‘You're Like Yourself': Multimodal Literacies in a Reading Support Class

This article explores the experiences and literacy practices of an adolescent boy enrolled in an academic support class, in which students received an open-ended invitation to respond to S.E. Hinton's novel The Outsiders with the software programme Comic Life. In constructing this ‘telling case', we highlight how traditional print literacies associated with English instruction can construct school as a ‘contradictory symbolic space' for many students, but also how the introduction of the multimodalities can provide opportunities for adolescents to experience in-school literacies as social, performative and creative. We argue for re-envisioning literacy curricula and assessment not only to incorporate multimodalities, but also to provide students with instruction in writing conventions and practice with print in ways that serve larger purposes beyond remediation and test preparation. We posit the possibility for ‘complementary symbolic spaces' that are connected to the landscape of adolescent literacies that students traverse outside school and to students' desires to communicate, create and reach others within a range of discourse communities.     

Summer’s End and Sad Goodbyes: Children’s Picturebooks About Death and Dying

This article explores children’s picturebooks about death and grieving by considering both psychological and literary aspects. Two questions frame this analysis: How can picturebooks, particularly written for young children, support children’s grief when someone dies? How do the illustrations and text of picture books express and convey the aesthetic and emotional experience of loss? Using both psychological research on children’s grief reactions and literary analysis of picturebooks, this paper reviews picturebooks that have been published on the topic of death from 2001 to 2011 and then closely analyzes three books that span a range of topics and approaches to death. Findings indicate that children’s picturebooks convey important psychological and cultural issues through text and illustrations. Furthermore, understanding some of the psychological and literary features of children’s picturebooks that address death and grieving can help educators to provide support and understanding for children when they experience loss.     

“What the Real World in Schools is Like”: Urban Youth in Dialogue About Educational Inequality

This article examines the emergence of a dialogue among urban youth about their educational condition, and the opportunities for learning and collaboration that ensue. The study is based on observations and interviews with eight students in a community-based program that supports the engagement of young people in school reform. Notably, the membership includes youth enrolled in both urban and suburban high schools. Findings reveal that the students capitalized on their dialogic inquiry process by constructing knowledge of educational disparity and forging coalitions across district lines. Implications include the possibilities for structuring and supporting students’ social inquiry, and the potential for diverse, student-led dialogues to advance the cause of educational equality.     

“Is This a Boy or a Girl?”: Rethinking Sex-Role Representation in Caldecott Medal-Winning Picturebooks, 1938–2011

A number of previous studies have addressed gender role-stereotyping in Caldecott Award-winning picturebooks. Building upon the extensive scholarship examining representations of females in Caldecott books, this current study offers a critical investigation of how gender is represented in Caldecott Medal-winning literature from 1938 to 2011 by exploring the ways in which “femininity” and “masculinity,” biological sex, and gender are constructed in these texts. The investigators briefly address author and illustrator gender and the representations of males and females as characters or images in pictures and text before departing from previous scholarship to offer a rereading of books that feature “ungendered” leading characters, those that are not identified in the text as being either “male” or “female” and are therefore open to the interpretation of individual readers. By resisting cultural cues and normative constructions of gender and biological sex, these ungendered depictions extend the range of possible ways in which readers may see themselves or those in their lives represented in Caldecott Medal-winning picturebooks.     

Reading and Comprehension: a longitudinal study of ex‐Reading Recovery students

The paper reports the results of a longitudinal case study conducted in Australia and New Zealand. The study compares the reading and comprehension age of children in their fifth and sixth years in school. Reading and comprehension ages of 121 children who had Reading Recovery intervention at age 6 were compared with those of a Comparison group of 121 children, drawn from the same classes who, at age 6 years, had been better performers in literacy. Reading and comprehension assessment was conducted with the use of the Neale Analysis of Reading and analysed by means of a t‐test. Results show that the mean reading age of ex‐Reading Recovery children was nearly 12 months superior to that of the Comparison group and that the mean comprehension age was nearly 13 months superior at very highly significant levels. The results strongly suggest that Reading Recovery tuition at age 6 years enabled the 121 ex‐Reading Recovery children to make greater progress in literacy than children in the Comparison group.     

Reading Sacred Texts in the Classroom: The Alignment Between Students and Their Teacher’s Interpretive Stances When Reading the Hebrew Bible

This study investigated the voices of students interpreting Hebrew Bible texts in one fourth-grade classroom. Through think-alouds on the Biblical text with each student, exit interviews, teacher interviews, and classroom observations, this study found that those students whose interpretive stances were more aligned with the teacher’s were given greater voice in classroom text discussions than students whose interpretive stances were misaligned. Drawing on neo-Vygotskian education theory, I argue that Jewish educators need to take students’ interpretive stances seriously; attempting to force students into an interpretive framework that is set by the teacher will only undermine student learning and engagement.     

Bibliotherapy and Teaching Jewish Texts: “Medicine for the Mind”

Bibliotherapy is an educational approach that attempts to engage learners in meaningful discussions about relevant, compelling, and complex issues that they confront in their lives. Bibliotherapy begins with reading and reflecting on stories that can draw participants into a process of reflection, in ways that are user friendly and non-threatening. This study examines the unique educational features of bibliotherapy, and then proposes a model for implementing this approach in teaching Jewish texts. In the study's final section, we describe a teaching unit that demonstrates how to introduce bibliotherapy into the teaching about death and mourning in Jewish schools.     

“Everyone Needs a Class Like This”: High School Students' Perspectives on a Gay and Lesbian Literature Course

Abstract

This article offers insights on how students experienced and made sense of their learning in a trimester-long high school Gay and Lesbian Literature course. Drawing on questionnaires and interviews that the students completed as part of a larger ethnographic study of this class, the author shows how a queer-themed literature curriculum is relevant for both LGBTQ-identifying and straight–identifying students and contributes to a better school climate.     

Print Reading in General Education Kindergarten Classrooms: What Does It Look Like for Students At‐risk for Reading Difficulties?

The purpose of this study was to examine the amount of time spent actively engaged in reading sounds, words, and connected text for students at‐risk for reading difficulties in the first formal grade of reading instruction, kindergarten. Observational data of 109 kindergarten students at high‐risk for later reading difficulties were collected during general education reading instruction across the school year. Findings revealed students read orally for just over 1 minute during their reading instruction with approximately equal time spent reading sounds, words, or connected text. Implications of these results for early reading instruction and intervention for students at‐risk for reading difficulties or disabilities are presented.     

Like是“喜欢”还是“像”

舞台上的“变脸”绝活,一定使你赞叹不已。其实,like也有“变脸”的本领,有时“动”有时“介”,千万别弄错!一、like作动词老本行,基本含义是“喜欢”1.名词、代词身后站,“喜欢某物与某人”。例如:He likes apples very much.他非常喜欢苹果。She likes her students very muc     

“The Pleasure of Reading”

Reading books will not only enrich our life, but also broaden (1) our horizon.In addition, it will add(2) grace to our life. Thus, it is the favourite pastime of men     

Challenging the Visual Discourse of Reading: or,Do Teen Readers Look Like Google Images?

Popular culture images of reading tend to portray readers as solitary individuals deeply immersed in reading a single text in a quiet, undisturbed spot. Yet, in our documentation of adolescent students reading in Singapore secondary schools, we find that there are many ways and modes of reading, much of which is social in nature. Through the use of comparative, critical visual analysis, this paper expands the understanding of what it means to read and to understand how adolescent readers experience reading in school contexts. Visual images serve to disrupt dominant readings of what counts as reading to elicit new considerations for engaging adolescents in reading.