This book illustrates how teachers can draw upon young adult literature to facilitate students’ social action. Each chapter centers on one novel that represents a contemporary topic including police brutality, women’s rights, ecojustice, and bullying. In each, authors provide pre-, during-, and after reading strategies for teaching that connect the social issues in the texts to students’ lives and to the world around them. They then offer a multitude of avenues for student action, emphasizing the need to move readers from understanding and awareness to asserting their own agency and capacities to effect change in their local, national, and global communities. In addition to methods for scaffolding students’ analysis of texts and topics, authors also offer a plethora of additional resources such as documentaries, canonical companions for study, connected music, and supplementary lesson plans.
Reading as Collective Action examines literature's power to reshape our world in very public and very active ways. Whether through readers publicly posting poems of Shakespeare and Amiri Baraka to criticize the Bush administration, forming a community reading program using Grapes of Wrath to organize support during the recent Great Recession, or taking to public transit to talk with strangers about working-class literature, this book challenges dominant academic modes of reading. For adherents of the "civic turn," it suggests how we can create more politically effective forms of service learning and community engagement grounded in commitment to tactical, grassroots actions. -- from back cover.
An award-winning journalist and literacy advocate provides a clear, step-by-step guide to helping your child thrive as a reader and a learner. When her child went off to school, Maya Smart was shocked to discover that a good education in America is a long shot, in ways that few parents fully appreciate. Our current approach to literacy offers too little, too late, and attempting to play catch-up when our kids get to kindergarten can no longer be our default strategy. We have to start at the top. The brain architecture for reading develops rapidly during infancy, and early language experiences are critical to building it. That means parents’ work as children’s first teachers begins from day one too—and we need deeper knowledge to play our positions. Reading for Our Lives challenges the bath-book-bed mantra and the idea that reading aloud to our kids is enough to ensure school readiness. Instead, it gives parents easy, immediate, and accessible ways to nurture language and literacy development from the start. Through personal stories, historical accounts, scholarly research, and practical tips, this book presents the life-and-death urgency of literacy, investigates inequity in reading achievement, and illuminates a path to a true, transformative education for all.
"Teachers know scientifically based reading research (SBRR) is important - but how can they use it in their everyday classroom instruction to improve students' literacy outcomes? They'll find the answers in this practical SBRR guide. Answers to these questions come complete with straightforward explanations of research and vingettes that demonstrate how to work research-based practices into classroom reading instruction."--BOOK JACKET.
You wouldn’t tell a heart surgeon to also do pediatrics—so why would we tell content area educators they must “do” literacy? Math, history, English and science teachers are passionate about their specialties, and that’s why authors Releah Lent and Marsha Voight designed a framework that keeps teachers’ subjects at the center of daily classroom life while also helping them pool strengths with colleagues. Based on years of successful implementation, this powerful PL cycle “drops in” seamlessly to any school setting, so teachers schoolwide take on innovative practices of reading, writing, thinking, and doing within their areas of expertise.
From the master of Story, Dialogue, and Character, ACTION offers writers the keys to propulsive storytelling. ACTION explores the ways that a modern-day writer can successfully tell an action story that not only stands apart, but wins the war on clichés. Teaming up with the former co-host of The Story Toolkit, Bassim El-Wakil, legendary story lecturer Robert McKee guides writers to award-winning originality by deconstructing the action genre, illuminating the challenges, and, more importantly, demonstrating how to master the demands of plot with surprising beats of innovation and ingenuity. Topics include: Understanding the Four Core Elements of Action Creating the Action Cast Hook, Hold, Pay Off: Design in Action The Action Macguffin Action Set Pieces The Sixteen Action Subgenres A must-add to the McKee storytelling library, ACTION illustrates the principles of narrative drive with precision and clarity by referencing the most popular action movies of our time including: Die Hard, The Star Wars Saga, Dark Knight, The Matrix, and Avengers: Endgame.
The inspirational bestseller that ignited a movement and asked us to find our WHY Discover the book that is captivating millions on TikTok and that served as the basis for one of the most popular TED Talks of all time—with more than 56 million views and counting. Over a decade ago, Simon Sinek started a movement that inspired millions to demand purpose at work, to ask what was the WHY of their organization. Since then, millions have been touched by the power of his ideas, and these ideas remain as relevant and timely as ever. START WITH WHY asks (and answers) the questions: why are some people and organizations more innovative, more influential, and more profitable than others? Why do some command greater loyalty from customers and employees alike? Even among the successful, why are so few able to repeat their success over and over? People like Martin Luther King Jr., Steve Jobs, and the Wright Brothers had little in common, but they all started with WHY. They realized that people won't truly buy into a product, service, movement, or idea until they understand the WHY behind it. START WITH WHY shows that the leaders who have had the greatest influence in the world all think, act and communicate the same way—and it's the opposite of what everyone else does. Sinek calls this powerful idea The Golden Circle, and it provides a framework upon which organizations can be built, movements can be led, and people can be inspired. And it all starts with WHY.
"You'd be hard-pressed to find a better American story than this one. . . . Rafael Cruz is one of the greatest freedom fighters of his generation." âGlenn Beck, from the foreword America was founded on Judeo-Christian principles, by moral leaders, many of whom were strong Christians themselves. The first settlers were committed Christians seeking refuge from religious persecution abroad. In the last hundred years, America has been on a slippery slope, moving away from its founding principles, and in large part with little resistance from the Church. In A Time for Action , Rafael Cruz presents a simple underlying message: For Christians, Jesus Christ should be the foundation of the lives they build and they should be active in making a difference in the world around them. In practical terms, that means we should strive for a free society that respects each of God's children; we should embrace the Judeo-Christian values of love, joy, and peace; and we should seek a relationship with the living God. It means people of faith should actively participate in the political process in order to combat the debilitating and deceptive progressive mantra that there should be a separation of church and state. A Time for Action is the story or one man's quest for refuge from Cuban persecution to realizing the American dream. It is a story about one man finding true freedom that comes from faith in Jesus Christ. It is the story of this great nation that was founded on Judeo-Christian principles and why it has fallen from grace. It is a wake-up call to the faithful across the land to step up to the challenge of entering the public arena and taking on the forces at work to destroy the guiding principles that made this country great. Religious people must saddle up. They must vote and volunteer and campaign. They must get in the political game. The followers of Christ are, in His words, "the light of the world." But for a light to have its effect, it has to shine in the darkness. That's why our mission is "to declare," as St. Paul said, "the whole counsel of God." If we continue to remain silent, we will answer to God for our silence.
This book provides a wealth of enactment techniques that help students apply their social, physical, and intellectual selves to the books they read to help improve their comprehension.
