Developing Higher-Level Literacy in All Students: Building Reading, Reasoning, and Responding

Help your students develop higher-level  literacy skills required by today’s demanding curriculum and high-stakes tests with Thomas Gunning!

Known for his practical, research-based approach, Dr. Gunning offers classroom teachers the tools to promote higher-level literacy in all students. In his new book, he presents assessment procedures in a step-by-step format to guide teachers in reading assessment and includes model lessons for all strategies and techniques.

Teachers rave about Thomas Gunning’s strategies to promote higher-level skills!

"I think this book would make an exceptional subject for an in-service workshop for all teachers of any school since the strategies can be applied at any grade level. I would enjoy participating or teaching a workshop of these ideas. The author seems to have created a knowledge base that is desperately needed in today’s educational environment…especially in the…world of high-stakes testing, merit pay, and low-performing schools."

-Sylvia Hoke, MacArthur Junior High School, AR

"I find the organization of the book logical, moving from an overview of specific issues, to assessment, to remedies and application. The writing style is personable and clear.  The anecdotes and practical applications are, of course, the “good stuff,” and it is impossible to ever have enough of them."

-Polly Bill, Brandywine School District, DE

Take a look inside:

• Provides step-by-step lessons, examples, and practice materials for each higher-level literacy teaching strategy.

• Addresses the needs of struggling learners with examples of maximum scaffolding that is gradually reduced to help teachers instruct all students.

• Presents systematic specific instruction from easiest to complex and provides a comprehensive program for teaching students how to respond to higher-level constructed response questions.

• Aligns instruction with assessment of higher-level skills.

Thomas G. Gunning has taught courses in methods of teaching reading and writing for more than 20 years and was director of the Reading Clinic at Southern Connecticut State University. Before that, as a secondary English teacher, a reading specialist, and an elementary school reading consultant, he worked extensively with achieving and struggling readers and writers. Dr. Gunning, who recently served as a Reading First consultant, is currently working with elementary and middle school students to help them develop higher level literacy skills, as well as serving as an adjunct professor in the Reading/Language Arts Department at Central Connecticut State University. Over the years, Dr. Gunning’s research has explored reading interests, informal reading inventories, decoding strategies, readability, higher-level literacy skills, and response to intervention. As a result of this research, he has created a number of informal assessments and programs for developing decoding and comprehension skills.