Language and Literacy Education Commons^™

“I Want Them To See The Real Us Not Just What They What They Want Us To Be…”: Cultivating A ‘Literate Language Of The Soul’ For Radical Hope, Patriann Smith

Literacy Practice and Research

In this conceptual essay, I argue that radical hope can be fostered through literacies of timeless learning based on student-created literature in literacy and English language arts classrooms as an endeavor of soul education, allowing teachers and youth to cultivate a literate language of the soul. Drawing on tenets of soul education and its interconnections with affect theory and Ubuntu as an African spirituality, I describe how literacy and English language arts teachers working with predominantly Black middle-school youth connected their histories, backgrounds, stories, and understandings while engaging with literature created by their students. I argue that exploring literacies …

Teachers’ Beliefs Towards Learners’ Heritage Languages Inside Schools In A Multilingual Setting, Ivian Boruchowski Phd

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study adds to the conversation about the increasing language diversity in U.S. schools (Paris & Alim, 2014). In the South Florida district discussed here, ELLs represent 16.9% of the total student enrollment (Miami Dade, 2020), and there is a popular narrative about the value of bilingualism in this community. Despite that, Valencia and Lynch (2019), Mackinney (2016), and Lanier (2014) indicated: even though the bilingual political and economic value in South Florida is noticeable, HLs are relegated to a secondary place and with no prestige inside local school settings.

As Garcia and Wei (2014) observed: "language practices cannot be …

Ungifted: Teacher Candidates’ Understanding Of Giftedness Through Literature Circles, Sharryn Larsen Walker, Wendie Lappin Castillo

Literacy Practice and Research

The purpose of this qualitative study was to analyze the reflective comments made by teacher candidates (TCs) after they participated in weekly discussions about the tween novel Ungifted by Korman (2012). The TCs attended at a regional Pacific Northwest university, majoring or minoring in various educational fields. After reading and discussing the topic of giftedness as it related to their engagement with the novel, the TCs wrote a reflective essay about their new understandings of teaching the gifted. Using the constant-comparative method, the essays from three sections of the course over a three-year period were read and reread for identifiable …

Arrows Of Resilience: Teaching The Artemis Archetype In Children’S Literature, Shannon Tovey

Literacy Practice and Research

Story is a powerful vehicle for teaching resilience skills. Strong female archetypes in stories demonstrate qualities of resilience that offer models of how to face adversity, survive it, and thrive. Drawing on psychoanalytic, resiliency, reader response, and Storyworld Possible Selves theories, this work explores the relationship between strong female characters in children’s literature and resilience skills, and explains ways in which analyzing, discussing, and writing about them can help to build emotional competencies that will last a lifetime.

What Are The Disciplinary Literacy Complex Texts And Comprehension Habits Of Mind In Elementary (K-6)?, Stephanie Buelow, Charlotte Frambaugh-Kritzer

Literacy Practice and Research

This article spotlights complex texts and the comprehension habits of mind that elementary students may encounter across the disciplines of visual arts, performing arts, science, social studies, and mathematics.

Linguistic Landscapes And The Navigation Of New Settings: A Phenomenological Self-Study Of Signage On My First Trip Abroad And Implications For Teaching Literacy, Lindsay Persohn

Literacy Practice and Research

Landry and Bourhis (1997) are credited with coining the term linguistic landscapes, a term which they defined as “the language of public road signs, advertising billboards, street names, place names, commercial shop signs, and public signs on government buildings [combined] to form the linguistic landscape [of a given region]” (p. 25). In this phenomenological (Patton, 1990) self-study, I explored the linguistic landscapes of three unfamiliar countries during a forty-five-day summer research and leisure trip. I analyzed the photographic data I collected to understand what information I gained from the signs, how I used the information in visual images to …

Critical Review Of Language At The Speed Of Sight: How We Read, Why So Many Can’T, And What Can Be Done About It By Mark Seidenberg, Elizabeth Fincher

Literacy Practice and Research

This comprehensive book review on Mark Seidenberg’s Language at the Speed of Sight: How We Read, Why So Many Can’t, and What Can Be Done About It advances the conversation around the “reading wars” in scholar and educator stances on effective methods to teaching reading through explicit phonics-based instruction versus a whole-language approach that emphasizes the child’s discovery of meaning through experiences in a literacy-rich environment. Seidenberg’s support of science-based or “brain-based” teaching of reading is critically examined, as it relates to theoretical and practical knowledge in reading pedagogy. This review aims to provide scientific insight into reading development and …

Something American, Carolina S. Souto

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

SOMETHING AMERICAN is a poetry collection written from the perspective of a first-generation American navigating a growing family, a political crisis, and a global pandemic. Influences on this collection include Robert Hass’s THE ESSENTIAL HAIKU and FIELD GUIDE, which attend to nature and the poet-speaker’s immediate surroundings with diligence and precision. Ariel Francisco’s place poems and creative titles in ALL MY HEROES ARE BROKE provide important touchstones for Souto’s commitment to here-and-now writing. And Sylvia Plath’s frank and complex writing about motherhood in ARIEL grants the poet permission to probe these subjects as well.

In SOMETHING AMERICAN, experimental poems sprawl …

Critical Awareness For Literacy Teachers And Educators In Troubling Times, Patriann Smith, S. Joel Warrican

Literacy Practice and Research

The field of literacy remains assailed by a persisting discrepancy between an increasing body of literacy research that honors the diversity in students’ practices juxtaposed against a persistent system of schooling and high-stakes assessment that has not been designed to draw from underrepresented students’ literate assets. This discrepancy has created a situation where teachers often receive well-intentioned instruction from literacy educators about how to address diverse literacy needs, but then, struggle to enact this instruction in the high-stakes testing environment of classrooms and schools where they have little autonomy. We argue in this essay that critical multilingual, critical multicultural and …

Teachers’ Use Of Standardized Assessments To Monitor Learning And Its Impact On Student Reading Achievement, Eilyn Sanabria

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Reading instruction must be “intentional, systematic, and explicit” and “implemented by a knowledgeable teacher” (Ruetzel & Cooter, 2019, p. 87). The era of accountability has brought standardized assessments to the forefront of reading instruction. However, gaps about assessment-related and instructional practices and their impact on student achievement exist in the literature. The present study aims to provide needed insights on how these practices help or hinder, specifically, historically low-performing students.

Using student achievement and teacher survey data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study: Kindergarten 2011 (ECLS-K), and through the lens of data use theory (Hutchins, 1995; Spillane, 2012), hierarchical multiple …

A Corpus-Driven Approach Toward Teaching Vocabulary And Reading To English Language Learners In U.S.-Based K-12 Context Through A Mobile App, Seyedjafar Ehsanzadehsorati

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In order to decrease teachers’ decisions of which vocabulary the focus of the instruction should be upon, a recent line of research argues that pedagogically-prepared word lists may offer the most efficient order of learning vocabulary with an optimized context for instruction in each of four K-12 content areas (math, science, social studies, and language arts) through providing English Language Learners (ELLs) with the most frequent words in each area. Educators and school experts have acknowledged the need for developing new materials, including computerized enhanced texts and effective strategies aimed at improving ELLs’ mastery of academic and STEM-related lexicon. Not …

The Effect Of Reciprocal Mapping On Third-Grade Students’ Reading Comprehension Achievement And Reading Attitude, Olga Elena Flamion

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Reading comprehension is the process of simultaneously extracting and constructing meaning through interaction and involvement with written language (Snow, Science and Technology, and States, 2002). For many students, there is a decrease in reading achievement as early as fourth grade as a result of increased demands in complexity of intermediate text (Williams et al., 2005). Reading attitude is “a system of feelings related to reading which causes the learner to approach or avoid a reading situation” (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975, p. 1). McKenna, Kear, and Ellsworth (1995) found that attitude towards reading grew increasingly negative as students moved from first …

A Mixed Method Study Of Prospective Teachers' Epistemic Beliefs And Web Evaluation Strategies Concerning Hoax Websites, Jennifer Coccaro-Pons

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Teachers need to be equipped with the tools necessary to evaluate content on the Internet and determine if it is a credible source, or a hoax website since they are expected to instruct and prepare students on how to evaluate the sites which is now a relevant phenomenon. The purpose of the mixed‑method study was to obtain an understanding of the web evaluation strategies of prospective teachers regarding the evaluation of hoax websites and how their epistemic beliefs may influence their evaluation. Another aspect of this study was to find out what outcomes resulted from providing guidance, or not to …

Learning To Think...Thinking To Learn, James C. Dean Mr., Julie Pfeiffer, Nancy Famulari, Julia Connett, Briana Kaparis

ICOT 18 - International Conference on Thinking - Cultivating Mindsets for Global Citizens

How do you create a systemic school culture of THINKING? In this interactive presentation learn how 3 Miami-Dade schools are using a set of consistent visual tools to teach critical, creative THINKING and communication to all learners. This session will capitalize on connecting the visuals to the latest brain research and its implications on the developmental needs of PreK-Adult learners. Examples of practice will be highlighted by these schools.

The Effect Of Employing Cultural Criticism In The Teaching Of British Literature For Chinese Undergraduate English Majors, Yu Zhang

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The traditional literature teaching methods for Chinese English majors are formalism and biographical criticism. These criticisms use an objective approach focused on details about the author, historical context and literary mechanics to analyze literature. These methods neglect the fact that literature comprehension involves readers’ active participation. Cultural criticism, as a critical approach, considers influences that readers bring to their engagement with a given literary text. This approach is supposed to fit the classroom settings for cross-cultural literature teaching and learning.

This study was conducted to examine the effect of utilizing cultural criticism to teach British literature among Chinese undergraduate English …

Becoming Bilingual: Examining Teachers' Perceptions And Practices For Achieving Bilingualism And Biliteracy In English And Spanish In A Two-Way Dual Language Bilingual Education Program, Carolyn O'Gorman-Fazzolari

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Bilingualism characterizes not only people, but homes, schools, and communities across the United States. While some bilingual people are forced to suppress their bilingualism, others are encouraged to develop their skill set to a level of becoming biliterate. Bilingualism and biliteracy are key features in dual language bilingual education (DLBE) programs where students are provided daily opportunities to develop two languages simultaneously, along with grade-level academic content. Research in DLBE suggest closure of the achievement gap (Valentino & Reardon, 2015). Traditionally, DLBE programs were designed to keep the two target languages (for example, Spanish and English) separate as designated by …