Preschool Correspondence School

Even our youngest students have lots of stories to tell, whether real or imagined. How can we create entry points for writing, so that all writers feel confident and motivated to share their stories? How can we establish a classroom community of beginning writers where equity, empathy, and compassion become part of the process and vital by-products of story writing? Enter story workshop, a structure for early literacy that amplifies the relationship between play, art, and writing. Children develop ideas and stories through choices of art materials. By creating images through play, story workshop invites children to explore the "amazingness" (Nisa, age 10) of their ideas in a variety of art forms. "Through their stories," Susan writes, "students share the meaning they make of their experiences in the world." Children in every classroom environment feel empowered to transition from play to pencil as they add words to their stories. Story Workshopincludes an abundance of classroom videos, photos, and student samples that illustrate what is possible when children use words, colors, textures, shapes and all kinds of materials to create the stories they want to tell. Watch how students' imaginations soar, their love of writing blossoms, and their connections with one another become the focal point of your classroom.

Hong Kong and Macao have much in common. The dominant populations in both territories are Cantonese-speaking Chinese; both are small in area; both are urban societies; both have been colonies of European powers; and both have undergone political transition to reunification with China. Yet in education, for reasons that are analysed in this book, they are very different. The patters of similarities and differences in the two territories make a fascinating basis for comparative study. The overarching theme of the book, on continuity and change is particularly pertinent following the transition of the two societies of the postcolonial era. This thoroughly-revised and expanded second edition builds on the widely-acclaimed first edition. The work has been recognised as a significant contribution to the broad field of comparative education as well as to study of the specific societies which are its main focus.

The concept of "funds of knowledge" is based on a simple premise: people are competent and have knowledge, and their life experiences have given them that knowledge. The claim in this book is that first-hand research experiences with families allow one to document this competence and knowledge, and that such engagement provides many possibilities for positive pedagogical actions. Drawing from both Vygotskian and neo-sociocultural perspectives in designing a methodology that views the everyday practices of language and action as constructing knowledge, the funds of knowledge approach facilitates a systematic and powerful way to represent communities in terms of the resources they possess and how to harness them for classroom teaching. This book accomplishes three objectives: It gives readers the basic methodology and techniques followed in the contributors' funds of knowledge research; it extends the boundaries of what these researchers have done; and it explores the applications to classroom practice that can result from teachers knowing the communities in which they work. In a time when national educational discourses focus on system reform and wholesale replicability across school sites, this book offers a counter-perspective stating that instruction must be linked to students' lives, and that details of effective pedagogy should be linked to local histories and community contexts. This approach should not be confused with parent participation programs, although that is often a fortuitous consequence of the work described. It is also not an attempt to teach parents "how to do school" although that could certainly be an outcome if the parents so desired. Instead, the funds of knowledge approach attempts to accomplish something that may be even more challenging: to alter the perceptions of working-class or poor communities by viewing their households primarily in terms of their strengths and resources, their defining pedagogical characteristics. Funds of Knowledge: Theorizing Practices in Households, Communities, and Classrooms is a critically important volume for all teachers and teachers-to-be, and for researchers and graduate students of language, culture, and education.