Organic vocabulary is a term that describes a child’s inner source of thoughts. Based on the early work of Sylvia Ashton-Warner in New Zealand with Maori children, organic vocabulary can help promote early literacy among children who have little connection and prior experiences with print. This book connects the early research and methodology to today’s classrooms. These connections are applied to Title 1 schools (indicating low socioeconomic status), second language learners, and children with multiple levels of ability and adverse risk factors.

This practical book focuses on three distinct types of struggling readers that teachers will instantly recognize from their own classrooms--the Catch-On Reader, the Catch-Up Reader, and the Stalled Reader. Detailed case studies bring to life the specific problems these students are likely to face and illustrate research-based instructional strategies that can help get learning back on track. The book also illuminates the causes and consequences of literacy difficulties, giving K-6 teachers a better understanding of how to meet the needs of each child. A comprehensive appendix provides dozens of informal assessment devices, ready to photocopy and use. Other user-friendly features include annotated bibliographies of key research, descriptions of commercial materials and curricula designed for each type of learner, and information on technology resources. Photocopy Rights: The Publisher grants individual book purchasers nonassignable permission to reproduce selected materials in this book for professional use. For details and limitations, see copyright page. Key Features: * Struggling readers are a major focus of current teaching and legislation. * Extended case studies provide realistic instructional examples. * Research base evident throughout. * Covers the causes and consequences of reading difficulties as well as how to help.

In her newest book, teacher researcher and bestselling author Karen Gallas investigates imagination in the classroom to understand its function in literacy learning. Using rich examples from her elementary classrooms, she proposes that imagination is a central, but untapped, component of learning across all subject areas—language arts, science, social studies, and math. This book gets to the heart of a theme which has been a strong undercurrent in her previous books. “Karen Gallas shares persuasive insights that will be of importance to educators at all levels. As one pre-service teacher put it after reading the book, ‘I am now inspired to unleash the imagination of my students and see where it takes us!’” —Gordon Wells, University of California at Santa Cruz “Karen Gallas’s inquiry into imagination and literacy is an engaging illustration of the power of inquiry to inform teaching while making a substantial contribution to current theory and research on the meaning and power of imagination.” —Curt Dudley-Marling, Lynch School of Education, Boston College “Eloquent and intellectual . . . Karen Gallas offers us insights from her teaching journal and connections to philosophers from Freire to Bakhtin, showing teachers and researchers how to re-envision and improve our work with our students. I loved this book and have already recommended it to colleagues and friends.” —Ruth Shagoury, author of A Workshop of the Possible, Mary Stuart Rogers Professor of Education at Lewis & Clark College

This edited collection will stand as the first volume that specifically describes service-learning programs and courses designed as part of teacher education programs in the fields of literacy education, secondary English education, elementary language arts education, and related fields. The contributing authors describe the programs they have developed at their universities and/or in their local communities, providing information about the rationale for their initiative, the design of the course, the outcomes of the experience, and other matters that will help literacy educators develop similar courses and experiences of their own. Additionally, this edited collection will fill a great gap in the field’s knowledge of alternative forms of teacher education. It will provide descriptions of service-learning initiatives that have been field-tested with demonstrable results. Thus far the field has produced widely scattered articles in journals covering a variety of disciplines, but no definitive collection of papers in which service-learning designed to promote literacy instruction is housed in a single volume edited for cross-referencing and thematic categorization. The two editors have developed courses and received grants to support service-learning initiatives at their universities and believe that others might develop similar programs if they had better understandings of their value and design. Their intention with this volume is to promote service-learning more broadly among literacy educators.

From Small Places: Toward the Realization of Literacy as a Human Right brings together history, theory, research, and practices that can lead to the realization of this right, both in itself, and as a means of achieving other rights.The premise of this book is that this right begins early in life within small places across the world. This idea originates from the words of Eleanor Roosevelt, Chair of the Commission that drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR):Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home—so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any map of the world... Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere.Herein, literacy is viewed as a life-long social process. Literacy includes reading, writing, and new literacies that are evolving along with new technologies.The book includes an examination of the evolution of literacy as a human right from 1948, the time of the writing of the UDHR, to the present. Barriers to the realization of literacy as a human right, including the pedagogy of poverty and pathologizing the language of poor children, are explored. The book also describes theory, research and practices that can serve to dismantle these barriers. It includes research about brain development, language and literacy development from birth to the age of six, and examples of practices and community initiatives that honor, support, and build upon children’s language and literacy./div

This unique and innovative book fuses journalism with both psychology and biology to create a new scaffolding where primal literacy is the guiding force to covering high-risk environments. When humans are in high-stress situations, their perceptions of reality can be easily deceived and manipulated. What is safe, moral, truthful, and brave can be distorted, unless the journalist has a strong core in primal literacy. This text remedies this oversight by showing the mechanisms of primal literacy and survival instincts to create a powerful and reliable scaffolding with internal, external, and ecological validity. Readers are shown how to cover dangerous events using journalism and evolutionary psychology to avoid falling for propaganda or bringing further danger to the reporter and news consumer; however, these methods can easily be applied to any situation in times of both war and peace.

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