All students deserve the opportunity to reach their full literacy potential, yet research shows that the numerous challenges faced by today's urban schools prevent many students from achieving this goal. Therefore, preparing teachers to effectively teach reading in diverse urban populations in ways that students find engaging and relevant must be a top priority of teacher education programs.

This book shares lessons gleaned from a two-year intervention in a high-poverty school, which was highly successful in significantly narrowing the literacy achievement gap and in raising children’s motivation and engagement in literacy both inside and outside school. Kennedy argues that there is much that disadvantaged schools can do to close the gap, but this is more likely to occur when a research-based approach to instruction (with a dual emphasis on cognitive skills and motivation and engagement), assessment and professional development is undertaken.

Children living in poverty have the same God-given potential as children in wealthier communities, but on average they achieve at significantly lower levels. Kids who both live in poverty and read below grade level by third grade are three times as likely not to graduate from high school as students who have never been poor. By the time children in low-income communities are in fourth grade, they're already three grade levels behind their peers in wealthier communities. More than half won't graduate from high school--and many that do graduate only perform at an eighth-grade level. Only one in ten will go on to graduate from college. These students have severely diminished opportunities for personal prosperity and professional success. It is clear that America's public schools do not provide a high quality public education for the sixteen million children growing up in poverty. Education expert Nicole Baker Fulgham explores what Christians can--and should--do to champion urgently needed reform and help improve our public schools. The book provides concrete action steps for working to ensure that all of God's children get the quality public education they deserve. It also features personal narratives from the author and other Christian public school teachers that demonstrate how the achievement gap in public education can be solved.

Improve reading achievement for students from diverse backgrounds with research-supported practices and culturally responsive interventions in phonemic awareness, phonics/decoding, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.

"The intent of this handbook is to provide a comprehensive, forward-looking, research-based resource for teachers, teacher-educators, and researchers on the key, inter-connected components of effective literacy instruction. The book is designed so that it is a readily useable resource for pre-service and practicing teachers as well. Every chapter in sections I, II, III, and IV includes substantial suggestions for implementing research-based practices in the classroom and for engaging in professional learning to help teachers increase their effectiveness as literacy instructors. Every chapter in section IV also includes substantial suggestions for fostering collaboration among staff and, when applicable, parents within schools"--

This book presents cutting-edge research findings in areas critical to advancing reading research in the 21st century context, including new literacies, reading motivation, strategy instruction, and reading intervention studies. While students’ reading performance is currently receiving unprecedented attention, there is a lack of research that adopts an international perspective and draws on research expertise from different parts of the world to present a concerted effort, discussing key research models and findings on how to improve reading education. Addressing this gap in the literature, the book also responds to the challenge of promoting higher levels of literacy, and supporting and developing readers who can enjoy and critique texts of every genre.

This practical book examines how teaching media in high school English and social studies classrooms can address major challenges in our educational system. The authors argue that, in addition to providing underserved youth with access to 21st century learning technologies, critical media education will help improve academic literacy achievement in city schools. Critical Media Pedagogy presents first-hand accounts of teachers who are successfully incorporating critical media education into standards-based lessons and units. The book begins with an analysis of how media have been conceptualized and studied; it identifies the various ways that youth are practicing media, as well as how these practices are constantly increasing in sophistication. Finally, it offers concrete examples of how to develop a rigorous, standards-based content area curriculum that embraces new media practices and features media production.

Maintaining that urban teaching and learning is characterized by many contradictions, this work proposes that there is a wide range of social, cultural, psychological, and pedagogical knowledge urban educators must possess in order to engage in effective and transformative practice. It is necessary for those teaching in urban schools to be scholar-practitioners, rather than bureaucrats who can only follow rather than analyze, understand, and create. Ten major sections cover the myriad issues of urban education as it exists today.

Beginning to Read reconciles the debate that has divided theorists for decades over what is the "right" way to help children learn to read. Beginning to Read reconciles the debate that has divided theorists for decades over the "right" way to help children learn to read. Drawing on a rich array of research on the nature and development of reading proficiency, Adams shows educators that they need not remain trapped in the phonics versus teaching-for-meaning dilemma. She proposes that phonics can work together with the whole language approach to teaching reading and provides an integrated treatment of the knowledge and process involved in skillful reading, the issues surrounding their acquisition, and the implications for reading instruction. A Bradford Book

The International Handbook of Research in Children's Literacy, Learning and Culture presents an authoritative distillation of current global knowledge related to the field of primary years literacy studies. Features chapters that conceptualize, interpret, and synthesize relevant research Critically reviews past and current research in order to influence future directions in the field of literacy Offers literacy scholars an international perspective that recognizes and anticipates increasing diversity in literacy practices and cultures