Publications & Downloads
Inexperienced Readers
Traveling Together over Difficult Ground
Negotiating Success with a Profoundly Inexperienced Reader in an Introduction to Chemistry Class
This engaging book, updated in a second edition, reviews key topics in literacy instruction, grades 5-12, and provides research-based recommendations for practice. Leading scholars present culturally responsive strategies for motivating adolescents, including English learners and struggling readers.
WestEd’s Cindy Litman and Cynthia Greenleaf author a key chapter, “Traveling Together Over Difficult Ground: Negotiating Success with a Profoundly Inexperienced Reader in an Introduction to Chemistry Class.” This profile of one teacher-student instructional relationship takes an important look at how teachers might translate their commitment to equity into classroom practices that help all students achieve high levels of academic literacy. In this case, chemistry teacher Will Brown not only provides rich literacy and science learning opportunities, but supports his students to invest themselves in learning through a process of “negotiating success.”
Intro to Chemistry
Will Brown’s Oakland high school students are profoundly inexperienced readers. But their teacher invites them to learn about acids and bases by asking questions, making connections, and noticing where the reading gets sticky. Then they problem solve.
Cindy Litman, Cynthia Greenleaf
Best Practices in Adolescent Literacy Instruction, Second Edition, edited by Kathleen Hinchman, Heather Sheridan-Thomas
Trade paper: $36.00, 396 pages, Guilford Press, 2014
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