Jane Fleming - More Mirrors in the Classroom: Using Urban Childrens Literature to Increase Literacy

More Mirrors in the Classroom

About the Series

The Kids Like Us series published by Rowman & Littlefield Education is designed to support educators in discovering the world of high-quality urban childrens literature and to demonstrate the potential for culturally relevant texts to increase literacy. More Mirrors in the Classroom: Using Urban Childrens Literature to Increase Literacy is the first book in the series. It includes research summaries, guidelines for text selection, and a step-by-step guide to increasing the cultural relevance of literacy instruction with urban childrens literature. The second book in the series will provide practical guidance for building high-quality, culturally relevant classroom library collections and for utilizing the classroom library as a central part of daily literacy instruction. The third book will document practice in urban classrooms, showcasing how teachers have used urban childrens literature in a range of inquiry-based projects and thematic units to support childrens reading and writing development. The Kids Like Us website (www.kidslikeus.org) provides additional resources to accompany the series, including access to descriptions, cover art, and reading levels of high-quality multicultural and urban childrens literature, as well as links to teaching guides, author and illustrator websites, and other resources.

More Mirrors in the Classroom

Using Urban Childrens Literature to Increase Literacy

Jane Fleming, Susan Catapano, Candace M. Thompson, and Sandy Ruvalcaba Carrillo

Rowman & Littlefield

Lanham Boulder New York London

Published by Rowman & Littlefield

A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706

www.rowman.com

Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26-34 Stannary Street, London SE11 4AB

Copyright 2015 by Jane Fleming, et al.

Cover art: From Hot city illustrated by R. Gregory Christie. Illustrations copyright 2004 by R. Gregory Christie. Used with permission of the illustrator.

All rights reserved . No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Fleming, Jane, 1967- author.

Title: More mirrors in the classroom : using urban childrens literature to increase literacy / Jane Fleming, Susan Catapano, Candace M. Thompson, and Sandy Ruvalcaba Carrillo.

Description: Lanham, Maryland : Rowman & Littlefield, 2016. | Series: Kids like us ; 1

Identifiers: LCCN 2016006166| ISBN 9781475802153 (cloth) | ISBN 9781475802160 (pbk.) | ISBN 9781475802177 (electronic)

Subjects: LCSH: Reading (Elementary)Social aspectsUnited States. | City childrenBooks and readingUnited States. | Children with social disabilitiesBooks and readingUnited States. | Classroom librariesUnited States. | Culturally relevant pedagogyUnited States.

Classification: LCC LB1573 .F54 2016 | DDC 372.4dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016006166

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Preface

Im a city child.

I love the dizzy heights,

the concrete,

the steel,

the bright neon lights.

In the United States, more than 14 million children attend school in our nations cities, accounting for approximately 30 percent of the public-school student population (U.S. Department of Education, 2013). We wrote this book with all of our city children in mind who are eager to find themselves, their families, and their communities represented and valued among the vast collections of childrens books they find in school.

When learning how to read and write, children use language and experiences that are familiar to them to recognize words, understand texts, and tell stories. However, the large educational publishers that serve urban public-school districts generally develop basal readers and trade book collections to reach a national mainstream audience. As a result, few text selections include urban settings, multicultural and multilingual communities, and the urban architecture and ecology with which young children in urban public schools are familiar. When urban selections are included, they often depict communities, families, and children from a deficit perspective, rather than presenting authentic and affirming images of urban life.

Although teacher education and library science programs typically include coursework in multicultural education, fewer urban public-school teachers and librarians have extensive knowledge of the range of high quality urban childrens literature available to them and the important role it can play in the development of reading and writing skills. It is our goal to build greater awareness among preservice and inservice teachers, administrators, and teacher educators about literature that authentically reflects and celebrates urban life and how it can be used to engage students and support their literacy learning.

In addition, the research summaries, text recommendations, and instructional examples contained throughout the book should be useful for educators in any type of setting who are interested in learning more about culturally relevant instruction and discovering a range of outstanding childrens books to add to their collections.

Organization of the Book

We begin with several chapters that summarize research in culturally relevant instruction and the key role that urban childrens literature can play in student engagement, reading and writing development, and dual language learning. In addition to building our collective background knowledge about the impact urban childrens literature can have on students academic achievement, these chapters are designed to help culturally responsive teachers and administrators justify their practices and make the case for supplementing published curricula with more culturally relevant texts.

Chapters 6 through 8 provide guidance on text selection, outlining characteristics of high-quality urban literature and informational texts, as well as guidelines for considering cultural and linguistic authenticity in text selection. The final chapters focus on how to use these books as effective tools for reading and writing instruction. Chapter 9 includes practical examples of text sets and instructional units that utilize urban childrens literature in real classroom practices. Chapter 10 wraps it up with a step-by-step process that educators can take to get started in using urban childrens literature to increase literacy and help students connect with content.

Additional Resources

The collection of childrens literature featured in this book is one that we have developed over many years and countless hours of public library and Internet searches and scouring the shelves of classroom libraries in the schools in which we work. The reference list on page 183 includes the complete list of recommended childrens books featured throughout the chapters.