New publications

Reading under the Covers summarises children's thoughts about books and reading, gathered from interviews and surveys of readers aged between seven and 13. The main section contains contributions from authors and illustrators of books that children have chosen in Australia-wide competitions. Contributors stress the need to foster children's excitement with reading and the value of having their input into the selection of books by teachers and librarians. The contributors are Pamela Allen, Andy Griffiths, Terry Denton, Jackie French, Bruce Whatley, Carole Wilkinson, Bob Graham, Margaret Wild, Ann James, Leigh Hobbs, Anna Fienberg, Kim Gamble, Stephen Michael King, Duncan Ball, Allan Stomann, Felice Arena, Emily Rodda, and Morris Gleitzman. The book concludes with two pages of teaching tips. Adapted from publisher's description.

Teachers can use differentiated literacy coaching to maximise the effectiveness of their literacy teaching. The book takes a research-based approach in describing eight professional development formats, ranging from co-planning and focused classroom visits to demonstration lessons and co-teaching. The author explains how to design and deliver literacy coaching, the different roles and responsibilities of literacy coaches, and step-by-step procedures to help new and experienced coaches collaborate more effectively with teaching colleagues. Adapted from publisher's description. A brief interview with the author is available here.

New functional approaches to language and education should have an impact on literacy teaching in the classroom. The first section of this book looks at issues of multimodality, in which the definition of a text is expanded to include not only that which is written down, but also the interaction of writing, graphics and audiovisual material. The contributors explore ways in which language education can be expanded to deal with multimodal discourse, whether in children’s books, in textbooks or on the web. The second section looks at how critical discourse analysis and appraisal theory can be used as tools for assessing the effectiveness of student writing and literacy achievement, and also for developing writers' skills. The final section argues that corpus-based studies of language have changed the way we see language, and that the way we teach language should evolve in line with these changes. This survey of new directions in language and education includes contributions from international scholars. It is designed for researchers in systemic functional linguistics, or language and education. Adapted from publisher's description.

Rethink! is a new publication edited by Dr Susan La Marca. It includes discussions about, and numerous illustrations of, library design, learning environments, ICT, future scenarios, and architectural and interior design perspectives. The book also contains a special section by marketing and retail consultant Kevin Hennah that shares ideas for innovative merchandising strategies, layout and traffic flow, signage, promotion and colour. Adapted from publisher's description. See also review by Renate Beilharz in FYI, Summer 2008.

Now in a second edition, this book examines the educational needs of bilingual children and the methods that can be used with them to improve and develop literacy and literature in the classroom. The authors argue that bilingual children’s literacy learning in English is necessarily an intercultural process. Children’s voices are strong throughout the book, and writing development is a focus because it is often a particular struggle for fluent bilingual students. The book also contains chapters on multicultural classrooms, bilingualism and English literary language, and incorporating refugee children into mainstream classrooms. Adapted from publisher's description.

This book explores the contributions that cognitive linguistics and psychology, including neuropsychology, have made to our understanding of the way that second languages are processed and learnt. It examines areas of phonology, word recognition and semantics, examining ‘bottom-up’ decoding processes as compared with ‘top–down’ processes as they affect memory. It also discusses second language learning from the acquisition/learning and nativist/connectionist perspectives. These ideas are then related to the methods that are used to teach second languages, primarily English, in formal classrooms. The book is intended to act both as a textbook for students who are studying second language teaching and as an exploration of issues for the interested teacher who would like to extend their understanding of the cognitive processes underlying their teaching. Adapted from publisher's description.