Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Pages: 220
Trim: 6¼ x 9
978-1-4758-4184-8 • Hardback • September 2018 • $93.00 • (£72.00)
978-1-4758-4185-5 • Paperback • September 2018 • $40.00 • (£30.00)
978-1-4758-4186-2 • eBook • September 2018 • $38.00 • (£30.00)
Jennifer Tuten, Associate Professor, Literacy Education at Hunter College, CUNY steaches courses in literacy assessment and intervention and children’s literature. She also leads professional development initiatives for teachers in New York City schools.
Deborah Ann Jensen, retired from the Graduate Literacy Program at Hunter College, CUNY, was the founder of their two semester tutoring program for struggling readers. She is now a literacy consultant to afterschool programs in New York City.
Charlene Klassen Endrizzi, Professor of Literacy Education at Westminster College, PA., teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in literacy learning, family-school partnerships and children’s literature.
Preface
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1: Why Cross the Bridge?
Chapter 2: Evoking Trust by Initiating Conversations
Chapter 3: Re-imagining Collaborative School- Home Events
Chapter 4: Developing Respect for Home and Community Literacy Experience
Chapter 5: Adapting Curriculum to Include Families’ Ways of Knowing
Chapter 6: Celebrating Literacy through Sharing Stories
Chapter 7: Using Children’s Literature to Connect Families and Schools
Chapter 8: Crossing Bridges: Sustaining Family and School Engagements to Support all
Learners
Index
Practical, meaningful, timely, and supportive, Tuten, Jensen and Endrizzi add to their work with Crossing Bridges: Strategies to Collaborate with Families of Struggling Readers. Their book is jam-packed with authentic vignettes to touch one’s heart and mind, with guiding principles to apply in one’s own instructional decision-making, with self-assessments for taking an honest look at one’s strengths and challenges, and with suggestions for expanding one’s professionalism through supplemental readings. Crossing Bridges is a complete package of inspiration and aspiration for any teacher who is dedicated to enriching the literacy lives of all students.
— Deborah Eldridge, Academic Vice President of WGU's Teachers College
This textbook is a gift; one that teachers who work with struggling readers will want to open again and again. The authors provide educators with an indispensable tool for strengthening the home and school connection. Using five important principles of trust, respect, communication, adaptation, and celebration, teachers are presented with a plethora of creative ideas and practicable strategies to inform their literacy instruction. Using surveys, letters, workshop game nights, technology, photography, intergenerational projects, websites, are just a few of the tangibles teachers will be delighted with as they use this book. In this critical and practical textbook, the authors share what they have learned and show teachers how to build a literacy bridge from their classroom to their students’ homes. Thank you for the opportunity to endorse and add my perspective to this book.
— Margaret Maziarz, PhD., educational consultant; former middle school language arts teacher and principal