Guided Practice for Reading Growth, Grades 4-8: Texts and Lessons to Improve Fluency, Comprehension, and Vocabulary

Use these lessons to build developing readers’ skill and desire to read, read, read!

This book will be your guide as you support middle grade students who are reading two or more years below grade level. The lessons enlarge students’ vocabulary and background knowledge and engage them in meaningful discussions and writing about their reading. As students’ reading skill and desire to read increases, you’ll watch them complete more independent reading and ramp up their reading volume―the practice they need to improve!

Guided Practice for Reading Growth provides all you need to get started. Laura Robb and poet David L. Harrison have collaborated to design twenty-four powerful reading lessons using original poems and short texts that interest your students and encourage them to think deeply. The opening chapters offer background knowledge for the lessons and teaching tips, then the bulk of this book consists of lessons―with full texts and suggested videos provided. Guided practice lessons are the instructional piece that can move developing readers forward by building their self-confidence and the reading expertise needed to read to learn and for pleasure.

This unique book shows you how to:

·         Build students’ background knowledge by watching and discussing videos.

·         Use the poems to improve reading and to improve fluency through practice and performance.

·         Invite students to write about their reading and increase comprehension and recall.

·         Ask partners to discuss before, during, and after reading as meaningful talk enlarges students’ analytical thinking and understanding.

·         Design your own lessons for students with extra texts by David L. Harrison in the appendix.

Use this book to develop students’ self-confidence and the reading skill they require to become lifelong, joyful readers!

An author, teacher, coach, and speaker, LAURA ROBB has spent the last four decades in middle school education.  What teachers appreciate most about Laura is her deep commitment to children and adolescents, and her ability to show what best-practice instruction looks like day by day; a survey conducted by Instructor magazine named Laura as one of the nation’s top twenty educators. Currently, in addition to her speaking and consulting, she works part time in grades K-8. She was named NCTE’s recipient of the 2016 Richard W. Halle Award for Outstanding Middle Level Educator.

David L. Harrison is the author or co-author of over 100 publications for children and educators. His work has inspired plays and been set to music. He has been featured at hundreds of conferences, workshops, literature festivals, schools, and colleges. David holds two science degrees and two honorary doctorates of letters. He is Drury University’s poet laureate. David Harrison Elementary School is named for him. In 2020, he received the first Laura Ingalls Wilder Children’s Literature Medal for his body of work (presented by the LIW Children’s Literature Festival).