Social Worlds of Children Learning to Write in an Urban Primary School

by Dyson, Anne Haas

• ISBN13: 9780807732953
• ISBN10: 0807732958
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1993-10-01
• Publisher: Teachers College Pr

Summary

Presents the results of a two-year ethnographic study of K-3 children who do not tell stories in the written language format valued by most early literacy educators. Their literacy learning, particularly their writing development, is portrayed as a social process in a complex social world.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
Introduction: Composing a Place in the Classroom Neighborhood	1	(4)
Purpose of the Book	5	(2)
Plan of the Book	7	(2)
Framing Child Texts with Child Worlds: Ways of Studying Language, Literacy, and Diversity	9	(21)
Learning to Write as Social Work	11	(2)
Cultural Traditions in School Worlds	13	(5)
Children Discovering and Crossing Cultural Boundaries	18	(2)
Studying Children's Social and Text Worlds	20	(10)
The Official Classroom World: A Permeable Curriculum	30	(22)
A Diaglogue of Images and Sounds: The School Context	31	(2)
The Classroom Context	33	(2)
The Dialogic Curriculum	35	(17)
Unofficial Classroom Worlds: Children Taking Action Through Language	52	(26)
The Complexity of the Children's Social Worlds	54	(3)
Composing Unofficial Neighborhoods	57	(18)
The Sociocentric Child at Work and Play	75	(3)
The Case Study Children: Social Actors and Literacy Users	78	(30)
The Social Work and Symbolic Tools of Child Composers	79	(1)
Beginning Portraits	80	(26)
On Child Composing as Social Work	106	(2)
Jameel: Staking a Claim on the Official Literacy Curriculum	108	(25)
Jameel: The Case of the Singing Scientist, Part I	111	(20)
Jameel Midyear: Negotiating a Classroom Place	131	(1)
Coda: On Boundaries	132	(1)
Jameel: Claims, Inroads, and Emerging Crossroads	133	(22)
Jameel: The Case of the Singing Scientist, Part II	134	(17)
Summary: Finding a Social Place at School	151	(2)
Epilogue	153	(2)
Lamar and Eugenie: From Textual Crossroads to Curricular Side Roads	155	(34)
Year 1: Toward Texts as Curricular Crossroads	156	(15)
Year 2: Composing on Curricular Side Roads	171	(15)
On Crossroads, Side Roads, and Unpredictable Stories	186	(3)
Ayesha and William: The Politics of Composing in the Third Grade	189	(26)
Louise's Third-Grade Class	191	(3)
William and Ayesha	194	(7)
Negotiating Classroom Worlds Through Composing	201	(10)
Verbal Performance in the Dialogic Curriculum	211	(4)
Composing the Classroom Neighborhood	215	(16)
Defining Discourse Boundaries: Rigidity vs. Permeability	217	(2)
Acknowledging and Supporting Sociocultural Breadth	219	(4)
Acknowledging and Supporting Sociocultural Depth	223	(5)
The Social Work of Teaching	228	(1)
In Closing: On Composing Texts and Composing Selves	229	(2)
Appendices	231	(6)
Notes	237	(8)
References	245	(12)
Index	257	(6)
About the Author	263