Maybe Townsend Press should be renamed "Godsend Press" because these books have truly been a blessing to this teacher and her students!
What Educators Are Saying About TP Townsend Press
I just want to thank you all for providing the best low-cost reading materials and online practice site my students and I could ever ask for.
Your materials and your service are the very best I have ever experienced in my 20+ years in education.
We're using the Ten Steps book for the classes I designed when I was department chair. They are excellent...I think the Learning Center is one of the best sites relative to providing exercises to build comprehension skills. The materials are clear, leveled, and immediately relevant to students' course goals.
I love your online activities, which not only help students practice their skills but allow for quick grading for instructors! Townsend Press is, hands down, the best.
I love using your book The Advanced Reading-Writing Connection in my CCR 092 classes. The PowerPoints are perfect, and classes always enjoy the cartoons. I’ve been using your books for almost 15-20 years, and my students have succeeded to pass into the college level 121 class. Thanks for all of your options.
I sincerely appreciate your support and expeditious sending of materials. Your professionalism in meeting instructors' needs is far superior to some other companies I have worked with.
The customer service is exemplary, and the quality of the materials you offer is of the highest level. This publisher truly seems to remember the purpose of being in the educational publishing business: serving students and providing them with quality materials. Working with this company is one of the things that helps me to still find delight in my profession after thirty-three years in education.
We have thoroughly enjoyed the Bluford books! From a teacher's perspective, it is a most wondrous sight to see: children simply enjoying a good book. Further, I am much appreciative of Townsend's exceptional customer service via Facebook and the amazing wealth of additional resources your company offers online. I truly feel as though I stumbled on a gold mine!
Thank you, Townsend Press, for producing books that kids want to read. After I introduce my kids to your books, they do not want to stop reading. These are often the kids who "should not like reading" because it may mess up their tough image. Kids who are often in trouble outside of the classroom but are behaving their best in class so they can read your Bluford Series. This year a team of boys from my class won the Bluford Book Battle at our school. These are boys that you would never expect to be up on that stage. Boys who visit the office too often and test my patience often. These boys may have not been dealt the best cards in life, but yesterday, they won.
Using Ten Steps to teach fundamental comprehension reading skills proved to be extremely beneficial to my students. The structure of the books allowed for interactive classroom instruction, group practice, and individual practice. The scaffolding of exercises helped students progressively move toward a higher level of critical reading and thinking. The readings not only helped students apply the skills to full-length writings, but they also promoted critical thinking discussions. My class found Ten Steps to be a great source for learning and reinforcing reading skills. On behalf of the students and myself, thank you.
I’m really impressed with all of the Townsend Press materials I have used—especially the Learning Center. It is so organized and effective at putting my students in the driver’s seat with their progress without me having to spend a fortune at FedX Office making copies of materials pirated from the Internet. The customer and technical service is also world class—no, better! I’m not kidding. I’m a booster forever here in my district.
I teach at Seattle Central Community College, and our intensive English program has used John Langan's Ten Steps series for many years. The books are generally regarded as among the best for preparing students to tackle challenging academic reading. They effectively break down the process into discrete skills that build upon one another in order to help learners master the task of understanding and using information from college-level texts.
The ten steps are introduced in ten chapters: Vocabulary in Context, Main Ideas, Supporting Details, Implied Main Ideas, Relationships, Inferences, Purpose and Tone, Argument, Critical Reading, and Combined Skills. They may be covered in a quarter or a semester. Each chapter includes an ample supply of examples, exercises, review tests, and an extended final reading selection with an exam. Six mastery tests of graduated difficulty appear at the end of each chapter, and these pages are perforated so that they may be torn out and handed in for grading. Ten additional high-interest readings accompanied by tests are featured in an appendix, and even more exercises and exams are available online.
Good teachers know that only by practicing as often as possible will reading skills improve. This reasonably priced book and its companions Ten Steps to Building College Reading Skills and Ten Steps to Advancing College Reading Skills are designed to provide an abundance of material that should keep students engaged and learning throughout a school term and beyond.
I do think Townsend Press is an inspiration. So many classes don't order books for their classes because of the outrageous prices, but that is really a huge mistake. Students really need a reference book. In addition, we can't cover everything in class and there are so many great and interesting stories, especially in Ten Steps to Advancing College Reading Skills, that I am really happy when students come in and say, "I was reading the book over the weekend and I really think this is a good story. You should assign this one for the next paper," or they find another story that matches the idea of one we did in class. With the prices out there and the unwillingness of students to buy books even with the money they get from Financial Aid, I am really glad that I can have a packet of vocab, grammar, and reading and writing that I can draw from all the books for a very reasonable price. The grammar practices are so complete and good in English Essentials, that I no longer use any of my grammar handouts. Less waste of paper and time in duplicating and less possibility of students saying I left the paper home or I lost it.