The relative ease of digitally documenting and sharing classroom life creates new challenges for teachers faced with critical decisions about what digital representations to share with ...families/caregivers and for what purposes. The authors explored one kindergarten teacher’s yearlong approach to using Seesaw, a digital portfolio app, to make the process of early literacy learning in the classroom more visible to families/caregivers. Ultimately, this teacher's approach to digital documentation aimed to move the conversation between school and home from what is being learned to how learning happens, offering rich invitations for families/caregivers to engage in the literacy learning process alongside their children.
Parenting while transitioning out of incarceration, homelessness, or drug addiction has received inadequate attention despite the fact that these factors affect more and more of the U.S. population ...each day. This article is about a family literacy program implemented in a residential treatment facility where the fathers, most of whom were previously incarcerated and now receiving treatment for substance use disorder, have been parenting from afar with limited access to their children. Fathers participated in a family literacy program where they respond to children’s literature with the intention of eventually reading with their children. Our research was guided by the following question: How do fathers who are separated from their children while in a residential treatment program, read and respond to children’s literature in a small‐group setting? Findings reflect how fathers wanted to share their feelings about parenting and also consider their identities as fathers who were also addicts.
The authors examined the results of a three-year summer intervention, Dig Into Reading, for pre-first-grade through pre-third-grade students. This partnership among university professors, public ...school Title I teachers, and primary classroom teachers resulted in the development of research-based, copyright-free, replicable summer reading intervention materials. The four-year study involved collecting baseline data in year 1, then implementing the program, which progressed from sending 100 bags home with struggling pre-first-grade readers in year 2 to adding 100 bags for pre-second graders in year 3 (100 pre-first-grade and 100 pre-second-grade bags) and adding pre-third graders in year 4 (100 pre-first-grade, 100 pre-second-grade, and 100 pre-third-grade bags). The results of the Dig Into Reading intervention showed that participating students retained at least 30%–67% more reading ability based on reading level than did students in the baseline group who did not participate.
Authors featured in this department share anthropological perspectives and qualitative insights to redefine community in adolescent and adult literacy practice.
Leveraging Language(s) Caraballo, Limarys; Martinez, Danny C.
Journal of adolescent & adult literacy,
July/August 2019, Volume:
63, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
This department explores how teachers can sustain students’ multilingual literacies and reimagine literacy learning across multiple contexts in conversation with researchers, practitioners, and ...communities.
The terminology that we use to refer to English learners has shifted over the past two decades, from limited English proficient to English language learner to what is now the preferred term in ...California and, increasingly, other states: English learner. Yet, what has not changed is how this category continues to limit our thinking about bilingual/multilingual students. English learner is a label that conceals more than it reveals. It emphasizes what these students supposedly do not know instead of highlighting what they do know. As a category, “English learner” constrains our ability to perceive the many strengths that bilingual/multilingual students bring to the classroom—strengths on which we might build to support their language and literacy learning. The author describes how this label distorts our view of bilingual/multilingual students and proposes an alternative perspective that highlights the richness of these students’ linguistic repertoires.
In response to the growing number of linguistically diverse students in elementary classrooms, this Teaching Tip centers stories of students exploring language identity and use in one fourth‐grade ...classroom in the Midwestern United States. Specifically, the author situates this Teaching Tip by first telling how students engaged in a discussion about the Navajo code talkers before nuancing stories of two linguistically diverse elementary students as they navigated and negotiated the intricacies of language identity in their school. The author then illuminates how teachers can open new spaces for dialogue about and the practice of a multiplicity of languages.
This department highlights language learning for bi/multilingual students worldwide, from our earliest learners to early adolescent writers. It also highlights exemplary teachers and ways that they ...include research-based instruction to develop bi/multilingual learners.
Family literacy programmes can take many shapes, and are often focused on training adult caregivers to engage in particular literacy activities with their young children. In this study, through a ...series of five, two-hour workshops, we instead worked to help families take advantage of opportunities to infuse literacy learning into their daily routines with their preschool-aged children. Effects of the workshop include parent reports of increased literacy interactions in the home, particularly in the areas of read-alouds and writing opportunities. In addition, students whose families participated in the workshops showed statistically significantly greater literacy growth in print and word awareness and comprehension than peers whose families did not participate in the workshops.
In this article, the author invites teachers of children who are bilingual, multilingual, and at promise for bi‐/multilingualism to honor and build on their rich literacy practices. To do so, she ...challenges ideas and labels that continuously disempower bilingual and multilingual learners. Souto‐Manning establishes the understanding that education is a human, civil, and legal right and briefly reviews the laws determining the education of bilingual children in the United States. In doing so, she explores issues of access and equity in education, then focuses on Ladson‐Billings's concept of culturally relevant teaching and shares examples of culturally relevant teaching in action. These examples come from dual‐language and ESOL classrooms in the United States. She concludes by inviting readers to consider ways to honor and build on the language and literacy practices of bilingual and multilingual learners.
