I Can Fly: Teaching Narratives and Reading Comprehension to African American and other Ethnic Minority Students [Hardcover]

I Can Fly highlights the critical importance of narrative structural analysis in teaching reading comprehension, while providing a system for constructing comprehension questions that are grounded conceptually in the structure of the stories that the students read, from both a practical, and theoretical, orientation. The author presents the idea that folk tales and ethnic literature provide excellent material for the teaching of reading, particularly to multicultural or minority populations, by increasing the cultural congruence and motivation for multicultural students through their inclusion of language, illustrations, situations, and perspectives in which they see themselves reflected. These conclusions arise from a two year study in a middle school classroom in California with low income, 'at risk' students, most of them African American, but including Latinos and Pacific Islanders.Angela Marshall Rickfordis Assistant Professor in the College of Education at San Jose State University.

The book does serve a noble purpose-it stimulates motivation to solve a persistent problem in the development of reading ability of an important population. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy

 The book does serve a noble purpose-it stimulates motivation to solve a persistent problem in the development of reading ability of an important population.  Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy

chapter 1 Foreword
chapter 2 Preface
chapter 3 Acknowledgments
chapter 4 Introduction
chapter 5 Conceptual Framework and Literature Review
chapter 6 The Research Site: Community, Classroom, Students
chapter 7 Culture-Based Classroom Discipline and Organization
chapter 8 Structural Analysis of the Six Study Narratives
chapter 9 Research Design and Methods
chapter 10 Quantitative Results: An Overview
chapter 11 Narrative Genre and Literal Meaning Questions
chapter 12 Interpretive Reading and Critical Evaluation Questl/