Crossing Literacy Bridges: Strategies to Collaborate with Families of Struggling Readers - Softcover

Tuten, Jennifer; Jensen, Deborah Ann; Endrizzi, Charlene Klassen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 147584185X ISBN 13: 9781475841855

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2018

Synopsis

It has been well established that schools and families must work together to ensure academic and literacy success for all children. Educators understand the importance of creating a learning connection between families and schools. Families provide teachers with increased knowledge of students. Teachers also recognize the importance of building on the learning events occurring in students’ homes and communities. However, in practice, partnerships are not easily established. Often teachers are not prepared to effectively reach out to families nor are families and schools prepared to effectively work together. There are many constraints in forming home-school partnerships and the added challenges of creating partnerships with families of children struggling with literacy development are even more difficult. Often teachers and families find themselves on opposite sides, facing similar challenges, looking for a way to connect. Families of children struggling to acquire literacy skills are often faced with many challenges other families never experience. For teachers, trying to reach out to these families and form partnerships is equally challenging. Bridges enable connections to be made between people and ideas and allow passage from one side to another. This book describes five principles to guide teachers in working with families of struggling readers. With examples from the field, tools to put into practice, and extensive resources lists, teachers will expand their understanding of family engagement. This book is an important resource for pre-service and in-service teachers who are eager to engage more sensitively and effectively with families, particularly those whose children have struggled with literacy.

About this title

About the Author

Jennifer Tuten, Associate Professor, Literacy Education at Hunter College, CUNY steaches courses in literacy assessment and intervention and children’s literature. She also leads professional development initiatives for teachers in New York City schools.

Deborah Ann Jensen, retired from the Graduate Literacy Program at Hunter College, CUNY, was the founder of their two semester tutoring program for struggling readers. She is now a literacy consultant to afterschool programs in New York City.

Charlene Klassen Endrizzi, Professor of Literacy Education at Westminster College, PA., teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in literacy learning, family-school partnerships and children’s literature.

Review

Practical, meaningful, timely, and supportive, Tuten, Jensen and Endrizzi add to their work with Crossing Bridges: Strategies to Collaborate with Families of Struggling Readers. Their book is jam-packed with authentic vignettes to touch one’s heart and mind, with guiding principles to apply in one’s own instructional decision-making, with self-assessments for taking an honest look at one’s strengths and challenges, and with suggestions for expanding one’s professionalism through supplemental readings. Crossing Bridges is a complete package of inspiration and aspiration for any teacher who is dedicated to enriching the literacy lives of all students. (Deborah Eldridge, Academic Vice President of WGU's Teachers College)

This textbook is a gift; one that teachers who work with struggling readers will want to open again and again. The authors provide educators with an indispensable tool for strengthening the home and school connection. Using five important principles of trust, respect, communication, adaptation, and celebration, teachers are presented with a plethora of creative ideas and practicable strategies to inform their literacy instruction. Using surveys, letters, workshop game nights, technology, photography, intergenerational projects, websites, are just a few of the tangibles teachers will be delighted with as they use this book. In this critical and practical textbook, the authors share what they have learned and show teachers how to build a literacy bridge from their classroom to their students’ homes. Thank you for the opportunity to endorse and add my perspective to this book. (Margaret Maziarz, PhD., educational consultant; former middle school language arts teacher and principal)

Edition details

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 147584185X
• ISBN 13: 9781475841855
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 206