“Well, It’s Reading, but It’s Writing . . . but It’s Reading . . .”: Mentor Texts as a Tool Toward Instructional Equity in Elementary Literacy Classrooms

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Thursday 1:45 pm Four Seasons Ballroom 2-3
  In Roundtable Session: Resisting Curricular Flattenings Through Expansive Literacy Structures and Interventions (Table 11)

Abstract

This qualitative case study pulls data from a two-year critical ethnography at one elementary school in the Southwest US. The study examines how a teacher used "Alpert" by LaNesha Tabb (2022) to mediate two weeks of literacy instruction. During this time, the teacher and students envision, draft, publish, and digitally share their own “Alpert” books with friends and family. Findings explore how the children “remix”(or transmediate) text features with their ideas, languaging, and multimodal design. In response to calls for limiting (and limited) curriculum due to book bans and isolated skills instruction, this study centers on the instructional potentia available through the tools teachers do have available and the intentional, expansive, multimodal activity they can engender in primary classrooms.

Authors

• Kerry H. Alexander, University of Maryland

• Rose Cherussery, University of Maryland