Courageous Conversations in the Classroom: Using Childrenā€™s Literature to Support Social and Emotional Growth, Positive Identity, and Mental Health - Hardcover

Liang, Lauren Aimonette; Tao, Karen W.; Hosp, Michelle K.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1462557562 ISBN 13: 9781462557561

Publisher: Guilford Press, 2025

Synopsis

A complete classroom toolkit for grades 3–6, this book empowers teachers to leverage high-quality children's literature to boost emotional well-being, positive self-identities, social awareness, and civic engagement. Nine thematic instructional units are built around carefully curated book sets. Teachers are guided to spark meaningful conversations and foster empathy by exploring challenging themes like friendship, bullying, racism, disability, and mental health, through read-alouds and expert-designed activities. Step-by-step lesson plans include ready-to-use scripts, activities, and discussion prompts--all aligned with current academic and social and emotional learning standards. The Appendix features 30 reproducible and downloadable worksheets and handouts; the large-size format facilitates photocopying.

About this title

About the Author

Lauren Aimonette Liang, PhD, is Associate Professor in Literacy in the Department of Educational Psychology and Director of the QUEST Program for first-year student success at the University of Utah. Her research focuses on the selection and educational use of childrenā€™s literature, particularly as related to student response and comprehension. Dr. Liang is the author or coauthor of many articles, chapters, and books, and has held leadership roles in international literacy and childrenā€™s literature organizations. She has served as a committee member or chair for several prestigious childrenā€™s literature awards.

Karen W. Tao, PhD, is Associate Professor in Counseling Psychology in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Utah. She is a community-engaged scholar who teaches, conducts research, and facilitates workshops with a commitment to reduce disparities in access, service provision, and quality of mental health and education for historically marginalized groups. Dr. Tao collaborated with PBS Utah to produce an award-winning digital series, ā€œLet's Talk.ā€ As the host of this seven-episode series, she met with parents to discuss how to talk with kids about race, racism, and cultural differences.

Michelle K. Hosp, PhD, is Associate Professor of Special Education at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Senior Director of Assessment and Innovation at Renaissance. A nationally known trainer and speaker on problem solving and the use of progress monitoring data, she has served as Director of the Iowa Reading Research Center and as a trainer with the National Center on Progress Monitoring and the National Center on Response to Intervention, and is currently on the technical review committee for the National Center on Intensive Intervention. Dr. Hospā€™s research focuses on reading and on multi-tiered systems of support/response to intervention in relation to curriculum-based measurement and curriculum-based evaluation. She has published numerous articles, book chapters, and books.

Edition details

• Publisher: Guilford Press
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1462557562
• ISBN 13: 9781462557561
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 342