An interview with Laura Robb and David L. Harrison, authors of Guided Practice for Reading Growth. Dr. Sam Bommarito conducted this interview.
NOTE: The Part Two blog about Artfully Teaching the Science of Reading will not be posted until tomorrow, Monday, Aug 10th. What follows now is the interview of David and Laura about their book Guided Practice for Reading Growth: Texts and Lessons to Improve Fluency,
I’ve known David and Laura for a very long time. Here are links to their bios: LINK1, LINK2. In writing the book Guided Practice for Reading Growth: Texts and Lessons to Improve Fluency, Comprehension and Vocabulary, they had a perfect collaboration. Laura’s years of working with teachers in classrooms and familiarity with the latest research on how middle school children learn helped her create the kind of lessons teachers need to help their older readers. David’s ability as a writer and poet is unmatched anywhere. He has been the poet laureate for my state (Missouri). The project uses a method I’ve reported on extensively: repeated readings of short text to improve fluency, comprehension, and vocabulary. The guru of that method is Tim Rasinski. A good resource for more information on implementing that method is Rasinski and Chesman’s The Megabook of Fluency LINK and The Fluency Lesson Plan: Closing the Reading Gap LINK. My blogs around this topic included the work of Rasinski, LINK, Kraus and Kay LINK, and Litwin LINK.
What Laura and David’s series brings to the table is a ready-to-use, complete program, with lessons designed for students in grades 4-8. The lessons were modified during field testing. They work. Laura and David do an amazing job during the interview of explaining how and why the lessons were written as they are. The series provides short texts for each lesson. Most of the content area poems were written by David, especially for this series. The book also includes helpful videos to explain and support the implementation of the lessons.
While visiting sites where reading specialists gather to talk about their craft, I’ve often seen the question raised: What is an effective intervention to use to improve middle school students’ reading? I have at least one good answer to that question- Robb & Harrison’s Guided Practice for Reading Growth series. Let us see what David and Laura have to say about their book.
Biographies (taken from Corwin.com)
Laura Robb
David Harrison
Guided Practice for Reading Growth
LINK to the book on Corwin Literacy
Laura Robb and her son Evan have a website called We Are Teachers. Here is a link to that website: LINK. One component of that website is the We Are Teachers Media Kit. As you can see from the screen capture below, the media kit is widely used by many different groups of teachers.
Other books by Laura are available on Amazon. Go to Amazon to look up particular titles.
David Harrison Website LINK.
Conclusion
A very special thanks to Laura and David for doing the interview! There is a lot to unpack. I think teachers really will find plenty of ideas and material they can use on Monday.
Looking ahead to Monday’s post
Who wants their easy over eggs served with a saltshaker full of salt and a pepper shaker full of pepper?
NOBODY
The same thing goes for phonics methods at the building level. As Seidenberg and others have pointed out, there really is such a thing as too much phonics instruction. Next week’s blog will do a deep dive into that topic.
In the meantime, Happy Reading and Writing.
Dr. Sam
The guy in the middle, taking flak from all sides.
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