Allen Webb

Jory Brass

Reclaiming English Language Arts Methods Courses showcases innovative work in teacher education that fosters teachers’ capacities as reflective practitioners and public intellectuals; extends traditional boundaries of methods courses on teaching the English language arts, literacy, children’s and young adult literature; and embodies democratic and critical politics that go beyond the reductive economic aims and traditional classroom practices sanctioned by educational policies and corporate educational reforms. Featuring leading and emerging scholars in English language arts teacher education, each chapter provides rich and concrete examples of elementary and secondary methods courses rooted in contemporary research and theory, on-line resources, and honest appraisals of the possibilities, tensions, and limits of doing teacher education differently in a top-down time of standards-based education, high-stakes testing, teacher assessment, and neoliberal education reforms. This book offers important resources and support for teacher educators and graduate students to explore alternative visions for aligning university methods courses with current trends in English and cultural studies, critical sociocultural literacy, new literacies and web 2.0 tools, and teaching the English language arts in multiethnic, multilingual, and underserved urban communities.

Critical Issues and Challenges for Teacher Educators in Top-Down Times

Reclaiming English Language Arts Methods Courses

Richard Beach

Amanda Haertling Thein

Timely, thoughtful, and comprehensive, this text directly supports pre-service and in-service teachers in developing curriculum and instruction that both addresses and exceeds the requirements of the Common Core State Standards. Adopting a critical inquiry approach, it demonstrates how the Standards’ highest and best intentions for student success can be implemented from a critical, culturally relevant perspective firmly grounded in current literacy learning theory and research. It provides specific examples of teachers using the critical inquiry curriculum framework of identifying problems and issues, adopting alternative perspectives, and entertaining change in their classrooms to illustrate how the Standards can not only be addressed but also surpassed through engaging instruction. The Second Edition provides new material on adopting a critical inquiry approach to enhance student engagement and critical thinking planning instruction to effectively implement the CCSS in the classroom fostering critical response to literary and informational texts using YA literature and literature by authors of color integrating drama activities into literature and speaking/listening instruction teaching informational, explanatory, argumentative, and narrative writing working with ELL students to address the language Standards using digital tools and apps to respond to and create digital texts employing formative assessment to provide supportive feedback preparing students for the PARCC and Smarter Balanced assessments using the book’s wiki site http://englishccss.pbworks.com for further resources

A Critical Inquiry Approach for 6-12 Classrooms

Teaching to Exceed the English Language Arts Common Core State Standards

Ashley S. Boyd

Timely, thoughtful, and comprehensive, this text directly supports pre-service and in-service teachers in developing curriculum and instruction that both addresses and exceeds the requirements of English language arts standards. It demonstrates how the Common Core State Standards as well as other local and national standards’ highest and best intentions for student success can be implemented from a critical, culturally relevant perspective firmly grounded in current literacy learning theory and research. The third edition frames ELA instruction around adopting a justice, inquiry, and action approach that supports students in their schools and community contexts. Offering new ways to respond to current issues and events, the text provides specific examples of teachers employing the justice, inquiry, and action curriculum framework to promote critical engagement and learning. Chapters cover common problems and challenges, alternative models, and theories of language arts teaching. The framework, knowledge, and guidance in this book shows how ELA standards can not only be addressed but also surpassed through engaging instruction to foster truly diverse and inclusive classrooms. The third edition provides new material on: adopting a justice, inquiry, and action approach to enhance student engagement and critical thinking planning instruction to effectively implement standards in the classroom teaching literary and informational texts, with a focus on authors of color integrating drama activities into literature teaching informational, explanatory, argumentative, and narrative writing supporting bilingual/ELL students using digital tools and apps to respond to and create digital texts addressing how larger contextual and political factors shape instruction fostering preservice teacher development

A Justice, Inquiry, and Action Approach for 6-12 Classrooms

Teaching to Exceed in the English Language Arts

As the new English Language Arts Common Core State Standards take hold across the United States, the need grows for pre-service and in-service teachers to be ready to develop curriculum and instruction that addresses their requirements. This timely, thoughtful, and comprehensive text directly meets this need. It delineates a literacy practices and critical engagement curriculum framework for 6-12 English language arts education that explains and illustrates how the Standardsâ€™ highest and best intentions for student success can be implemented from a critical, culturally relevant perspective that is firmly grounded in current literacy learning theory and research. The first 6-12 English language arts methods text to be aligned with the Standards, this book also addresses their limitations â€” formalist assumptions about literacy learning, limited attention to media/digital literacies, lack of attention to critical literacies, and questionable assumptions about linking standards and text complexity to specific grade levels. Specific examples of teachers using the literacy practices/critical engagement curriculum framework in their classrooms shows how these limitations can be surpassed. Features â€¢ Moves the CCSS framework into a view that literacy is a contextualized, social practice â€¢ Challenges simplistic models that homogenize adolescent learners â€¢ Adds the important element of critical literacy to English language arts classrooms â€¢ Provides specific examples of teachers in action implementing these practices â€¢ Interactive Companion Website with student and instructor resources. The Website is designed to foster interactivity through participation in an online teaching planning simulation with a text, video, or case on one side of the screen and a chat box for instructors and students to share their reactions and planning ideas. The Companion Website is linked to a wiki that serves as a repository for links, activities/units, and further reading.

A Literacy Practices Approach for 6-12 Classrooms

Jeff Share

CO-PUBLISHED BY ROUTLEDGE AND THE NATIONAL COUNCIL OF TEACHERS OF ENGLISH Teaching Climate Change to Adolescents is THE essential resource for middle and high school English language arts teachers to help their students understand and address the urgent issues and challenges facing life on Earth today. Classroom activities written and used by teachers show students posing questions, engaging in argumentative reading and writing and critical analysis, interpreting portrayals of climate change in literature and media, and adopting advocacy stances to promote change. The book illustrates climate change fitting into existing courses using already available materials and gives teachers tools and teaching ideas to support building this into their own classrooms. A variety of teacher and student voices makes for an appealing, fast-paced, and inspiring read. Visit the website for this book for additional information and links. All royalties from the sale of this book are donated to Alliance for Climate Education.

Reading, Writing, and Making a Difference

Teaching Climate Change to Adolescents

Showing how to teach the literature of today’s Middle East, this book offers teachers a powerful resource for helping students to think deeply and critically about the politics and culture of the Middle East through literary engagements.

Teaching the Literature of Today's Middle East

Ken Moskowitz

Greater Washington Area Bicycle Atlas

What are the realities and possibilities of utilizing on-line virtual worlds as teaching tools for specific literary works? Through engaging and surprising stories from classrooms where virtual worlds are in use, this book invites readers to understand and participate in this emerging and valuable pedagogy. It examines the experience of high school and college literature teachers involved in a pioneering project to develop virtual worlds for literary study, detailing how they created, utilized, and researched different immersive and interactive virtual reality environments to support the teaching of a wide range of literary works. Readers see how students role-play as literary characters, extending and altering character conduct in purposeful ways ,and how they explore on-line, interactive literature maps, museums, archives, and game worlds to analyze the impact of historical and cultural setting, language, and dialogue on literary characters and events. This book breaks exciting ground, offering insights, pedagogical suggestions, and ways for readers to consider the future of this innovative approach to teaching literary texts.

Immersive Learning in English Studies

Teaching Literature in Virtual Worlds

Providing a gateway into the real literature emerging from the Middle East, this book shows teachers how to make the topic authentic, powerful, and relevant. Teaching the Literature of Today’s Middle East: • Introduces teachers to this literature and how to teach it • Brings to the reader a tremendous diversity of teachable texts and materials by Middle Eastern writers • Takes a thematic approach that allows students to understand and engage with the region and address key issues • Includes stories from the author’s own classroom, and shares student insight and reactions • Utilizes contemporary teaching methods, including cultural studies, literary circles, blogs, YouTube, class speakers, and film analysis • Directly and powerfully models how to address controversial issues in the region Written in an open, personal, and engaging style, theoretically informed and academically smart, highly relevant across the field of literacy education, this text offers teachers and teacher-educators a much needed resource for helping students to think deeply and critically about the politics and culture of the Middle East through literary engagements.

Allen Webb

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