The author argues that to truly help young students who struggle with reading and writing--including those with identified disabilities or conditions that effect building literacy--teachers should avoid the approach of focusing on a student's deficits and creating labels for him or her (dyslexic, English language learner, and so on). A rush to label a student and place that learner in a disability category puts him or her at risk for being segregated into special education programs or separate instruction. There, too often, kids receive training on literacy skills like phonics in a fragmented manner and miss out on a literacy-rich environment that grows authentic reading and language skills; students fall behind not only in literacy, but often in other subjects. Shunning labels and seeking various opportunities for instruction in each individual child's characteristics is more likely to build good readers and writers. Wolter describes five practices toward that end.