Despite growing evidence that all students will benefit from engaging and challenging instruction, many struggling students continue to experience a circumscribed curriculum that emphasizes low-level skills. Featuring contributions from emerging and well-known researchers, this important volume is about the enactment of high-expectation curricula in everyday practice. Chapters document specific classroom strategies that make a difference in the learning of students from low socioeconomic backgrounds and cultural and linguistic minority communities. While the book focuses on language and literacy instruction, key chapters on math and science also demonstrate high-expectation teaching across the curriculum. Book Features: A broad framework for creating high-expectation curricula in underperforming K12 schools, clear illustrations of what alternative literacy practices look like, powerful examples of rich math and science instruction, research-based strategies for second language learners, students with disabilities, and struggling readers, an incisive critique of the deficit-driven curricula that dominates in underachieving schools and classrooms.

"This volume examines early literacy research on a global scale and puts social, cultural, and historical analyses in the front seat--without losing sight of individual and family-level matters in the process. It is comprehensive, ground-breaking, and provocative, and should help literacy researchers to think differently about the field." --Marjorie Faulstich Orellana, School of Education and Social Policy, Northwestern University "No other publication that I am aware of brings together views from such diverse disciplines, contributing to a comprehensive statement about early childhood literacy. The Handbook not only reviews the current field of situated literacy but presents some important and exciting new research. It is a significant resource that promises to become a landmark text." --Eve Bearne, University of Cambridge, Faculty of Education, U.K. "This handbook brings together an astonishing array of writers who explore contemporary political, cultural, and cognitive understandings of early childhood literacy. Literacy and literacy acquisition are broadly defined here to encompass not just traditional notions of reading and writing, but multimodalities, multiliteracies, and critical literacies. . . It is rich and comprehensive, an invaluable resource for scholars, educators, and students of early childhood literacy." --Elsa Auerbach, Professor of English, University of Massachusetts, Boston "This book is unique in its broad consideration of topics and its global focus . . . I particularly appreciate how the editors have situated current research in an historical context. They have also included development issues, pedagogy, research, and the newest areas of interest--critical literacy and popular culture." --Diane Barone, University of Nevada, Reno In recent years there has been a virtual revolution in early childhood studies, with a mass of books and papers seeking to re-examine and reposition childhood. At the same time an equally significant area has developed within literacy studies, reflecting a growing interest in the nature of literacy as a socially situated phenomenon. There is increased interest in literacy as a multimodal concept in which symbolic meaning is a central concept, rather than more conventional and narrower notions of literacy. The Handbook of Early Childhood Literacy is central in providing access to all these different perspectives. The Handbook offers a way through the vast diversity of publications on early childhood literacy by providing comprehensive and up-to-date reviews of research and thinking in early childhood literacy. The arrangement of chapters reflects a contemporary perspective on research into early childhood literacy. Major sections include: the global world of early childhood literacy; childhood literacy and family, community and culture; the development of literacy in early childhood; pedagogy and early childhood literacy and researching early childhood literacy. Contributions by leading authorities focus on literacy as a socially situated and global experience, one that is evolving in relation to changes in contemporary culture and technological innovation.

Through their focus on children who were successfully learning to read and write despite extraordinary economic hardship, this multiracial team presents new images of the strengths of the family as educator.

Grade level: 1, 2, 3, k, e, p, t.

This book examines emergent literacy as the foundations for language instruction and seeks to relate the work of those doing research on literacy acquisition and those designing programs to facilitate children's literacy development. It bridges theory and practice, looking at both cognitive processes and settings in which children first experience literacy. With contributions by leading researchers in the field, the book examines emergent literacy in nonliterate homes; oral language supports; parent-child reading; literacy and working class families; literacy from a developmental perspective; parental involvement; and collaborative efforts of teachers and parents. An essential collection for all research and education in the language arts methods area. Will also appeal to educators involved in reading instruction and parent-education.