Creating a learning and instructional environment for teaching students in a "humane and efficient" manner, this book is designed to empower teachers by providing them with specific suggestions for problems they will encounter as they provide students with direct, explicit instruction in reading. As in earlier editions, the book devotes a "disproportional" amount of space to beginning reading, because the first months of reading instruction are immensely important to later reading success. The major change in the third edition of the book is the addition of an "expansive and commanding" research base that supports the importance of direct, explicit instruction in reading. Chapters in the book are (1) Classroom Reading Instruction; (2) Direct Instruction; (3) A Model of Reading Instruction; (4) Classroom Reading Instruction; (5) An Overview of Beginning Reading; (6) Phonological and Auditory Skills; (7) Letter-Sound Correspondence; (8) Sounding Out Regular Words; (9) Sight-Word Reading; (10) Irregular Words; (11) Vocabulary and Language Skills; (12) Using Commercial Materials: The Beginning Reading Stage; (13) Research on Beginning Reading Instruction; (14) Overview of Decoding; (15) Phonic Analysis; (16) Structural Analysis; (17) Contextual Analysis; (18) Passage Reading; (19) Using Commercial Materials: Decoding Instruction; (20) Research on Decoding Instruction and Word Recognition; (21) Overview of Comprehension Instruction; (22) Vocabulary Instruction; (23) Specific Comprehension Skills for the Primary Level; (24) Specific Comprehension Skills for the Intermediate Level; (25) Narrative-Comprehension Strategies; (26) Direct Instruction in Content Area Reading; (27) Using Commercial Materials in Comprehension Instruction; and (28) Research on Reading Comprehension and Vocabulary Instruction. Appendixes present word lists; a list of 400 common words; an outline of lessons for beginning phonics programs; and basic vocabulary for beginning readers and suggestions for assessing student knowledge. (RS)