Diverse student populations bring a richness of experience to the classroom that benefits teachers and students alike.
Creating a classroom in which each student knows that his or her voice is accepted and valued is central to envisionment-building instruction.
Helping students celebrate their own diversities helps them develop their individual voices, recognize their own perspectives, and understand those perspectives as positions from which they approach literary experiences.
It is important that students learn to confront and think about literary interpretations different from their own.
A teacher may select literary texts to help students understand their own perspectives or choose titles that expose students to perspectives alien to their own.
Teachers working with bilingual children may find themselves walking a fine line between honoring a child's home language and making sure they can navigate the educational process in English.
Research suggests that, with comprehension support, students with limited English proficiency can explore ideas, interpretations, and perspectives in response to the content of literary texts.
The read-aloud is a central pedagogical strategy for teachers working to include all students in literary experiences.
Read-alouds allow students access to titles that might be too difficult for their individual reading levels, and they offer students experience with the sounds and rhythms of the English language.
In diverse classrooms, teachers offer students a wide range of literature to suit a wide range of reading levels.
Teachers in diverse classrooms find it useful to have students support one another's reading and learning through social reading activities.
In a classroom that embraces all voices, students with learning disabilities or physical challenges are often the ones able to make thoughtful and important contributions to classroom discussions.
One strategy used by teachers in inclusion classrooms is to present the same materials to all children and then find ways to support each child's approach to them.
Looking for what each student does well helps teachers support each individual as a valued contributor to the classroom community.
