This work supports PK-12 teachers to independently multiculturally adapt existing curriculum, to create new multicultural curriculum differentiated by content areas and grade levels, and by providing ample examples of what such multicultural transformed literacy and language arts curricula looks like in practice.

This book focuses on multicultural curriculum transformation in literacy and language arts subject areas. The discussion of each area outlines critical considerations for multicultural curriculum transformation for the area by grade level and then by eight organizing tools, including content standards, relationships with and among students and their families, and evaluation of student learning and teaching effectiveness. The volume is designed to speak with PK-12 teachers as colleagues in the multicultural curriculum transformation work. Readers are exposed to “things to think about,” but also given curricular examples to work with or from in going about the actual, concrete work of curriculum change. This work supports PK-12 teachers to independently multiculturally adapt existing curriculum, to create new multicultural curriculum differentiated by content areas and grade levels, and by providing ample examples of what such multicultural transformed literacy and language arts curricula looks like in practice.

Introduction

by Amanda VandeHei-Carter, Nayelee Villanueva, and Christine Clark

Part I: Literacy and Language Arts Education in the Community

Chapter 1: Understanding Water as Social, Political, and Natural: An Example of Transformative Multicultural Literacy Teaching and Learning

by Jeannette Driscoll Alarcón, Benjamin Francisco, Dara Nix-Stevenson, and Laura Shelton

Chapter 2: Curation as a Literacy Practice: Bringing a Critical Lens to Traditional Field Trip Spaces

by Amy Tondreau and Laurie Rabinowitz

Chapter 3: Place-Based Literacies for a Multicultural World: A Framework for Literacy and Language Arts Curriculum Transformation in Rural Communities

by Vicki Sherbert, Eileen Montalvo Wertzberger, and Ernestina Wiafe

Part II: Literacy and Language Arts Education in the Classroom

Chapter 4: The Question Matters Most: Using Student-Generated Inquiry Questions to Promote Student Agency and Curiosity in Texts in Classes of Diverse Learners

by Merida Lang and Molly Sherman

Chapter 5: Using Text Sets to Support the Development of Biliteracy in “English-only” Elementary Classrooms

by Rhianna Henry, Aja E. LaDuke, and Alexandra Porrata

Chapter 6: Backwards Design and Reading Complexity Circles

by Kristen R. Strom

Chapter 7: Toward a Critical Translanguaging Pedagogy: An AsianCrit Perspective

by Sharon Chang and Yaojia Qu

Chapter 8: Creating Culturally Relevant Classroom Libraries Using Children’s Voices

by Socorro García-Alvarado

Part III: Literacy and Language Arts Education and Sense of Belonging

Chapter 9: Disrupting Whiteness in Classroom Libraries: Using the Windows and Mirrors Metaphor in Teacher Education

by Alisun Thompson and Judith A. Scott

Chapter 10: Inviting Decolonizing Analysis through Primary Sources: Constructing an Ethnic Studies Unit for Language Learners on the History of Segregation in California Schools

by Tricia Gallagher-Geurtsen

Chapter 11: “My Heaviest Verse’ll Move a Mountain:” Hip Hop-Based Writing Instruction in the High School English Language Arts Classroom

by Melody Andrews and Brittany Goldsby

Chapter 12: Transformative Assessment: Ungrading

by Nayelee Villanueva, Christine Beaudry, and Amanda VandeHei-Carter

Coda

by Amanda VandeHei-Carter, Nayelee Villanueva, and Christine Clark