Literacy for the 21st Century: A Balanced Approach (2nd Edition)

Appropriate for courses in Elementary Reading Methods. This best-selling text is based on four contemporary theories of literacy learning-constructivist, sociolinguistic, interactive, reader response-and advocates a balanced approach to teaching reading. The author offers a highly readable text demonstrating how to implement a literature-based reading program using skills and strategies taught with a whole-part-whole approach.

GAIL E. TOMPKINS is a Professor at California State University, Fresno, in the Department of Literacy and Early Education, where she teaches courses in reading, language arts, and writing for pre-service teachers and students in the reading/language arts master's degree program. She directs the San Joaquin Valley Writing Project and works regularly with teachers, both by teaching model lessons in classrooms and by leading staff development programs. Recently Dr. Tompkins was inducted into the California Reading Association's Reading Hall of Fame in recognition of her publications and other accomplishments in the field of reading. She has also been awarded the prestigious Provost's Award for Excellence in Teaching at California State University, Fresno.

Previously, Dr. Tompkins taught at Miami University in Ohio and at the University of Oklahoma in Norman where she received the prestigious Regents' Award for Superior Teaching. She was also an elementary teacher in Virginia for eight years.

Dr. Tompkins is the author of three books published by Merrill/Prentice Hall: Teaching Writing: Balancing Process and Product, 3rd ed. (2000), 50 Literacy Strategies (1998), and Language Arts: Content and Teaching Strategies, 4th ed. (1998). She has written numerous articles related to reading and language arts that have appeared in The Reading Teacher, Language Arts, and other professional journals.