What are the principles that every elementary teacher must learn in order to plan and adapt successful literacy instruction? This concise course text and practitioner resource brings together leading experts to explain the guiding ideas that underlie effective instructional practice. Each chapter reviews one or more key principles and highlights ways to apply them flexibly in diverse classrooms and across grade levels and content areas. Chapters cover core instructional topics (phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension); high-quality learning environments; major issues such as assessment, differentiation, explicit instruction, equity, and culturally relevant pedagogy; and the importance of teachers’ reflective practice and lifelong learning.

"Teachers and students studying to be teachers want strategies that they can use in the classroom and this book definitely delivered...The reader is hooked from the first page."---Amy MacKenzie, Manhattanville College, Purchase, NY --

'The authors provide practical approaches to literacy instruction that are desperately warranted. They offer a prescription for using strategies, selecting text, making home-school connections, and building learning communities aimed at benefiting all students. In short, this is a text that is long overdue' - Alfred W. Tatum, Assistant Professor, Northern Illinois UniversityMake literacy meaningful in your classroom for students of all cultures.This book will allow teachers to use innovative strategies to promote engaged, inclusive literacy, and raise their students' appreciation for the cultural diversity in their own classroom communities. This resource celebrates awareness of individual, ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and economic diversity, and addresses all aspects of studies within the context of culturally responsive teaching. Tried-and-tested by teachers, each strategy is differentiated to help teachers to individualize and accommodate special needs students.50 Literacy Strategies for Culturally Responsive Teaching addresses all aspects of language arts, reading, writing, speaking, and listening, and integrates math, science, and social studies, all within the context of culturally responsive teaching. Ways to include families and community members further strengthen the strategic effectiveness.The six major themes of this text cluster a wealth of easily adapted and implemented strategies around:- Classroom community- Home, community, and nation- Multicultural literature events- Critical media literacy- Global perspectives and literacy development- Inquiry learning and literacy learningThis invaluable resource will allow every teacher to transform the classroom culture to one in which all cultures are valued and literacy becomes meaningful to all.

To develop strong disciplinary literacy skills, middle and high school students need to engage with diverse types of challenging texts in every content area. This book provides a blueprint for constructing literacy-rich instructional units in English language arts, science, and social studies. The authors describe how to design interconnected text sets and plan lessons that support learning and engagement before, during, and after reading. Presented are ways to build academic vocabulary and background knowledge, teach research-based comprehension strategies, and guide effective discussions and text-based writing activities. Chapters also cover how to teach students to write argumentative, informative, and narrative essays, and to conduct discipline-specific inquiry. Special features include sample text sets and 24 reproducible planning templates and other teaching tools; purchasers get access to a Web page where they can download and print the reproducible materials in a convenient 8 1/2" x 11" size.

Many tens of thousands of preservice and inservice teachers have relied on this highly regarded text from leading experts, now in a revised and updated sixth edition. The latest knowledge about literacy teaching and learning is distilled into flexible strategies for helping all PreK–12 learners succeed. The book addresses major components of literacy, the needs of specific populations, motivation, assessment, approaches to organizing instruction, and more. Each chapter features bulleted previews of key points; reviews of the research evidence; recommendations for best practices in action, including examples from exemplary classrooms; and engagement activities that help teachers apply the knowledge and strategies they have learned. New to This Edition *Incorporates the latest research findings and instructional practices. *Chapters on new topics: developmental word study and the physiological, emotional, and behavioral foundations of literacy learning. *Chapters offering fresh, expanded perspectives on writing and vocabulary. *Increased attention to timely issues: classroom learning communities, teaching English learners, and the use of digital tools and multimodal texts.

Ana loves stories. She often makes them up to help her little brother fall asleep. But in her small village there are only a few books and she has read them all. One morning, Ana wakes up to the clip-clop of hooves, and there before her, is the most wonderful sight: a traveling library resting on the backs of two burros‑all the books a little girl could dream of, with enough stories to encourage her to create one of her own. Inspired by the heroic efforts of real-life librarian Luis Soriano, award-winning picture book creators Monica Brown and John Parra introduce readers to the mobile library that journeys over mountains and through valleys to bring literacy and culture to rural Colombia, and to the children who wait for the BiblioBurro. A portion of the proceeds from sales of this book was donated to Luis Soriano's BiblioBurro program.

Describes everyday classroom practices and exercises to help students in grades four through twelve read for accuracy, extract meaning from text, and interpret subject matter.