This text offers pre-service and in-service teachers pragmatic strategies for teaching middle grades literacy in culturally proactive and sustaining ways. By demystifying big ideas and complex concepts, Dominguez and Seglem provide clear pathways and lessons for illuminating and engaging with race, ethnicity, culture, and identity in the middle grade English Language Arts classroom. While addressing social justice, equity , diversity, and liberation can seem intimidating or unrelated to classroom practice, the authors demonstrate how weaving such questions into instruction benefits students' development. The guidance, strategies, and lessons in this book provide an answer to the question, What does decolonial literacy teaching look like? Concrete but not prescriptive, the authors encourage us to reconsider accepted logics of schooling, so that we can better support adolescents as they navigate complex identity landscapes. Bringing together disparate conversations around reading, writing, identity, and decolonial thinking, and specifically tailored to the middle grades, this book serves as a comprehensive toolkit for praxis and covers such topics as cultural change, community connections, and racial literacy. Each chapter features tips on reading and writing instruction, Teacher Spotlights, Planning Questions, and Additional Resources to make it easy for educators to apply the strategies to their own contexts. An accessible entry to addressing challenging questions around identity in the classroom, this book is essential reading in courses and professional development on ELA and literacy methods as well as teaching culturally and linguistically diverse students. For teachers looking to push toward equity and reshape literacy education so that it serves all middle grade students, Dominguez and Seglem offer plenty of accessible and motivating places to start.

This practical book provides teachers with step-by-step guidance for developing a class culture that welcomes curiosity and ignites social action. Student-driven inquiry has a lasting impact on learning, yet questions posed from students' own contexts rarely serve to shape their understanding of the outside world. The authors show teachers how to use literature to introduce characters and worlds that exist outside of their students' lived experiences. Through this exposure, students can develop questions that seek to build empathy for others, which ultimately positions young people to be change agents in their communities and in the larger world. This book translates ideas from theorists in critical literacy, student motivation, and culturally responsive pedagogy into practical approaches for the English language arts and social studies classroom (6–12). Each chapter poses questions designed to get teachers thinking about how to use mind-opening texts with students to address social problems.Book Features: Shows teachers how to use literature to help students navigate a shifting world. Equips students with the skills to advocate for themselves and others, including using digital tools in meaningful, effective ways. Asks students to face controversial points-of-view head on and interrogate the world in which they live. Includes examples of discussions that lead to projects and opportunities that allow youth to do work in the community. Demonstrates how to move theory into practice, providing teachers with the rationale for using inquiry as disruption if questioned by stakeholders. Contains a scope and sequence that outlines an entire year devoted to inquiry, as well as how to break it down into individual units and lessons.

This practical book provides teachers with step-by-step guidance for developing a class culture that welcomes curiosity and ignites social action. Student-driven inquiry has a lasting impact on learning, yet questions posed from students' own contexts rarely serve to shape their understanding of the outside world. The authors show teachers how to use literature to introduce characters and worlds that exist outside of their students' lived experiences. Through this exposure, students can develop questions that seek to build empathy for others, which ultimately positions young people to be change agents in their communities and in the larger world. This book translates ideas from theorists in critical literacy, student motivation, and culturally responsive pedagogy into practical approaches for the English language arts and social studies classroom (6-12). Each chapter poses questions designed to get teachers thinking about how to use mind-opening texts with students to address social problems.Book Features: Shows teachers how to use literature to help students navigate a shifting world. Equips students with the skills to advocate for themselves and others, including using digital tools in meaningful, effective ways. Asks students to face controversial points-of-view head on and interrogate the world in which they live. Includes examples of discussions that lead to projects and opportunities that allow youth to do work in the community. Demonstrates how to move theory into practice, providing teachers with the rationale for using inquiry as disruption if questioned by stakeholders. Contains a scope and sequence that outlines an entire year devoted to inquiry, as well as how to break it down into individual units and lessons.