LAURA ROBB and I have received word that our 2020 book with Corwin Publishing, Guided Practice for Reading Growth, Grades 4-8, has now been slated for publication by SAGE Knowledgeas part of their 2023 SK title list.
SAGE Knowledge is the premier social sciences digital library. Hosting more than 5,000 titles, it includes an expansive range of SAGE eBook and eReference content, including scholarly books, reference works, handbooks, and professional development titles.SAGE Knowledge is sold primarily to the academic library market.
This is noted portrait photographer Randy Bacon taking my picture for a literacy project in March. I love this picture and can’t wait to see which shot Randy will choose for the exhibit.
Yesterday I heard from a journal editor in California inviting me to do a little tweaking on an article on poetry I submitted in May and send it back. I’m in a time crunch for now but hope to get back to that before long.
At Kate Cosgrove’s invitation I’m joining her for a virtual book talk in a Florida book store in August.
In October, Laura Robb and I are now booked to do a zoom tweet about our book, GUIDED PRACTICE FOR READING GROWTH, TEXTS AND LESSONS TO IMPROVE FLUENCY, COMPREHENSION, AND VOCABULARY, Grades 4-8.
A conference call set for tomorrow will determine the fate of a major project in the works. More about that tomorrow.
I’m glad and grateful for the positive review by Jennifer Wirtz of our book, GUIDED PRACTICE FOR READING GROWTH, Graded 4-8, which was released last fall by Corwin Publishing. Here’s the link.
Laura and I created this book to help teachers work with students who are at least two grades behind in their reading level. My job was to write poems and texts to capture students’ interest at their intellectual/developmental level while using language accessible to them at their current reading level. Laura created wonderful plans and activities to encourage and reinforce efforts to reach for growth in reading. An earlier review included this: “One of the hardest parts of helping developing readers can be finding texts that support them. In this compendium of intermediate and middle grade reading lessons, Laura and David suggest one great text after another, making offering readers the practice they need to become stronger, more proficient readers even easier!”
New books suffered when they were introduced during the thick of the pandemic, and ours came out last September. Corwin is essentially reintroducing the book now. All the more reason why we appreciate Jennifer’s review and hope for additional reviews to come. The Amazon ratings so far are all 5 stars so we’re encouraged to think we’ll continue to find more and more teachers who can put our book to use. If you are in a position to pass this along to teacher and/or administrator friends, we will be in your debt. Thank you.
I hope to complete a 1,000-word essay today about poetry that will appear in Laura and Evan Robb’s blog — The Robb Review — later this month. Coincidentally, yesterday while I was working on it, Laura received an advance copy of a new review of our book, GUIDED PRACTICE FOR READING GROWTH, that will come out shortly in MiddleWeb. It was a pleasure to work with Laura on this book that is even more timely now as so many struggling readers worldwide work to regain skills lost by the effects of the pandemic. I’m happy to post a bit of the review here today.
Title: Guided Practice for Reading Growth Texts and Lessons to Improve Fluency, Comprehension, and Vocabulary Authors: Laura Robb and David L. Harrison Publisher: Corwin Literacy (CL), 2021
Review by Jennifer Wirtz
In GUIDED PRACTICE FOR READING GROWTH, the authors Laura Robb and David L. Harrison bring guided practice to life with lessons and examples that can be used by educators in the real-world classroom.
At the heart of this text and its lessons, is the fact that after years of not reading proficiently, students can take on characteristics that actually prevent growth. Things like: lacking self-confidence, feeling embarrassed, having difficulty decoding, and having learned the art of fake reading (so others think they can read).
The Appendix proves to be a great resource as well, including suggested ELA schedules, self-evaluation questions/prompts, lists of books for read-alouds, and guidelines for preplanning/planning discussion lessons.
Overall, GUIDED PRACTICE FOR READING GROWTH looks like it will be a great resource for years to come.
My thanks to Evan Robb for hosting Laura Robb and me yesterday evening as we talked about our new book, GUIDED PRACTICE FOR READING GROWTH. Here’s the link. https://www.facebook.com/evanrobbprincipal .
And here’s the link to my reading aloud from AFTER DARK, which is currently available on the Drury University website: http://www.Drury.edu/read.
Yesterday we (Tim Rasinski, Mary Jo Fresch, and I) agreed to terms with Scholastic Teacher Resources to write two books in time for publication early in 2022. For my part it means an enormous amount of work with deadlines of June 1 for the first manuscript and July 1 for the second. If I didn’t have anything else to do, this would be close to impossible so let’s say I’m delighted and concerned.
I’m afraid I’ll need to sharply curtail my blog posts for a while. On average I spend an hour each morning to post something new and believe me I’m going to need those twenty hours a month for a while. I may need to post once or twice a week, or maybe just when something new happens, until I see how the new work is going to progress. I hope you’ll understand and bear with me.
Children's Author David L. Harrison's Blog 