Noa's Ark: One Child's Voyage into Multiliteracy

Many monolingual teachers view multiliteracy development - the development of literacy in multiple languages simultaneously - as difficult or even unattainable. With Noa's Ark, David Schwarzer proves otherwise. He reveals that, under the right conditions, multiliteracy can be developed easily and provides some of the tools and strategies to enable monolingual teachers to do so.

This book is based on an in-depth longitudinal study of Noa, a multilingual (Hebrew, English, Spanish) first grader studying in a traditional English/Spanish bilingual classroom. Schwarzer follows Noa's early literacy development in her community, in her household, and in her school. His research goal is to show the complexity of a young student's multiliteracy development in the context of her daily life in which three languages are presented in different formats, for different purposes and audiences. His practical goal is to show the pivotal role teachers play in multiliteracy development and provide some of the tools they need to promote it. Schwarzer also addresses many of the misconceptions about early multiliteracy development and offers clear, manageable advice on how a monolingual teacher can create a learning community in which multiliteracy will flourish.

Providing both theoretical and practical ideas on early literacy development in general, and biliteracy and multiliteracy education in particular, Schwarzer will change the way teachers view bilingual and multilingual instruction. Not only will they be more open to allowing other languages in their classrooms, they'll be able to foster these languages by applying their knowledge of literacy education in general.

Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, David Schwarzer immigrated to Israel at the age of seventeen to pursue his B.A. and M.A. in counseling and literacy education, and later earned his Ph.D. in Language, Reading, and Culture at the University of Arizona. He now works as an assistant professor in multilingual studies at the University of Texas in Austin. David is married to Taly and together they have three multilingual children: Noa, Ariel, and Tamar.