The Power of Peers in the Classroom ― Enhancing Learning and Social Skills

Peer support and social relationships have a tremendous influence on development, motivation, and achievement for all students, including struggling learners and those with disabilities. This highly practical book is one of the few resources available to guide classroom teachers and special educators in the application of peer-assisted instructional strategies in grades K-12. Expert contributors describe evidence-based approaches for building students' skills in reading, writing, math, and other content areas, as well as social competence and executive functioning. Sample lessons and more than a dozen reproducible tools are provided. Purchasers get access to a Web page where they can download and print the reproducible materials in a convenient 8 1/2" x 11" size.

Karen R. Harris, EdD, is the Mary Emily Warner Professor in the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University, and a former general and special education teacher. Her research focuses on theoretically based interventions for the development of academic and self-regulation abilities among at-risk students and those with disabilities, as well as effective models of inservice teacher preparation for writing instruction for all students. She developed the Self-Regulated Strategy Development model of strategies instruction. The former editor of the Journal of Educational Psychology, Dr. Harris is coauthor or coeditor of several books and over 200 peer-reviewed publications. She is a recipient of the Distinguished Researcher Award for special education research from the American Educational Research Association and the Career Research Award from the International Council for Exceptional Children. She is President of Division 15 (Educational Psychology) of the American Psychological Association and has served as President of the Division for Research of the Council for Exceptional Children.

Lynn Meltzer, PhD, is President and Director of Research at the Research Institute for Learning and Development (ResearchILD) and Director of Assessment at the Institute for Learning and Development (ILD) in Lexington, Massachusetts. She holds appointments as an Associate in Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and as Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Child Development at Tufts University. Dr. Meltzer is a fellow and past president of the International Academy for Research in Learning Disabilities and is founder and chair of the Learning Differences Conference, now in its 30th year at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her 35 years of neuropsychological evaluations and clinical consultations with children, adolescents, and adults have emphasized the theory-to-practice cycle of knowledge. Her recent work, together with her ResearchILD colleagues, has centered on the development of SMARTS Online, an evidence-based executive function and peer mentoring/coaching curriculum for middle and high school students. She has published widely on the assessment and treatment of learning and attention difficulties.