Perhaps no factor has a greater influence on children's literacy learning than exposure to engaging, authentic, culturally relevant texts. This concise practitioner resource and course text helps K--8 teachers make informed choices about using children's literature in their classrooms, from selecting high-quality texts to planning instruction and…

"It could happen to anybody", observed one nine-year-old child when her teacher read a book in class about refugees. Fiction provides the perfect conduit for the experiences of refugees so that young refugee students feel their experiences are validated, and their peers come to understand their situation. In this book, Julia Hope…

Grounded in theory and best-practices research, this practical text provides teachers with 40 strategies for using fiction and non-fiction trade books to teach in five key content areas: language arts and reading, social studies, mathematics, science, and the arts. Each strategy provides everything a teacher needs to get started: a classroom…

This book offers teachers some information about many of the newest children's books as well as over 125 kid-tested and teacher-approved ways to extend these stories into other areas of the curriculum. It aims to enable teachers to enhance their professional judgment about using literature in the classroom; guide teachers toward getting their…

Representing Australia, Canada, England, the United States, and Wales, this collection of essays focuses on ways in which teachers can adapt classroom activities and modify writing assignments to encourage personal response and exploration of texts. Essays, their authors, and nationalities are as follows: (1) "The River and Its Banks:…

Intended for use in classes in children's literature at the preservice and graduate levels in education or English departments and in library schools in colleges and universities, this book provides a rationale and suggestions to teachers for planning and evaluating a literature-based curriculum. The three-part organization of the book emphasizes…

Offering an alternative to traditional language arts methods textbooks, this collection of 20 essays by master teachers is grouped into 4 main sections. Following an introduction, essays in the book are: (1) "Walter" (Vivian Gussin Paley); (2) "Children Become Writers: A Conversation with Two Teachers" (Cyndy Hoffman and Carol…

Intended for teachers, this book demonstrates the importance of teaching with real books. The first three chapters outline the components of a literature program, the settings in which it operates, and the human communities that shape it. Chapter 4 discusses literary elements: character, time, mood, layers of story meaning, place, point of view,…

Focusing on reader response in the classroom, the works collected in this book represent the results of a five-week summer institute in which 25 middle school, high school, and college teachers studied the principles and applications of literature instruction. The following essays are included: an introduction by G. Garber; "An Overview of the…

Written for those who would like to seriously and systematically study response to literature and the teaching of literature, this book presents a review of the major theories that might inform research on response and a catalog of most of the promising research techniques. The book is organized into three parts: theories of response, ways to…

Working from case studies of teachers and from the actual language used by teachers and students, this book provides a rationale for and a description of a response-centered approach to the teaching of literature in the secondary school. Embedded throughout the book are student activities. Each chapter gives suggested readings of related articles…

Using a college course on William Wordsworth's "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood" as a case study, this book presents an alternative approach to teaching poetry. Divided into seven sections with 19 chapters, the book describes how students can develop and exercise an historical imagination in the…

Intended as a guide for teachers of grades 3-6, this book presents ideas for the use of literature groups in the classroom. In chapter 1, the author talks about her own reading background and her discovery of teaching methods for literature, and presents ideas for forming literature groups. Chapter 2 offers advice on selecting and collecting good…

The purpose of this book is to provide teachers of literature with a sampling of a wide range of theoretical backgrounds and possible pedagogical applications for reading, writing, and interpreting literature in school classrooms, elementary through college. The book contains the following essays listed with their authors: (1) "Henny Penny to…

This book is about teaching and learning the English language and about using children's literature to support that teaching and learning in K-8 classrooms. The book is organized to help preservice teachers first develop a knowledge of language, and then examine the ways in which teachers can teach and children can learn about language. Chapters…