Irene C. Fountas is Professor in the School of Education at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She has been a classroom teacher, language arts specialist, and consultant in school districts across the nation and abroad. She has been involved in extensive field based literacy projects and has received several awards for her contributions to literacy. She works extensively in the literacy education field and directs the Literacy Collaborative in the School of Education at Lesley University.Together Irene and Gay Su Pinnell have authored numerous books, videos, and websites with Heinemann that are now considered standards in the field of literacy instruction and staff development. They are coauthors of numerous professional books for teachers, including: * Guided Reading: Good First Teaching for All Children (1996)* Word Matters: Teaching Phonics and Spelling in the Reading/Writing Classroom (1998)* Interactive Writing: How Language & Literacy come Together, K-2 (2000)* Guiding Readers & Writers: Teaching Comprehension, Genre, and Content Literacy, 3-8 (2001).* Teaching for Comprehending & Fluency, Grades K-8: Thinking, Talking, and Writing About Reading (2006)* Leveled Books K-8: Matching Texts to Readers for Effective Teaching (2006)* When Readers Struggle, Teaching That Works (2009)* The Fountas & Pinnell Prompting Guide, Part 1: For Oral Reading Early Writing, K-8 (English edition 2008, Spanish edition, 2009)* The Continuum of Literacy Learning: A Guide to Teaching (2nd edition, 2011)* Continuo de adquisición de la lectoescritura: Guia para la enseñanza, PreK-8 (2011)* Literacy Beginnings: A Prekindergarten Handbook (2011)* The Fountas & Pinnell Prompting Guide, Part 2 for Comprehension: Thinking,Talking and Writing, K-8 (2011)* The Continuum of Literacy Learning Teaching Library: Professional Development DVD, Grades PreK-2 (2011)* The Continuum of Literacy Learning Teaching Library: Professional Development DVD, Grades 3-8 (2011)Fountas and Pinnell have also published a four-volume set, Phonics Lessons: Letters, Words, and How They Work, for kindergarten, first, second, and third grades. The Fountas & Pinnell Benchmark Assessment System and its Spanish adaptation, Sistema de evaluación de la lectura, are comprehensive assessment systems for grades K-8 and K-2, respectively, that place students on the Fountas & Pinnell Text Level Gradient™ and connect assessment to instruction with the Continuum of Literacy Learning, Grades PreK-8: A Guide to Teaching. Grounded in research and classroom experience, the Continuum names and categorizes behaviors and understandings students can be expected to demonstrate in seven continua. The Continuo is a Spanish adaptation of the Continuum. A recent publication, When Readers Struggle: Teaching that Works, is designed to help teachers work with learners who find reading and writing difficult. It provides the basis for an intensive small-group model of teaching, Leveled Literacy Intervention Systems, also designed by Fountas and Pinnell. Their most recent publications are Literacy Beginnings: A Prekindergarten Continuum to Guide Teaching (Heinemann, 2011) and Genre Study in a Readers' and Writers' Workshop (Heinemann, in press).