Language and Literacy Education Commons^™

The Science Of Reading And The Use Of Decodable Texts In The Classroom, Anna Hudson

Honors Theses

This honors thesis includes a definition and explanation of the Science of Reading research, decodable texts and how they are used in the classroom, my creative process in writing my own decodable text, and a copy of my original decodable text "Can Meg Get In?"

Emory Healthcare Training Module For Esol Teachers, Parker Lindsey Timmons

Eagle Showcase: Excellence in Service-Learning

The Language Instruction Training Module, specifically designed for ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) teachers at Emory Health Systems, serves as a pioneering educational tool to enhance English language proficiency among non-English speaking employees. This comprehensive program aims to equip educators with essential tools and strategies for effective language teaching within a diverse healthcare setting. Recognizing the pivotal role of language educators in fostering a culture of inclusivity and effective communication, this module focuses on facilitating language acquisition and developing communication skills among staff members. The training is uniquely tailored to the healthcare sector, emphasizing the importance of language …

Healing A Generation; Implementation Of Higher Education Curricula For Venezuelan Journalism Students Living Under Structural Violence To Promote A Transition Into Democracy, José Luis Jiménez-Figarotti Prof.

The SUNY Journal of the Scholarship of Engagement: JoSE

Venezuela's sociopolitical landscape has deteriorated significantly over the past decade, culminating in a profound humanitarian crisis. This ethnography, conducted from 2015 to the present, explores the experiences of a study group comprising 2000 Venezuelan communication college students, aged 17 to 25, who navigate structural violence while striving for quality higher education. The research employed a multifaceted approach, encompassing interviews, focus groups, and observations. Additionally, this qualitative study examines the outcomes of implementing an interdisciplinary journalism curriculum grounded in human rights and media activism, complemented by online sessions and an environmental education component. This educational project aims to foster critical thinking …

Volume 72, Issue 2: Windows, Mirrors And Sliding Glass Doors - Bridging The Divide Call For Submissions

Virginia English Journal

No abstract provided.

I Can... Will You?, Cheryl Golden

Virginia English Journal

No abstract provided.

Take A Risk: A Review Of Expanding Literacy, Hollie M. Bergeron, Jenny M. Martin

Virginia English Journal

This is a book review of Expanding Literacy: Bringing Digital Storytelling into Your Classroom by Brett Pierce in 2022. Review collaboratively by two teacher educators and a content area literacy course, this thorough review of Pierce's book for educators includes many perspectives.

The Learning Center: Changing Your Writing Center To A Learning Center, Kyle D. Trott Ph.D.

Virginia English Journal

The purpose of this article is to reimagine the Writing Center not as an island removed from the disciplines or resource extending from the English Department, but as the heart of the secondary school. One way to do this is to recognize the need for secondary school writing centers to engage the academic community comprised of the five core disciplines—English, Math, Science, Social Studies, Foreign Language—through advocacy and shared responsibility by means of creating and engaging through agency by utilizing the honor societies in the various disciplines through the local example of the Woodbridge Senior High School’s development of the …

Lessons From The Bluest Eye: The Discovery Of Self, Shanda D. Boone-Hurdle

Virginia English Journal

This article will explore the profound impact of reading, utilizing Toni Morrison’s novel The Bluest Eye as a catalyst for students to create real-life connections that resonate with their own experiences. The love of reading is a transformative force that not only enriches the intellectual landscape but also serves as a powerful tool for fostering empathy and understanding. This article will demonstrate how reading empowers students and helps them find solace and strength in the realization that their struggles, dreams, and aspirations are not isolated but are woven into the fabric of a broader narrative in which students can reflect …

Engaging Students In Writing With Nonfiction Social Justice Texts, Tracy Spurlin-Saravanan

Virginia English Journal

Getting students engaged in writing in a high school setting is usually challenging and often elicits complaints of boredom. However, the utilization of texts that focus on the experiences of marginalized people and that educates about social injustices can get students interested. When students read texts that inform them about such issues that they might otherwise never hear about and when they are invited to share their views through writing, the door to learning to become critical thinkers and global citizens is opened for them.

Write Like The Character: A New Take On Using Mentor Text To Support Writing, Tracy L. Hough

Virginia English Journal

Writing is a complex process that requires the orchestration of cognitive, social, and emotional processes. This analysis explores ways to help our students navigate the complexities of becoming a writer by expanding the use of mentor texts to include an examination of characters who write, modeling the real challenges and rewards associated with becoming a writer. The themes identified within the selected mentor texts focus on finding encouragement and inspiration to write from others, making sense of the world through personal writing, and discovering one's voice and identity as a writer. By extending our use of mentor texts, we help …

Shifting Scaffolds: Building Intellective Capacity Through Student Choice, Amanda Blevins

Virginia English Journal

In an effort to meet the wide-ranging capacities and even wider-ranging levels of student motivation in ELA classrooms, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, teachers are tasked with examining current instructional practices through the lenses of efficacy and engagement. Disengagement, worsened by an over-reliance on prescriptive structures like the five-paragraph essay, hampers students' growth and independence. This essay explores how scaffolding, particularly through student choice, can nurture students' intellective capacity and foster genuine engagement with literacy. By embracing student interests and providing opportunities for authentic analysis, educators can empower students to navigate complex texts and develop nuanced thinking skills essential for …

“It's The Commonwealth's Attempt To Censor . . . What We Teach”: Anti-Lgbtqia2s+ Educational Policy Influences On Rural Secondary Ela Teacher Practices, Josh Thompson, Clint Whitten, Karin Kaerwer

Virginia English Journal

The shift in political landscape in Virginia from former Democratic Governor Ralph Northam to current Republican Governor Glen Youngkin influenced educational policies in the commonwealth. Waving the banner of parental rights, the Youngkin administration began targeting LGBTQIA2S+ students and educators through legislation and policies such as SB 656 and Model Policies on Ensuring Privacy, Dignity, and Respect for All Students and Parents in Virginia’s Public Schools. To understand the influence on rural school districts, this study asked how rural secondary English Language Arts educators understand and respond to these anti-LGBTQIA2S+ policies as well as the ways in which those educators …

Introduction From The Editor's Desk: Spring 2024, Cinde Wollenberg

Virginia English Journal

No abstract provided.

“Not A Stereotype”: A Teacher Framework For Evaluating Disability Representation In Children’S Picture Books, H. Emily Hayden, Angela M.T. Prince

Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy and Language Arts

Researchers and educators have explored representations of people with marginalized identities in children’s picturebooks for over 30 years. Disability has not been widely acknowledged as a marginalized identity nor explored as an aspect of diversity prevalent in classrooms. In the United States, over seven million students are identified with a disability, and most will spend the majority of their school day in general education classrooms. Like other diverse students, they may not see their identities mirrored in classroom literature. Picturebooks featuring main characters with a disability are rare, and some still foreground medical models, limiting individuals with narrow, ableist notions …

Disability Representations And Portrayals In Picture Books With The Coretta Scott King Award, Sohyun Meacham, Shuaib J. Meacham, Irenea Walker, Bryce Davis

Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy and Language Arts

This study analyzed how people with disabilities are portrayed in picture books with the Coretta Scott King Award (CSKA) to address the intersectionality of African/African American racial identity and disabilities. Disability critical race theory was foundational for this study. The pool of 134 picture books that received the CSKA from 1971 to 2020 was used as the data for the systematic content analysis. For analysis, the researchers utilized a qualitative approach that guided axial coding and selective coding in looking for emerging themes. They found that 13 picture books portrayed African/African American characters with disabilities. The majority of these books …

A Wide-Angle View Of Prekindergarten Through 12th-Grade Teachers’ Beliefs About Language Correction, Mike Metz, Matthew J. Gordon, Thanh Nguyen

Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy and Language Arts

This article explores patterns in teachers’ reported correction of student language use in speech and writing. The authors use the concept of language correction in student writing and student speech as a proxy for prescriptive approaches to teaching about language. By conducting a large-scale survey of all language and literacy teachers from preschool through 12th grade across an entire state, the authors were able to identify patterns in teachers’ approaches to teaching about language that smaller case studies and nuanced qualitative studies have not yet documented. They examine differences in teachers’ self-reported correction of student language use across teacher characteristics …

Editorial Review Board Vol. 63 Issue 1

Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy and Language Arts

No abstract provided.

Towards Shl Benchmarks From The Bottom-Up: High-School Teachers As Curriculum Designers, Isabel Torrubia Gortari, Maureen Wrightson, Elisa Gironzetti

11th National Symposium on Spanish as a Heritage Language

Spanish heritage language (SHL) programs at the secondary level lack a set of standards that address the linguistic, social, affective, and professional needs of students (Potowski & Carreira 2004) and guide the curricular decisions of administrators and teachers. While several curricular proposals currently exist for post-secondary education (e.g., Beaudrie, Amezcua, & Loza, 2021), these are not always easily adaptable or applicable in a secondary school program and can be perceived by secondary teachers as a top-down imposition disconnected from their reality. To address this need, our project engaged researchers, high-school teachers, and administrators in a long-term initiative aimed at: a) …

Empowering Spanish Heritage Learners Through A Community Informed, Online Medical Spanish Curriculum, Bonnie C. Holmes Ph.D., Kenneth Rhee Md

11th National Symposium on Spanish as a Heritage Language

The lack of standardized medical Spanish curriculum leads to variable content and quality, often neglecting heritage language learners. Also, community engagement efforts seldom extend to curriculum development. Learn about a collaboration between Spanish faculty and a physician to create an innovative, virtual Spanish for healthcare curriculum that addresses these challenges.

Building Connections: The Power Of Embedding Literacy And Math Content Into Science And Social Studies Contexts, Rachel Hallett-Njuguna Edd

Constellations: Online STEM Teacher Education Journal

Nationally, the lack of improvement in literacy scores continues to baffle experts. Instructional leaders from math, science, and social studies in one district knew the value of leveraging their subject areas to support literacy achievement in secondary students. Starting with an engaging STEM-related novel, the group of curriculum experts developed meaningful literacy connected tasks for their teacher and teacher leader participants. Working through the activities as their students would, the group found a new appreciation for the importance of leveraging the relevance of science and social studies content and the usefulness of math content when creating literacy lessons. The group’s …

Your Story, Your Life, Your Learning: Autobiography Reveals Basis For Supporting Personalized, Holistic Pedagogy, Michael Maser

Journal of Contemplative and Holistic Education

Each person ongoingly experiences the world uniquely through vital processes shaping their subjectivity, personhood and sense of self. Learning, an innate characteristic or modality of each human life, of living, likewise arises subjectively or idiosyncratically. In this paper, a phenomenological lens is applied to auto/biographical excerpts concerned with various learning experiences to help reveal essential, subjective characteristics of emergent learning. The insights help establish a basis for challenging the primacy of objectivist learning evaluations. The insights also confirm the importance of personalizing learning as a pedagogical gesture nurturing and enfranchising student learning in significant ways beyond conventional educational approaches …

Cross-Linguistic Awareness In 90/10 Two-Way Bilingual Immersion Programs, Patricia Mondragón-Doty

Dissertations

Purpose: The purpose of this phenomenological study was to identify, describe, and recommend the specific cross-linguistic connection instructional strategies that teachers in TWBI 90/10 programs have found to be most effective for fostering language and literacy development.

Methodology: This qualitative phenomenological study explored how teachers of TWBI 90/10 programs perceived the use of specific cross-linguistic connection instructional strategies to better serve emergent bilingual learners (EBLs) and what implications cross-linguistic connections had on dual language instruction. To determine what best instructional strategies support bilingualism, biliteracy, academic achievement and cultural competence, in-depth semi structured interviews were conducted. Ten teachers were selected to …

Literacy Across The Disciplines: A Way To Re-Engage Secondary Students, Jenelle Williams

Michigan Reading Journal

In this article, the author describes the opportunities present with leveraging disciplinary literacy approaches, in terms of re-engaging teens with learning. The author also provides several cautions for literacy leaders to keep in mind.

Back To The Future: Looking At Nostalgic Practices To Conceptualize A More Inclusive Literacy Future (Part 1), Rebecca Witte, Darreth Rice

Michigan Reading Journal

In the first of two articles, the authors, two girls that “Just Want to Have Fun,” reminisce about educational literacy practices of the past, specifically one nostalgic writing practice, dialogue journaling. Using the analogy of a familiar toy from the 1980s, the View Master, they aim to revitalize an antiquated practice using modern theoretical frameworks (reels) that make current classroom practices more inclusive for today’s students. Looking to “reels” of academic (using current state standards), culturally relevant pedagogy (Ladson-Billings, 1995), social emotional learning (Mussey, 2019), and humanizing instruction (Freire, 1968), we support current teachers in analyzing their practices to foster …

Facilitating Chinese Language Education With Chinese Calligraphy, Huiwen Li

Chinese Language Teaching Methodology and Technology

Chinese Calligraphy, a treasure of traditional Chinese culture, maintains considerable significance within the realm of global Chinese education. This article thoroughly scrutinizes the inherent value of calligraphy courses in overseas Chinese education. Primarily, it delves into the profound impact calligraphy classes have on students' Chinese language proficiency, intercultural cognitive skills, and aesthetic appreciation. Furthermore, this article elucidates the lamentable scarcity of calligraphy, while simultaneously revealing a range of strategic solutions to address this pressing issue. These strategies encompass comprehensive teacher training, optimization of teaching methodologies, creation of comprehensive calligraphy course materials and resources, as well as the procurement of substantial …

English 890: Advanced Research Methods, A First Benchmark Portfolio, Janel Simons

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

In this benchmark portfolio, I reflect on course design and student learning in a course I teach for incoming Master's students in the English department, ENGL 890: Advanced Research Methods. ENGL 890 is a mini-session course intended to introduce students to various aspects of managing graduate-level research within the discipline of English studies. In this portfolio, I discuss the learning outcomes and goals for the course, highlight some of the assessments I use, reflect on student learning throughout the course, and articulate changes that might improve student learning in future iterations of the course. Given the overarching goals of this …

Fish In A Tree Book Study Assignment Description, David Wolff

Open Educational Resources - Teaching and Learning

Individuals lead storied lives, and everyone has a story to tell. Our stories can be shared orally and documented in print. Often, learners are exposed to stories through novels and other trade books. Teacher educators may benefit from using the stories in novels and trade books as case studies in preservice teacher preparation course. This assignment description outlines how to use the novel, Fish in a Tree by Lynda Mullaly Hunt, as a case study to contextualize and understand the lived story of an individual living and learning with dyslexia. Through the novel, preservice teachers experience the dilemmas faced and …

Content Area Language And Literacy, Saadia Ali, Margaret A. Berg

Open Textbooks & Reviews

Content Area Literacy courses have long been a requirement in teacher education programs for pre-service teachers for the secondary level and, sometimes, for the elementary level. The 2020 World-class Instructional Design and Assessment (WIDA) Framework takes a genre approach that aligns well with the traditional Content Area Literacy courses in teacher preparation programs. WIDA argues for an educational approach that fosters (a) equity of opportunity and access, (b) integration of content and language, (c) collaboration among stakeholders, and (d) a functional approach to language development. This textbook examines the elements that make up the Simple View of Reading with adjustments …

A Science Teacher’S Experiences When Fostering Intercultural Competence Among Students In Multilingual Classrooms: A Narrative Study, Uma Ganesan, Amanda R. Morales

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Increased globalization of the world economy, growth in human migration, and rapid devel-opments in science and technology have required people to develop intercultural commu-nication skills. Teachers play a crucial role in developing intercultural competence among students in our globalized, multilingual classrooms. The need for fostering collaborative discourse among students with diverse cultural and linguistic repertoires and building in-tercultural competence among students is a common blind spot in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics teacher praxis. This can inhibit efforts to cultivate safe and supportive learning environments for all students and can ultimately threaten multilingual student success. As part of a larger …

Home Of The Brave Book Study Assignment Description, David Wolff

Open Educational Resources - Teaching and Learning

Individuals lead storied lives, and everyone has a story to tell. Our stories can be shared orally and documented in print. Often, learners are exposed to stories through novels and other trade books. Teacher educators may benefit from using the stories in novels and trade books as case studies in preservice teacher preparation course. This assignment description outlines how to use the novel, Home of the Brave by Katherine Applegate, as a case study to contextualize and understand the lived story of an individual learning a second language and living in a new country. Through the novel, preservice teachers experience …