Using Children's Literature Across the Curriculum: A Handbook of Instructional Strategies

This text uniquely offers preservice and inservice teachers templates for using quality children's literature to implement six themes across grades K-8. The themes are based on national curriculum standards and text sets are carefully selected to facilitate discussion, analysis, and problem solving across the grades. 

Using Children’s Literature Across the Curriculum, 1/e  provides teachers with a guide to using multilayered texts to facilitate students’ attainment of critical literacy. It is designed to be a supplemental text to guide teachers in designing literacy instruction.

The instructional sequence includes collaborative inquiry activities across the curriculum to extend each theme to math, science, technology and social studies. Teachers are shown how to incorporate family literacy with a component entitled ‘Home School Connections’ and to differentiate instruction for individual learners with a section entitled ‘On Your Own Activities’. The theme concludes with a critical literacy activity that applies the content knowledge of the theme with collaborative inquiry.

A unique feature of the handbook is the emphasis on performance based assessment with each instructional sequence containing two rubrics for the teacher to implement.  The instructional sequences are meant as models for teachers to use in developing their own themes in order to facilitate critical literacy. These ‘models’ can be adjusted to fit the reading level of the students as teachers become more familiar with the text’s structure and their students’ needs.

Dr. Patricia Antonacci

Patricia Antonacci is a Professor of Education and teaches in the literacy education program at Iona College. Antonacci entered the teaching profession as a classroom teacher for the elementary and middle grades and continued as a reading specialist. Her long career in public schools brought her a range of experiences as a teacher at all grade levels including a number of years working in diverse classroom settings. She has published numerous journal articles and books including (as coauthors) Antonacci & O’Callaghan, Portraits of Literacy Development: Instruction and Assessment in a Well-Balanced Literacy Program K-3, (2004),  Antonacci & O’Callaghan (2006) A Handbook for Literacy Instructional & Assessment Strategies K-8 (2006), and Antonacci & O’Callaghan (2010) Developing Content Area Literacy.

Dr. Catherine O’Callaghan

Catherine O’Callaghan  is a Professor of Education and Chair of the  Education Department at Iona College. She entered the profession as an early childhood teacher in New York City and continued her career as a literacy specialist. Teaching in New York City within diverse settings afforded her a wide range of teaching experiences. She has published numerous journal articles and books including (as coauthors) Antonacci & O’Callaghan, Portraits of Literacy Development: Instruction and Assessment in a Well-Balanced Literacy Program K-3, (2004),  Antonacci & O’Callaghan (2006) A Handbook for Literacy Instructional & Assessment Strategies K-8 (2006), and Antonacci & O’Callaghan (2010) Developing Content Area Literacy.

Dr. Florence Musiello

FlorenceMusiello is the former Director of Student Teaching at Iona College. Her experiences as an Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction afforded her a wide range of instructional methods to draw upon across the content areas. Dr. Musiello entered the profession as a public school teacher in New York City. She continued her career at the middle school level in Westchester County. These diverse settings provided her with myriad ways to differentiate instruction.

Dr. Lucy Murphy

Lucy Murphy is a Professor of Education teaches methods in science education at Iona College. She entered the profession as an elementary teacher and continued her career as a chemistry/biology teacher on the secondary level. She is currently involved in recruiting diverse candidates into the teaching profession.

Dr. Eugene Wolfson

Eugene Wolfson is an Associate Professor at Iona College and works with teacher candidates to develop their teaching methods in Literacy and Language Arts, as well as utilizing and developing strategies in assessment.  His experience as a childhood teacher in New York City provided him the opportunity to incorporate effective instructional strategies to meet the needs of diverse students in a variety of settings.  As a literacy specialist at the middle and high school levels he served students and content area teachers to improve literacy across the curriculum.  Lastly, Dr. Wolfson spent many years as an administrator of an early childhood program that provided him with a complete developmental perspective of literacy through the grades.