Legacy Texts

01

Literacy Before Schooling

Emelia Ferreiro and Ana Teberosky's 1982 book provided compelling evidence that children are making all kinds of hypotheses about how print systems are organized.  For instance, very young children think, at one point, that marks represent syllables.

 

02

The Reading Miscue Inventory

This 1972 publication by Yetta Goodman, Dorothy Watson, and Carolyn Burke introduced the analytic framework of psycholinguistics--graphophonic, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic cues--to the field of literacy education.  The term "miscue" which refers to any observed departure a reader may make from the expected text, a terms coined by Kenneth S. Goodman, has become so widely used that it is often not referenced. The inventory has gone on to several editions the latest of whi was published in 2005.

 

03

Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design

In 1996 Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen introduced the idea that visual elements in texts had their own unique grammar. Their ideas were among those that contributed to contemporary descriptions of literacy as multimodal or of literacy as being considered as a suite of literacies, hence the term multiliteracies.

 

04

Emerging Patterns of Literacy: A Multidisciplinary Perspective

1996 was a seminal year.  Rhyan Jones reported on her longitudinal study of her children. What was particularly notable about her work was discussion of the affective domain and the use of Winnicott's ideas to talk about the relationship of children to books.

 

05

Growing Up Literate: Learning from Inner City Families

Denny Taylor and Catherine Dorsey-Gaines' 1988 text highlighted the breadth of literacy activities that occurred in inner city homes, the disconnect between families and schools in terms of literacy practices, and the tremendous impact of seeminly small actions.