “three limitations of the affordances present in informational texts currently available for elementary school children.”

Reutzel, Jones, Clark and Tamara Kumar are authors of the second article, published earlier this year in The Journal of Educational Research (Volume 109, Issue 1). Article title is “ The Informational Text Structure Survey (ITS ²): An Exploration of Primary Grade Teachers’ Sensitivity to Text Structures in Young Children’s Informational Texts .” Focus is on development of the Informational Text Structure Survey and its impact on improvements in “teachers’ accuracy and reliability in identifying traditional information text structures in well-structured children’s grade level-appropriate informational texts.”