Transforming Literacy Curriculum Genres: Working With Teacher Researchers in Urban Classrooms / Edition 1

by Christine C. Pappas

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780805824018
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	01/01/2001
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	362
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Pappas, Christine C.

Table of Contents

Preface — 1 Urban Teacher Researchers’ Struggles in Sharing Power With Their Students: Exploring Changes in Literacy Curriculum Genres /Christine C. Pappas and Liliana Barro Zecker — Part I: Writing Curriculum Genres — 2 Creating A Writing Workshop in First Grade: How to Teach Literacy “Skills” and Help Children “Come to Voice” /Jane Liao, Dian Ruben, and Pamela Wolfer — 3 “Pero, Nosotros No Somos Autores!”: Using Explanations to Scaffold Authorship in Latino Second Graders /Liliana Barro Zecker, Caidyn Nichols, Linda Montes,and Sarah Cohen — 4 “Does That Sound Like You?”: Exploring Ways to Foster Eighth-Grade Students’ Voice in Their Written Research Reports /Dian Ruben, Jane Liao, and Michael Rassel — 5 Fostering First-Graders’ Phonemic Awareness and Much More: Using ABC Books in the Reading-Aloud Curriculum Genre /Christine C. Pappas, Shannon Hart, Diane Escobar, and Anne Barry — B Two Teachers’ Efforts to Transform The Reading-Aloud Curriculum Genre for Collaboration: Examining Shifts of Process and Content Dimensions of Sharing Authority /Christine C. Pappas, Shannon Hart, Diane Escobar, Hawa Jones, and Dorothy A. O'Malley — 7 Bridging Into English Through Reading-Alouds: More Than a Curricular Routine in a Bilingual Third Grade /Liliana Barro Zecker, Caitlyn Nichols, Linda Montes, and Sonia Torres Pasewark — Part III: Drama Curriculum Genres — 8 Trying Out Roles for Learning: Finding the “Right” Drama Approach for Sixth Graders /Henry Tabak, Jr., and Paul Fowler — 9 Finding the Right Balance: Using Drama to Promote Special Education Students’ Engagement in Literacy Learning /Dian Ruben, Jane Liao, and Bemadine Braun — Part IV: Other Language and Literacy Curriculum Genres — 10 Exploring “Language Richness” in a Bilingual Kindergarten Classroom: The Possible Forms and Power of Collaborative Talk /Liliana Barro Zecker, Caitlyn Nichols, Linda Montes, and Sonia White Soltero — 11 Fostering Young Readers: Creating Contexts for Kindergartners’ Reenactments of Books in the Classroom /Dian Ruben, Jane Liao, and Demetrya Collier — 12 Creating Ways to Individualize Teacher Response in Various Group Reading Experiences for Second Graders /Jane Liao, Dian Ruben, and Renuka L. Mehra — 13 The Rocky Road to Grand Conversations: Learning How to Facilitate Literature-Discussion Groups in Fourth Grade /Shannon Hart, Diane Escobar, and Susan C. Jacobson — 14 Transforming Curriculum Genres in Urban Schools: The Political Significance of Collaborative Classroom Discourse /Christine C. Pappas and Liliana Barro Zecker — About the Authors — Author Index — Subject Index.

Editorial Reviews

"The information is relevant to all who teach. This scholarly book presents a richly detailed portrait of literacy, is easy to read, and provides numerous examples grounded in theory and practical application. Highly recommended for graduate and upper-division undergraduate students interested in literacy."
—CHOICE

"Two collaborative efforts are chronicled in this volume, and both are equally interesting and instructive: first, the effort by teachers to improve the quality of instruction in their classrooms, with the support and encouragement of university personnel, and second, the efforts of individual teachers to establish collaborative inquiry in their own classrooms....These essays constitute a front line view of what it actually means to improve instruction, under the most difficult of circumstances, and demonstrate the importance of supporting competent and dedicated teachers."
—Marcia S. Popp
Southern Illinois University

From the Publisher

University researchers and urban elementary teacher researchers co- author 14 accounts of the teachers' year-long inquiries into a range of literary topics that they conducted as part of a collaborative school-university action research project. Central to the project was the effort by the teacher researchers to transform their teaching practices to meet the needs of students from diverse ethnic and linguistic backgrounds, and their discovery that those efforts generated more collaborative styles of teaching. A sister volume documents a similar project focused on teaching literacy. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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