In this volume, university researchers and urban elementary teacher-researchers coauthor chapters on the teachers' year-long inquiries, on a range of literacy topics that they conducted as part of a collaborative school-university action research project. Central to this project was the teacher-researchers' attempts to transform their teaching practices to meet the needs of students from diverse ethnic and linguistic backgrounds, and their finding that their inquiry efforts resulted in developing more collaborative styles of teaching. Because the everyday interactions between teachers and students are realized by the social talk in the classroom, the university- and teacher-researchers analyzed classroom discourse to study and document the teachers' efforts to make changes in the locus of power in literacy teaching and learning. The chapters include many classroom discourse examples to illustrate the critical points or incidents of these teachers' inquiries. They show the successes and the struggles involved in shedding teacher-controlled patterns of talk. This book explores the process of urban teachers' journeys to create dialogically organized literacy instruction in particular literacy routines--called, in this book, curriculum genres. The book is organized in terms of these curriculum genres, such as writing curriculum genres, reading-aloud curriculum genres, drama curriculum genres, and so forth. Teacher inquiries were conducted in various elementary grade levels, from kindergarten through grade eight. Three occurred in bilingual classrooms and one in a special education classroom. The first and last chapters, written by the editors, provide the background, theoretical, and methodological underpinnings of the project.

This book consists of the reports of 13 urban elementary teacher researchers' year-long inquiries around literacy topics -- conducted as part of a collaborative school-university action research project. The focus is on how they attempted to transform their teaching practices to meet the needs of students from diverse ethnic and linguistic backgrounds, and how their inquiry efforts resulted in developing more collaborative styles of teaching. These teachers explore how collaborative classroom interactions occur when teachers move away from teaching-as-transmission approaches to ones in which they share power and authority with their students -- viewing them not as 'at risk' but instead as 'at promise.' Because the everyday interactions between teachers and students are realized by social talk in the classroom, classroom discourse was analyzed to study and document the teacher researchers' efforts to make changes in the locus of power in literacy teaching and learning. Their chapters are filled with classroom discourse examples to illustrate their points. The volume includes teacher inquiries conducted in elementary classrooms from kindergarten through eighth grade. Three took place in bilingual classrooms, one in a special education class. These inquires cover a range of literacy topics, including reading-aloud, language richness, writing, literature discussion groups, drama, and 'pretend' reading. The background and theoretical underpinnings of the project are discussed in an introduction written by the editors; in the conclusion they pull together the major themes in the teacher researchers' chapters and discuss the political implications of their efforts to change literacyteaching and learning in their urban classrooms.

The Handbook of Research on Teaching Literacy Through the Communicative and Visual Arts, Volume II brings together state-of-the-art research and practice on the evolving view of literacy as encompassing not only reading, writing, speaking, and listening, but also the multiple ways through which learners gain access to knowledge and skills. It forefronts as central to literacy education the visual, communicative, and performative arts, and the extent to which all of the technologies that have vastly expanded the meanings and uses of literacy originate and evolve through the skills and interests of the young. A project of the International Reading Association, published and distributed by Routledge/Taylor & Francis. Visit http://www.reading.org for more information about Internationl Reading Associationbooks, membership, and other services.

Engage, challenge, and inspire students with work that matters Transformational Literacy, written by a team from EL Education, helps teachers leverage the Common Core instructional shifts—building knowledge through content-rich nonfiction, reading for and writing with evidence, and regular practice with complex text—to engage students in work that matters. Worthy texts and worthy tasks help students see the connection between their hard work as readers and writers and their capacity to contribute to stronger communities and a better world. The stories, examples, and resources that permeate Transformational Literacy come primarily from the more than 150 EL Education schools around the country that support teachers to select, supplement, customize, and create curriculum, and improve instruction. The book also draws on EL Education's open source Common Core English Language Arts curriculum—often cited as one of the finest in the country—and professional development offered to thousands of teachers to implement that curriculum effectively. Transformational Literacy combines the best of what EL Education knows works for kids—purposeful, inquiry-based learning—and the new imperative of the Common Core—higher and deeper expectations for all students. Teach standards through a compelling and purposeful curriculum that prioritizes worthy texts and worthy task Improve students' evidence-based reading, thinking, talking, and writing Support students to develop a new mindset toward the challenge of reading complex texts Transformational Literacy introduces an approach to literacy instruction that will engage, challenge, and inspire student with work that matters.

Science is often a forgotten subject in early elementary grades as various mandates require teachers to focus on teaching young students to achieve specific reading and mathematical competencies. This book offers specific examples and empirical evidence of how integrated science-literacy curriculum and teaching in urban primary-grade classrooms give students opportunities to learn science and to develop positive images of themselves as scientists. The Integrated Science-Literacy Enactments (ISLE) approach builds on multimodal, multidimensional, and dialogically oriented teaching and learning principles. Readers see how, as children engage with texts, material objects, dialogue, ideas, and symbols in their classroom community, they are helped to bridge their own understandings and ways with words and images with those of science. In doing so, they become learners of both science and literacy. The book features both researcher and teacher perspectives. It explores science learning and its intersection with literacy development in schools that educate predominately children of color, many of whom struggle with poverty and have been traditionally underestimated, underserved, and underrated in science classrooms. In all these ways, this volume is a significant contribution to a critically under-researched area of science education.

Findings generated by recent research in science education, international debate on the guiding purposes of science education and the nature of scientific and technological literacy, official and semi-official reports on science education (including recommendations from prestigious organizations such as AAAS and UNESCO), and concerns expressed by scientists, environmentalists and engineers about current science education provision and the continuing low levels of scientific attainment among the general population, have led to some radical re-thinking of the nature of the science curriculum.