Identity-Based Literacy Instruction for Early Childhood and Elementary Classrooms: Learning to Be Readers and Writers (1)

By: Christopher J. Wagner

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Synopsis: An essential text in literacy and teaching methods, this book introduces the concept of identity in literacy learning and provides guidance toward designing identity-based literacy instruction in early childhood and elementary classrooms. An identity approach to literacy learning asks teachers to see and engage with the ways that children make and remake ideas about who they are as readers and writers as they learn about language and literacy. This book explores what literacy teaching can look like when literacy is reframed as an identity practice, and it prepares readers to design literacy instruction using an identity-based instruction framework that focuses on four strands of teaching and learning: community, skills, membership, and reflection and narrative-making. Each chapter draws on examples of units and lessons developed by teachers using the four strands of the identity-based instruction framework, including instructional activities and resources. This is a foundational book for pre-service and in-service teachers to learn and develop the necessary tools to implement literacy instruction that recognizes and responds to the many possibilities of who children are becoming as readers and writers.