From the Authors:
We are so excited to share this excerpt from Love and Literacy – one of our favorite parts of the whole text. In it, we begin our discussion of English curriculum design and what it truly means for our students. (And we tell the story of someone very dear to Steve!) At schools this fall, the stakes couldn’t be higher. As we note, “curriculum shapes more than what students can do. It shapes who they become.”
As a whole, the book explores the tent posts of powerful literacy instruction in middle and high school: building powerful curriculum, coaching reading comprehension, strengthening student analysis, facilitating student-centered discourse, and engendering a culture that sings of a love of reading. We do this by learning from the classrooms of powerhouse Uncommon Schools English teachers to observe what’s working in their rooms – and then break down how these incredible teachers are doing it.
Like Uncommon’s other books, Love and Literacy is designed to be maximally practical; we include more than 40 printable resources, more than 20 videos, a discussion guide, and a full chapter to help educators strategically plan to execute any of the concepts in the text. We very much hope you enjoy this preview of Love and Literacy!
– Steve Chiger and Paul Bambrick-Santoyo