This original book offers a meaningful window into the lived experiences of children from immigrant families, providing a holistic, profound portrait of their literacy practices as situated within social, cultural, and political frames. Drawing on reports from five years of an ongoing longitudinal research project involving students from immigrant families across their elementary school years, each chapter explores a unique set of questions about the students’ experiences and offers a rich data set of observations, interviews, and student-created artifacts. Authors apply different sociocultural, sociomaterial, and sociopolitical frameworks to better understand the dimensions of the children’s experiences. The multitude of approaches applied demonstrates how viewing the same data through distinct lenses is a powerful way to uncover the differences and comparative uses of these theories. Through such varied lenses, it becomes apparent how the complexities of lived experiences inform and improve our understanding of teaching and learning, and how our understanding of multifaceted literacy practices affects students’ social worlds and identities. Children in Immigrant Families Becoming Literate is a much-needed resource for scholars, professors, researchers, and graduate students in language and literacy education, English education, and teacher education.

This original book offers a meaningful window into the lived experiences of children from immigrant families, providing a holistic, profound portrait of their literacy practices as situated within social, cultural, and political frames. Drawing on reports from five years of an ongoing longitudinal research project involving students from immigrant families across their elementary school years, each chapter explores a unique set of questions about the students' experiences, and offers rich data set of observations, interviews, student-created artifacts. Authors apply different sociocultural, sociomaterial, and sociopolitical frameworks to better understand the dimensions of the children's experiences. The multitude of approaches applied demonstrates how viewing the same data through distinct lenses is a powerful way to uncover the differences and comparative uses of these theories. Through such varied lenses, it becomes apparent how the complexities of lived experiences inform and improve our understanding of teaching and learning, and how our understanding of multifaceted literacy practices affects students' social worlds and identities. Children in Immigrant Families Becoming Literate is a much-needed resource for scholars, professors, researchers, and graduate students in language and literacy education, English education, and teacher education.

This original book offers a meaningful window into the lived experiences of children from immigrant families, providing a holistic, profound portrait of their literacy practices as situated within social, cultural, and political frames. Drawing on reports from five years of an ongoing longitudinal research project involving students from immigrant families across their elementary school years, each chapter explores a unique set of questions about the students' experiences, and offers rich data set of observations, interviews, student-created artifacts. Authors apply different sociocultural, sociomaterial, and sociopolitical frameworks to better understand the dimensions of the children's experiences. The multitude of approaches applied demonstrates how viewing the same data through distinct lenses is a powerful way to uncover the differences and comparative uses of these theories. Through such varied lenses, it becomes apparent how the complexities of lived experiences inform and improve our understanding of teaching and learning, and how our understanding of multifaceted literacy practices affects students' social worlds and identities. Children in Immigrant Families Becoming Literate is a much-needed resource for scholars, professors, researchers, and graduate students in language and literacy education, English education, and teacher education.

Four case studies were conducted using home and community observations, interviews with children and parents, and children-created drawings and writing to explore how American-born children in Korean immigrant families construct their identities as readers and writers in out-of-school contexts including home and community. Drawing on James Paul Gee's four identity perspectives--nature, institutional, discursive, and affinity perspectives and conception of primary and secondary D/discourses, I explored how the focal children perceive literacy and experience literacy learning, what texts they report reading and writing, and how their reading and writing practices reflect their literate identities. Korean American children were constantly constructing literate identities while interacting between primary and secondary discourses within their families and communities. Rather than having innate facility with these two languages, Korean and English as things, the children had fully integrated "becoming" biliterate and bilingual into their very existence of "being" Korean

This powerful book demonstrates how culturally responsive teaching can make learning come alive. Drawing on his experience as a fifth-grade teacher in a multiethnic school where children spoke over 14 different home languages, the author reveals how he created a language arts curriculum from the students’ own rich cultural resources, narratives, and identities. Illustrating the challenges and possibilities of teaching and learning in a large urban school, this book: Documents how a culturally engaged pedagogy improved student achievement and increased standardized test scores.Examines the literacy practices of children from immigrant, migrant, and refugee backgrounds, and includes powerful examples of their voices and writing.Provides an invaluable model of reflective practice, including a wide array of student-centered strategies, to generate powerful learning experiencesDemonstrates a way for teachers to tap into the various forms of literacy students practice beyond the borders of the classroom. “Campano illustrates what it takes to be a teacher with heart and soul, not simply one who succumbs to the increasing calls for higher test scores and standardized curricula. . . . There are many lessons to be learned from this gem of a book.” —From the Foreword by Sonia Nieto, University of Massachusetts at Amherst “Campano shows us what we can do—what we must all learn to do—to restore children’s full humanity to the center of U.S. literacy education.” —Patricia Enciso, The Ohio State University

This accessible book features K–12 teachers and teacher educators who report their experiences of culturally responsive literacy teaching in primarily high-poverty, culturally nondominant communities. These extraordinary teachers show us what culturally responsive literacy teaching looks like in their classrooms and how it advances children’s academic achievement. This collection captures different dimensions of culturally responsive (CR) practice, such as linking home and school, using culturally responsive literature, establishing relationships with children and parents, using cultural connections, and teaching English language learners and children who speak African American language. This engaging collection: Provides a window into what teachers actually do and think when they serve culturally diverse children, including classroom-tested teaching practices.Depicts teachers enacting CR teaching in the presence of scripted curricula and rigid testing schedules.Covers childhood, secondary, and higher education classrooms.Helps readers imagine how they can transform their own classrooms through “Make This Happen in Your Classroom” sections at the end of each chapter.Includes a “Becoming a Culturally Responsive Teacher” self-evaluation form. “A thoroughly contextualized description and understanding of culturally responsive teaching. It will become a classic.” —From the Preface by Lee Gunderson, University of British Columbia “The teachers profiled in this book keep the conversation alive and move us toward more just educational settings.” —From the Foreword by Patricia A. Edwards, Michigan State University