Gail E. Tompkins

Gail E. Tompkins is Professor Emerita at California State University, Fresno. Currently, she works with teachers in their kindergarten through eighth-grade classrooms and leads staff-development programs on reading and writing. Dr. Tompkins was inducted into the California Reading Association’s Reading Hall of Fame in recognition of her accomplishments in the field of reading, and she’s received the prestigious Provost’s award for Excellence in Teaching at California State University, Fresno. Dr. Tompkins is the author of six other books published by Pearson: Language Arts: Patterns of Practice, Language Arts Essentials, Teaching Writing: Balancing Process and Product, 50 Literacy Strategies, and two grade-specific versions of this text: Literacy in the Early Grades: A Successful Start for PreK-4 Readers and Writers and Literacy in the Middle Grades: Teaching Reading and Writing to Fourth Through Eighth Graders. During the past three decades, Dr. Tompkins has also worked with kindergarten through college-level writing teachers at National Writing Project sites in California and Oklahoma.