Book Study: Literacy Education and Diverse Families
Thursday, May 1, 7:00 p.m. ET

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This event is free for all NCTE members. Not yet a member? Join today!

NCTE members are invited to join Literacies and Languages for All (LLA) and Drs. Sally Brown and Rong Zhang for a discussion about their recent book, Multimodal Funds of Knowledge in Literacy: Countering Deficit Narratives of Diverse Families. Members will have the opportunity to engage in conversation with Drs. Brown and Zhang to gain a deeper understanding of diverse families in the twenty-first century.

The book prepares educators to teach and support diverse students and their families as they negotiate multimodal aspects of literacy learning. It compiles the experiences of fourteen families with a wide range of backgrounds and cultures. Many of the families speak English as well as Spanish, Chinese, Korean, or Vietnamese. The book is a comprehensive and instructive text in literacy education, family literacy, and community engagement.

At the book study, Dr. Zhang will offer insights into the ways families foster love, fun, and literacy with young children through the pages of books. Then, Dr. Brown will lead an exploration of digital tools and experiences for young children and intergenerational literacy learning. Both authors will share examples of family interactions and artifacts to help illustrate their experiences. 

Participants will learn new insights into ways to

• suggest families foster love, fun, and literacy;  

• explore digital tools and learn how to use them with young children and intergenerational literacy learning; 

• gain a deeper understanding of multimodality with multilingual families; and  

• build a network with other teachers and scholars who are interested in family literacy. 

Purchase a copy of Multimodal Funds of Knowledge in Literacy: Countering Deficit Narratives of Diverse Families. (NCTE and independent bookstores receive a small commission from purchases made using the Bookshop.org link provided.) 

Please contact profdev@ncte.org with any questions.

Dr. Sally Brown is a professor of literacy education at Georgia Southern University, where she teaches preservice and inservice educators about multimodal literacies. She is interested in how young, culturally and linguistically diverse children develop literacies across school, home, and community environments and in contact with the material world. 

Dr. Rong Zhang is an assistant professor of literacy education at Appalachian State University. Her research focuses on emergent bilingual families’ language and literacy practices. She also studies young children’s emergent literacy skills developed during picturebook reading and multicultural awareness. She is especially interested in multimodal meaning-making across different types of literacy events. 

FACILITATORS

Maria Perpetua Socorro U. Liwanag, professor in elementary education, Towson University, Maryland

Yang Wang, professor in language and literacy, University of South Carolina, Columbia