Synopses & Reviews
For young children with moderate to severe disabilities, developing literacy skills can lead to more active and fulfilling membership in society. This motivating, forward-thinking book will help educators see all their students as literate and use an innovative social model of literacy to enrich the skills of children with and without disabilities. Relating in-depth stories from hundreds of hours spent observing inclusive preschool classrooms, literacy researcher Christopher Kliewer inspires readers to
- view literacy as more than direct interaction with alphabetic text
- use dynamic, imaginative methods—dramatic play, drawing, painting, dance, movement—to help students with disabilities acquire useful literacy skills
- encourage students with and without disabilities to collaborate on literacy-building activities throughout the day
- incorporate the interests, imaginations, and histories of students with disabilities in classroom routines and lessons
Special and general educators will discover how this bold new vision of literacy and inclusion will benefit all their students, and they'll use the vivid examples as models in their own classrooms. A passionate, carefully researched call to action, this eye-opening book will help educators move beyond the labels and expectations often associated with disability, presume competence instead of limitation, and ensure that students with significant disabilities reach their full potential as literate citizens.
Review
"Provides a fine inspirational guide to literacy which uses imaginative teaching methods to help students with disabilities acquire literacy skills...it's an outstanding guide."
Synopsis
A passionate, carefully researched call to action, this eye-opening book will help educators move beyond the labels and expectations often associated with disability, presume competence instead of limitation, and ensure that students with significant disa
Synopsis
A social model of literacy that challenges assumptions about literacy for children with disabilities and illuminates how inclusion promotes literacy development in young children with and without significant disabilities.
About the Author
Dr. Kliewer is a professor of special education at the University of Northern Iowa, where he teaches graduate and undergraduate classes on inclusive education and qualitative research methods. His own qualitative research is focused on the literacy development of young children with significant developmental disabilities who are schooled in inclusive early childhood programs. Since 2001, his research has been supported through U.S. Department of Education research grants. His publications have appeared in the Harvard Educational Review, American Educational Research Journal, and the Teachers College Record among numerous other sociological and educational research venues.
Table of Contents
About the Author
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. "Dancing to Books": Local Understanding and Literate Participation in Early Childhood Implementing Local Understanding
Encouraging Literate Participation
The Genesis of Local Understanding
2. "It's About Making Sense": Citizenship in the Inclusive Early Childhood Literate Community Young Children's Expression on a Continuum
Established Constructions of Literacy
Perceptions of Literacy for Young Children with Significant Developmental Disabilities
3. "We Going a Space": Cardboard Boxes, Rockets, and the Child's Literate Construction of Meaning Children's Literate Citizenship Formed from the Triadic Literate Profile
Interrelationship of the Constructs of the Young Child's Literate Profile
The Bethel Rocket
"Just Shooting for the Stars" and Other Concluding Thoughts
4. "I See All My Kids as Readers!": Symbolic Presence, Narrative Construction, and Literacy Signs The Child's Symbolic Presence The Child's Construction of Narrative
The Child's Construction of Visual, Orthographic, and Tactile Sign Systems
The Tenuous Relationship Between the Child and Literate Citizenship 5. "And I Looked in Those Eyes": Fostering the Literate Citizenship of Young Children with Significant Developmental Disabilities The Struggle for Literate Acceptance
Realizing a Literate Voice
Currents of Literate Citizenship
The Basic Skills-Phonics Model and Young Children with Significant Developmental Disabilities 6. "His Only Limitations Were How I Imagined He Could Do Things": Concluding Thoughts on the Literate Citizenship of Young Children with Significant Developmental DisabilitiesInclusive Education and Local Understanding: The True Basics of Literate Citizenship
The Enriched Community: Inclusion and Literacy
Literacy as a Civil Right
References
Index