Literacy Playshop

Building on her award-winning research (featured in Playing Their Way into Literacies) which emphasizes that play is an early literacy, Wohlwend has developed a curricular framework for children ages 3 to 8. The Literacy Playshop curriculum engages children in creating their own multimedia productions, positioning them as media makers rather than passive recipients of media messages. The goal is to teach young children to critically interpret the daily messages they receive in popular entertainment that increasingly blur toys, stories, and advertising. The first half of this practical resource features case studies that show how six early childhood teachers working together in teacher study groups developed and implemented play-based literacy learning and media production. The second half of the book provides a Literacy Playshop framework with professional development and classroom activities, discussion questions, and technology try-it sections. This user-friendly book will inspire and support teachers in designing their own Literacy Playshops.

Offering an overview of the major fields in literacy studies, this book presents a detailed and accessible discussion of key theories and their relevance in the primary classroom. Each chapter uses a real life case study to explore the application of theory in practice, followed by a detailed discussion of the case study material by a leading name in the field, including contributions from Barbara Comber, Michele Knobel, Colin Lankshear, Gunther Kress, Brian Street, Kevin Leander and Patricia Enciso. The text also offers reflections on theoretical foundations for research, exploring literacy as a practice grounded in social, cultural, historical and political contexts and in relationships of power. This second edition includes: New chapters covering digital literacy, space and play, and multimodality Examples and contributions from a range of international contexts, including US, UK, Canada, Australia and South Africa Further reading links. Essential reading for students at undergraduate and post-graduate level on primary education courses and an invaluable guide for anyone wanting to understand literacy theory and successfully apply this to the classroom.

Expanding the definition and use of literacies beyond verbal and written communication, this book examines contemporary literacies through action-focused analysis of bodies, places, and media. Nexus analysis examines how people enact and mobilize meanings that are largely unspoken. Wohlwend demonstrates how nexus analysis can be used as a tool to critically analyze and understand action in everyday settings, to provide a deeper understanding of how meanings are produced from a mix of modes in daily social and cultural contexts. Organized in three sections—Engaging Nexus, Navigating Nexus, and Changing Nexus—this book provides a roadmap to applying nexus analysis to literacy research, and offers tools to enable readers to compare methods across contexts. Designed to help readers understand the theoretical and methodological assumptions and goals of nexus analysis in classroom and literacy research, this book provides a comprehensive understanding of the theory, framework, and foundations of nexus analysis, by using multimodal examples such as films and media, artifacts, live action performances, and more. Each chapter features consistent sections on key ideas and methods, and a description of procedures for replication and application.

In classrooms where children’s voices are valued, young readers and writers possess power. Their ability to exert this power through literacy is especially evident in classrooms where children, who are traditionally marginalized, can use their voices to be change agents. In this third volume of Perspectives and Provocations in Early Childhood Education, the authors’ stories explore students’ agentive power to change themselves, their teachers, school administrators, and the world.

This book provides an in-depth analysis of the challenges, potential and theoretical possibilities of apps and considers the processes of change for education and home learning environments. Drawing together a diverse team of international contributors, it addresses the specific features, context of use and content of apps to uncover the importance of these tools for young children’s learning. Apps, Technology and Younger Learners focuses on ways that apps support early years and primary school learning, connect various learning spaces and engage children in a range of edutainment and knowledge-building activities. In each chapter, the current state of knowledge and key research questions in the field for future study are identified, with clear messages provided at the end of each chapter. Focusing on empirical studies and strong theoretical frameworks, this book covers four key parts: Understanding the learning potential of children’s apps; Key app challenges; Empirical evidence; Future avenues. This book is an essential guide for educators, post-graduate students, researchers and all those interested in the advantages or challenges that may result from integrating apps into early education.

The SAGE Encyclopedia of Out-of-School Learning documents what the best research has revealed about out-of-school learning: what facilitates or hampers it; where it takes place most effectively; how we can encourage it to develop talents and strengthen communities; and why it matters. Key features include: Approximately 260 articles organized A-to-Z in 2 volumes available in a choice of electronic or print formats. Signed articles, specially commissioned for this work and authored by key figures in the field, conclude with Cross References and Further Readings to guide students to the next step in a research journey. Reader’s Guide groups related articles within broad, thematic areas to make it easy for readers to spot additional relevant articles at a glance. Detailed Index, the Reader’s Guide, and Cross References combine for search-and-browse in the electronic version. Resource Guide points to classic books, journals, and web sites, including those of key associations.

This book takes on current perspectives on children’s relationships to literacy, media, childhood, markets and transtionalism in converging global worlds. It introduces the idea of multi-sited imaginaries to explain how children’s media and literacy performances shape and are shaped by shared visions of communities that we collectively imagine, including play, media, gender, family, school, or cultural worlds. It draws upon elements of ethnographies of globalization, nexus analysis and performance theories to examine the convergences of such imaginaries across multiple sites: early childhood and elementary classrooms and communities in Puerto Rico and the Midwest United States. In this work we attempt to understand that the local moment of engagement within play, dramatic experiences, and literacies is not a given but is always emerging from and within the multiple localities children navigate and the histories, possibilities and challenges they bring to the creative moment.

This book highlights the multiple ways that digital technologies are being used in everyday contexts at home and school, in communities, and across diverse activities, from play to web searching, to talking to family members who are far away. The book helps readers understand the diverse practices employed as children make connections with digital technologies in their everyday experiences. In addition, the book employs a framework that helps readers easily access major themes at a glance, and also showcases the diversity of ideas and theorisations that underpin the respective chapters. In this way, each chapter stands alone in making a specific contribution and, at the same time, makes explicit its connections to the broader themes of digital technologies in children’s everyday lives. The concept of digital childhood presented here goes beyond a sociological reading of the everyday lives of children and their families, and reflects the various contexts in which children engage, such as preschools and childcare centres.