Start with Joy: Designing Literacy Learning for Student Happiness

In Start with Joy: Designing Literacy Learning for Student Happiness, author Katie Cunningham links what we know from the science of happiness with what we know about effective literacy instruction. When given a choice about what to write, children express hopes, fears, and reactions to life's experiences. Literacy learning is full of opportunities for students to learn tools to live a happy life. Inside, you'll find:

• Seven Pillars: Cunningham discusses the seven pillars that guide her classrooms and are involved in each literacy lesson'sConnection, Choice, Challenge, Play, Story, Discovery, and Movement.
• Ten Invitations: Designed for teachers to improvise and make their own, these ten lessons may be presented at any time of year in the context of any unit and include children's literature suggestions as well as recommended teacher talk to meet children's specific needs.
• Teaching Tools: Tools and resources that will help students tell their stories and make literacy learning something all students celebrate and cherish.

This book honors the adventure that learning is meant to be and aims to make happiness more tangible in the classroom. By infusing school days with happiness, teachers can support children as they become stronger readers, writers, and thinkers, while also helping them learn that strength comes from challenge, and joy comes from leading a purposeful life.

Katie Egan Cunningham believes in the power of stories. First as a classroom teacher, and now as a professor and consultant, Katie strives to let her students know their lives are full of stories. She lives with her husband and two sons where hilarious, heartfelt stories happen each day.