The Culture of Literacy
The Power of Agency Have you ever witnessed the pure and absolute joy that children express at a book club or fair? Why do they experience this joy in these moments as opposed to other time spent with books? One answer—agency. When students are given opportunities to make decisions based on their own interests, they effectively begin the shift of ownership of their literacy from their teachers and parents to themselves. That pride and confidence leads to more engaged and dedicated readers.
Multifaceted Diversity Ideally, every classroom would contain a robust classroom library filled with hundreds of books that reflect the mosaic of our society. Yet excellent texts with accurate, dignified, and appealing portrayals of all genders, cultures, orientations, and neurological differences are still largely lacking from most classroom and school libraries. And this lack of diversity takes a toll. When children do not see themselves in books—or worse, see only distorted or stereotypical reflections— they can internalize negative cultural views and feel as if school is a place where they don’t matter. Positive textual representations can change that, resulting in students who have higher self-esteem, better social- emotional functioning, and increased classroom engagement (Schwartz, 2019). Curated Collections Within a rich classroom library, children find books that vary in tone, level of complexity, format, and style. Children have the opportunity to read the classics as well as many new and popular books on subjects that they want to explore. They find books that allow them to stretch their perceptions of themselves as readers by experiencing a variety of fiction and informational texts. Becoming familiar with a wide array of texts will better equip them for the variety of writing they will encounter in school, on devices, and out in the world.
Reading aloud is no frivolous activity; it is solid instructional work when our intentions are clear. —Laminack, 2019
Read- Alouds Students of all ages enjoy and benefit from interactive read-alouds. Collections with whole-class read-aloud materials can introduce a unit of study or otherwise support lesson plans in and out of the ELA block. Listening to read-alouds allows all students to react and comment on a text, regardless of level or reading ability.
2 scholastic.com/classroomlibraries
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