Teaching the Dimensions of Literacy

Teaching the Dimensions of Literacy provides both the conceptual knowledge to support teachers' instructional decisions in the reading/literacy classroom and a multitude of instructional strategy lessons for classroom use with both monolingual and bilingual students. It proposes that teachers need to help children become code breakers (the linguistic dimension), meaning makers (the cognitive dimension), text users and critics (the sociocultural dimension), and scientists (the developmental dimension). Acknowledging and addressing all four dimensions, this text links literacy theory, literacy research, and literacy practice in a useable way. Covering both reading and writing, it features clear, concise, and useable reading and writing strategy lessons and ways to modify them for different types of students. Changes in the Second Edition: Entirely reorganized, the text is more user friendly, builds a stronger link between theory and practice, and makes it is easier for teachers to locate appropriate strategy lessons to use with their students. Academic literacy is addressed more fully.

Preface Part I Introducing the Dimensions of Literacy and Their Instruction 1. Introducing the Dimensions of Literacy 2. The Developmental Dimension and Instruction Part II: Conceptual Frameworks and Strategy Lessons 3. The Nature of the Linguistic and other Sign Systems Dimension of Literacy: The Reader and Writer as Code Breaker and Code Maker 4. Teaching the Linguistic and Other Sign Systems Dimension of Literacy 5. The Nature of the Cognitive Dimension of Literacy: The Reader and Writer as Meaning Maker 6. Teaching the Cognitive Dimension of Literacy 7. The Nature of the Sociocultural Dimension of Literacy: The Reader and Writer as Text User and Text Critic 8. Teaching the Sociocultural Dimension of Literacy Part III: Putting It All Together 9. A Dimensional Literacy Curriculum. References. Index

Stephen Kucer is Associate Professor of Language and Literacy Education, Washington State University at Vancouver. Cecilia Silva is Professor of Education, Texas Christian University.