50 Literacy Strategies for Culturally Responsive Teaching, K-8 - Paperback

by Patricia Ruggiano Schmidt (Author), Wen Ma (Author)

"The authors provide practical approaches to literacy instruction that are desperately warranted. They offer a prescription for using strategies, selecting text, making home-school connections, and building learning communities aimed at benefiting all students. In short, this is a text that is long overdue."
--Alfred W. Tatum, Assistant Professor
Northern Illinois University

Make literacy MEANINGFUL in your classroom for students of ALL cultures!

This book will allow teachers to use innovative strategies to promote engaged, inclusive literacy, and raise their students′ appreciation for the cultural diversity in their own classroom communities. This resource celebrates awareness of individual, ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and economic diversity, and addresses all aspects of studies within the context of culturally responsive teaching. Field-tested with K-8 teachers, each strategy is described for use at beginning, intermediate, and advanced grade levels, and also helps teachers to individualize and accommodate special needs students.

50 Literacy Strategies for Culturally Responsive Teaching, K-8 addresses all aspects of language arts, reading, writing, speaking, and listening, and integrates math, science, and social studies, all within the context of culturally responsive teaching. Ways to include families and community members further strengthen the strategic effectiveness.

The six major themes of this text cluster a wealth of easily adapted and implemented strategies around:

• Classroom community
• Home, community, and nation
• Multicultural literature events
• Critical media literacy
• Global perspectives and literacy development
• Inquiry learning and literacy learning

This invaluable resource will allow every teacher to transform the classroom culture to one in which all cultures are valued and literacy becomes meaningful to all!

Author Biography

After more than 20 years of teaching in public schools, Patricia Ruggiano Schmidt completed her doctoral studies in Reading and Language Arts at Syracuse University. Her dissertation, Cultural Conflict and Struggle: Literacy Learning in a Kindergarten Program received recognition by the International Reading Association and was published by Peter Lang. As a Professor of Literacy at Le Moyne College, she teaches courses in the elementary and secondary programs and has developed a model, known as the ABC's of Cultural Understanding and Communication. This model is implemented around the world and helps elementary and secondary teachers communicate and connect with families and communities and design culturally responsive literacy lessons. Recently Dr. Ruggiano Schmidt was the recipient of the International Reading Association, Elva Knight Research Award. This work has promoted the study of links between literacy learning and culturally responsive teaching in urban and rural elementary and secondary schools.

Presently, Dr. Ruggiano Schmidt lives with her husband, Tom, next to a small lake and golf course in East Syracuse, New York.