Focus on Urban Education Initiatives:
Recommended Reading

Books

Click on a title to find a detailed description, and to browse contents and sample chapters.

Improving Literacy Achievement in Urban Schools: Critical Elements in Teacher Preparation, edited by Louise C. Wilkinson, Lesley Mandel Morrow, and Victoria Chou  NEW!

Learning to Be Literacy Teachers in Urban Schools, by Althier M. Lazar

Literacy Development of Students in Urban Schools, edited by James Flood and Patricia L. Anders

Promising Practices for Urban Reading Instruction, edited by Pamela A. Mason and Jeanne Shay Schumm

Teaching African American Learners to Read, edited by Bill Hammond, Mary Eleanor Rhodes Hoover, and Irving Pressley McPhail

Articles

From the Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy:

“The leisure reading habits of urban adolescents,” by Sandra Hughes-Hassell and Pradnya Rodge (Sept. 2007; vol. 51, no. 1)

“Tagging as a social literacy practice,” by Laurie MacGillivray and Margaret Sauceda Curwen (Feb. 2007; vol. 50, no. 5)

“A love for the thing: The pleasures of rap as a literate practice,” by Susan Weinstein (Dec. 2006/Jan. 2007; vol. 50, no. 4)

“Setting the ‘opportunity to read’ standard: Resuscitating the SSR program in an urban high school,” by Douglas Fisher (Oct. 2004; vol. 48, no. 2)

“Toward a critical pedagogy of popular culture: Literacy development among urban youth,” by Ernest Morrell (Sept. 2002; vol. 46, no. 1; reprinted in Reading Online)

Selected articles from Reading Research Quarterly, the field’s leading research journal:

“Reading representations of themselves: Urban youth use culture and African American textual features to develop literary understandings,” by Wanda Brooks (July/Aug./Sept. 2006; vol. 41, no. 3)

“The knowledge gap: Implications of leveling the playing field for low-income and middle-income children,” by Susan B. Neuman and Donna Celano (April/May/June 2006; vol. 41, no. 2)

“Working toward third space in content area literacy: An examination of everyday funds of knowledge and Discourse,” by Elizabeth Birr Moje, Kathryn McIntosh Ciechanowski, Katherine Kramer, Lindsay Ellis, Rosario Carrillo, and Tehani Collazo (Jan./Feb./March 2004; vol. 39, no. 1)

“Access to print in low-income and middle-income communities: An ecological study of four neighborhoods,” by Susan B. Neuman and Donna Celano (Jan./Feb./March 2001; vol. 36, no. 1)

“How will diversity affect literacy in the next millennium?” by Sarah McCarthey, Mark Dressman, Laura Smolkin, Anne McGill-Franzen, and Violet J. Harris (Oct./Nov./Dec. 2000; vol. 35, no. 4)

From The Reading Teacher, which focuses on primary and elementary instruction:

“Implementing a schoolwide literacy framework: Improving achievement in an urban elementary school,” by Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey (September 2007; vol. 61, no. 1)

“Raising urban students’ literacy achievement by engaging in authentic, challenging work,” by William H. Teale and Linda B. Gambrell (May 2007; vol. 60, no. 8)

“High-poverty schools that beat the odds,” by Patricia M. Cunningham (Dec. 2006/Jan. 2007; vol. 60, no. 4)

“Rewriting “Goldilocks” in the urban, multicultural elementary school,” by Heather Lotherington and Sandra Chow (Nov. 2006; vol. 60, no. 3)

“Evidence-based literacy education and the African American child,” by J. Helen Perkins and Robert B. Cooter, Jr. (Oct. 2005; vol. 59, no. 2)

“Improving middle-grades reading in urban schools: The Memphis comprehension framework,” by E. Sutton Flynt and Robert B. Cooter, Jr. (May 2005; vol. 58, no. 8)

“A road map for reading specialists entering schools without exemplary reading programs: Seven quick lessons,” by Alfred W. Tatum (Sept. 2004; vol. 58, no. 1)

From Reading Today, the Association’s bimonthly newspaper:

“Leadership Academy focuses on reaching diverse learners,” (Dec 2006/Jan 2007)  FREE!

“Laundromat literacy,” (Aug/Sept 2006)  FREE!

“Manual for miracles,” by Matt Freeman (Feb/Mar 2006)  FREE!