Every elementary teacher deals with students who struggle as readers on a daily basis. Each struggling child is complex and each has a unique history as a learner. In One Child at a Time, experienced literacy specialist and consultant Pat Johnson provides a framework she has used in numerous K-6 classrooms to help teachers understand and assist individual children. The four-step process outlined in the book enables teachers to focus carefully on specific strategies and behaviors; analyze them with theoretical and practical lenses; design targeted instruction in keeping with current research on reading process; and then assess and refine the teaching in conferences with the child. The framework is by no means an easy answer to a difficult problem, but through its use teachers learn how the reading process works for proficient readers and how to support struggling readers as they construct their own reading process.

The text is packed with examples of actual conferences with students, detailing how and when Pat and her colleagues intervene to instruct and assess. The examples of follow-up assessment and analysis of struggling readers over days and weeks provide an indispensable model for teachers.

Pat shows how to use this framework successfully with a range of learners, including young children, English language learners, and students in the upper elementary grades who are stalled in their literacy progress. She builds upon her decades of work as a classroom teacher, literacy specialist, and consultant in schools with high poverty and diversity, to demonstrate how this framework can be useful in any setting.