ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a broad overview of foundational literacies and children’s literacy development in support of Ms. Magnolia’s, Ms. Dauphine’s, and Ms. Jackson’s pedagogical focus on foundational literacy skills and knowledge processes. Foundational literacies and children’s literacy development is at the forefront of the design of the literacy curriculum in the primary classrooms at Bricolage Academy. Sociocultural theories of literacy provide new perspectives regarding children’s literacy learning, enactments of literacy, meaning making, and implications for pedagogical practice. In the mid-nineties, the New London Group, came together to consider how literacy pedagogy might address the rapid changes in literacy due to globalization, technology and increasing cultural and social diversity. The group’s work resulted in a new area of study called New Literacy Studies. The “how” of multiliteracies pedagogy takes on the perspective that “human knowledge, when it is applicable to practice, is primarily situated in sociocultural settings and heavily contextualized in specific knowledge domains and practices”.
