I was excited to interview Jennifer Scoggin and Hannah Schneewind about their upcoming book, Trusting Readers: Powerful Practices for Independent Reading. The book is available for pre-order now. It is expected the first copies should be arriving in May. Here is a little bit about the two authors.

I first met Jennifer and Hannah at the 2017 NCTE conference held in my hometown of St. Louis. I had the honor of being the chair for their session and introducing them and their innovative ideas. At that presentation, they laid the framework for what became the foundational ideas for this about-to-be-released book. In their collaboration over the past three years, they honed their ideas about how to effectively conference within the workshop setting and then expanded their inquiry into identifying effective ways to promote independent reading. Their work is research-based. Their work is also imminently practical. As you can tell from their bios, both authors have spent considerable time successfully teaching in urban settings. As indicated in her biography, Hannah’s classroom was used as a model classroom for teachers around the city and country.  Both these authors have now moved into consulting. They work directly with classroom teachers around the country to help those teachers develop their craft. I predict this book will become a go-to resource for classroom teachers. What follows are the questions I asked them during the YouTube interview. The questions are time-stamped so my readers can easily locate the information from the interview that interests them the most.

1. Tell us a little bit about yourselves. (:48)

2. As consultants who go to a number of different schools, tell us about the current situation you’re finding in those schools. (5:36)

3. Tell us about your other key take-aways teachers will find in your book. Include comments about the cycle of conferring (9:14)

4. Tell us your definition of balanced literacy and the role of phonics instruction in a balanced literacy approach. I understand a whole chapter in your upcoming book will talk about that topic. Also talk about your views on a strength-based approach (18:06)

5. Your Final thoughts- ALSO, how soon will the book be available- how to order it. (21:42)

Here is the YouTube interview:

Here is the link to the Heinemann website where you can pre-order this bookhttps://www.heinemann.com/products/e12047.aspx

Next week I hope to feature the upcoming Missouri Reader spring volume. Among other things, you’ll find hundreds of ideas on how to use poetry to foster literacy instruction at all grade levels. In the weeks after that, I hope to interview more authors about their new or upcoming books. Included will be an interview with my good friend, Eric Litwin, who has a new professional book out along with another new children’s book. So until then:

Happy Reading and Writing!

Dr. Sam Bommarito (aka, the guy in the middle taking flak from all sides)

Copyright 2021 by Dr. Sam Bommarito. Views/interpretations expressed here are solely the view of this author and do not necessarily reflect the views of any other person or organization

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