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Focus on Literacy by Danling Fu and Marylou M. Matoush, Oxford University Press, 2015, 145 pp., ISBN 978- 0- 19- 400086- 4
While you could read Focus on Literacy by yourself, the book's structure and content call for conversation. The book poses questions at the beginning of each chapter, making it useful for classes or study groups, as well as a conversation over coffee with a colleague. What I love about this book is how Fu and Matoush define, explain, illustrate, and highlight key concepts in creating rich literacy classrooms for the 21st century. The authors propose a "language as thinking" (p. 14) orientation to language learning:
Honoring the dignity of students' sociocultural knowledge and experience implies consciously leading students to explore communication tools with the purpose of enabling them to express their full humanity as they see fit. It challenges the hegemonies associated with the dominance of English by informing students of their communicative choices while empowering them with the knowledge that they can craft messages that not...