This third edition of Marie Clay's highly-valued An Observation Survey of Early Literacy Achievement presents her familiar assessment tasks designed for systematic observation of young children as they learn to read and write. Always respecting the author's intention, the editors have taken a fresh look at the way the book's message is communicated to teachers. Layout and expression have been refreshed to ensure clear understanding, and the administration and interpretation of each task in the survey have been carefully structured for consistent delivery. The observation procedures arose from a theory of how children learn to manage the complex task of reading and writing continuous text. That process is described in Marie Clay's books Becoming Literate: the Construction of Inner Control; Change Over Time in Children's Literacy Development, and By Different Paths to Common Outcomes. The intervention described in Literacy Lessons Designed for Individuals makes use of these observation procedures. This book will continue to be an invaluable resource for early literacy assessment for many years.

Author Biography

Marie Clay, FRSNZ, FNZPsS, FNZEI(Hon), Emeritus Professor, taught in primary schools and then at the University of Auckland where, for the next 30 years she introduced educational psychologists to ways of preventing psychological problems. She did post-graduate study in Developmental Psychology at the University of Minnesota on a Fulbright Scholarship and completed her doctorate at the University of Auckland with a thesis entitled "Emergent Literacy." Her 'Reading (and writing) Recovery' is an early literacy intervention, which is now implemented in five countries, and three languages. Literacy Lessons Designed For Individuals integrates what has been learned from that innovation with new research and theoretical advocacies. Shifts in early literacy learning can be monitored by teachers using her Observation Survey of Early Literacy Achievement in English, Spanish and French. A series of individual lessons can be delivered in those languages to about 150,000 children worldwide annually using a guidebook called Reading Recovery: Guidelines for Teachers in Training. Literacy Lessons Designed for Individuals is a similar guidebook which aims to make accelerated progress possible for a wider range of problems. Marie Clay was past-President of the International Reading Association, served on the editorial committees of professional journals, was a research consultant at home and abroad including UNESCO, chaired a Social Science Research Committee advising government on policies and research allocations, and worked internationally with problem-solving related to early intervention research and practice.