2 minute read
Your Turn: Chapter 1
John Maxwell (2019) said, “We look back before we look ahead because reflection is the process that turns experience into insight,” and writing about your experiences often reveals this insight in authentic ways. Choose one of the following questions to consider, and record your thinking. Then, find a partner or a team or book study member, and share your writing. y Think about your own experiences as a student in secondary English language arts classes. Based on our definition of authentic literacy instruction, would you say the instruction you received was authentic? Why or why not?
y Recall writer Jason Reynolds’s experience, which we mentioned in this chapter (page 11). How is it possible to advance through school without reading a book, particularly a novel in his English classes? Why might some individual students choose to write poetry but refuse to read the books assigned in school? What about you— did you read? What did you like to write?
y How might a focus on the individual students’ strengths and challenges throughout the year shift the focus of what you prioritize instructionally?
Imagine a thriving English classroom: one that’s active, experiential, collaborative, and rigorous. Authentic Literacy Instruction: Empowering Secondary Students to Become Lifelong Readers, Writers, and Communicators will help you not only imagine this classroom but also create it. Through a hands-on approach to student-centered literacy, authors Billy Eastman and Amy Rasmussen empower readers to tap into the passions, strengths, and lived experiences of every learner. Aimed at educators working with students in grades 6–12, this book guides readers to reinvigorate their own literacy expertise, model lifelong reading and writing behaviors, and implement classroom practices that prioritize the individual needs of learners.
Readers will:
• Understand what authentic literacy is and why it’s important • Transform their classrooms into authentic literacy communities • Develop their own expertise as teacher readers and teacher writers • Establish classroom routines that make authentic literacy part of daily practice • Teach individual students and help them identify as lifelong readers and writers
Visit go.SolutionTree.com/literacy to download the free reproducibles in this book. “We all want to be in community with teachers who are as dedicated to learning and growth as Billy Eastman and Amy Rasmussen. Their voices guide teachers in transferring research-based literacy practices into dynamic classroom routines. . . . This is an exciting, forward-thinking book.”
—PENNY KITTLE
Author, Book Love and Write Beside Them
“Working from a deep well of professional experience, [the authors] show how students can see themselves in a new way . . . no longer dutiful (or not-so-dutiful) students, but readers and writers, making choices, living literate lives.”
—THOMAS NEWKIRK
Professor Emeritus of English, University of New Hampshire; Author, Writing Unbound: How Fiction Transforms Student Writers
“Authentic Literacy Instruction . . . puts us firmly on a pathway toward achieving student agency. Eastman and Rasmussen share stories, research, and reflective practices every teacher needs to enact the ideas schools say are important but rarely implement authentically.”
—SARAH J. DONOVAN
Assistant Professor of Secondary English Education, Oklahoma State University
SolutionTree.com
