Language and Literacy Education Commons^™

Best Practices In Online Course Design That Help Eliminate Learning Fatigue, Valarie Anderson O'Bryan

The Utah English Journal

Even though students have returned to learning in-person in schools, many districts require teachers to maintain an online course (usually using Canvas). When teachers use best practices when designing online learning content, students are less likely to experience frustration and learning fatigue.

Combatting The Inevitable: Reflective Writing In Response To Student Struggles, Kaylee Smedley

The Utah English Journal

'Teachers and students, we need all of you to immediately go into lockdown procedures. Again, please begin lockdown procedures."

That announcement had interrupted our freshman English class nearly two hours earlier, and yet the only updates we had were frantic texts and social media updates from friends and family members regarding a report of someone with a weapon on Provo High's campus. As I huddled in the book corner surrounded by my fifth period class, a million different thoughts rushed through my head. More than fear, all I could think about were the logistics. What if the culprit came to …

Voices With Power: Writing To Effect Change In 8th Grade, Emily Brown

The Utah English Journal

"Slow walkers."

"Seniors crowding the hallways."

"When teachers write crookedly on the board."

The minute I read the writing prompt for the day-"What is one of your biggest pet peeves?"-the response from my 8th graders is electrifying and instantaneous. Responses like the ones above begin flying around the room, and I have to loudly remind them, "Write first, share second!" because everyone is immediately ready to rant. I call this my Soapbox Day. It's a day where I make sure to devote enough time for students to write substantial responses and then "get on their soapboxes" to share these rants. …

Teach Me The Language Of The Bear, Rachel Stanger

The Utah English Journal

No abstract provided.

Book Review: Aristotle And Dante Dive Into The Waters Of The World, Corinne Downs

The Utah English Journal

Saenz has intimately captured the somber beauty that is shedding childhood off and stepping into the paths of adulthood. In his sequel Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World, readers find themselves continuing on in Dante's journey. This shy, quiet, and recluse character continues to find himself through moments of ecstasy and grief throughout his senior year of high school.

Book Review: From A Whisper To A Rallying Cry: The Killing Of Vincent Chin And The Trial That Galvanized The Asian American Movement, Krista Hong Edwards

The Utah English Journal

Part historical investigation, part modern-day reflection on identity, and part court drama, Paula Yoo's From a Whisper to a Rallying Cry takes the reader through a rather unknown, yet incredibly important moment in American history. Recognizing that several individuals in this story live in 2022, she sensitively examines the 1982 case of Vincent Chin: a Chinese-American man who was violently killed mere days before his wedding. Vincent was celebrating his bachelor party at a gentlemen's club when the night turned violent and volatile, and two white men employed at an automobile plant pursued Vincent across town to beat him to …

Book Review: The Legend Of Auntie Po, Katy Bigham

The Utah English Journal

Mei is an average thirteen-year-old Chinese-American girl. She loves spending time with her best friend, Bee ( whom she also is developing budding romantic feelings for); baking pie with her father; and dreaming of attending a university somewhere far from home. She tells fascinating stories that leave the neighborhood children enraptured and helps her dad at work however she can. But Mei lives in a Sierra Nevada logging camp in 1885, which makes her life dramatically more complicated.

Book Review: Tokyo Ever After, Grace Houston

The Utah English Journal

Izumi Tanaka goes by "Izzy" - not because she prefers it, as she claims, but because it's easier in her small town in northern California. She and her three best friends are the only Asian-American girls at their school. Together they face the struggles of being Asian-American in a mostly white small town. That is, until a discovery changes Izumi's entire world.

Book Review: A Teacher's Guide To Writing Workshop Minilessons, Belinda 'Ofakihevahanoa Fotu

The Utah English Journal

Eickholdt and Vitale-Reilly's A Teacher's Guide to Writing Workshop Minilessons is a 125 page writing instructor's manual marketed for teachers of k-8 grades. Colors regale the broad cover and every page throughout, with pages sometimes devoted just to one large blocked quote and pictures of writing carpets and writers' cubbies. Every visual and tactile indicator of this book impresses the reader that this is a text meant for teachers of small children; even so, A Teacher's Guide to Writing Workshop Minilessons is a manual of writing techniques applicable to any level of writing.

Pirls 2021 Australian Year 4 Data Tables [Excel], Kylie Hillman, Elizabeth O'Grady, Sima Rodrigues, Marina Schmid, Sue Thomson

Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS)

No abstract provided.

What Counts As Literacy In The Polytechnic Hispanic Serving Institution? Culturally Sustaining Frameworks For Writing Assignments, Assessment, And Language Use, Lisa Tremain, Jill Anderson, Beth Eschenbach, Nicolette Amann, Kerry Marsden

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations

This article theorizes and describes classroom pedagogies that support the development of students’ disciplinary literacies through culturally sustaining, socially just approaches. Drawing primarily from the framework of culturally sustaining pedagogies (CSP) (Paris, 2012; Alim, Paris & Wong, 2020), the authors suggest strategies for writing assignment and assessment designs that support students’ multilingual and multiliterate ways of knowing. These strategies intentionally invite and integrate students’ multiple ways of knowing and being in and outside of the polytechnic HSI. They also ask instructors to decenter the ways that whiteness operates in their curricula and programs. The authors conclude the article by arguing …

“Like A Whole Thing”: Dialogic Sensemaking In One Sixth Grade Classroom, Catherine Bienkowski

West Chester University Doctoral Projects

This qualitative study used a constructivist approach to better understand how students in one sixth grade classroom participate in dialogic discussions while making sense of texts. Participants in the study attended a suburban, public, high-performing middle school in Pennsylvania. Drawing on Sociocultural Learning Theory and Transactional Reading Theory, the researcher observed one English Language Arts class. Nine students participated in five reading events over a period of two months. Data collection, informed by linguistic ethnographic methods, included audio recordings, transcriptions of reading events, fieldnotes, and transcriptions of one on one and small group interviews. In Vivo coding of the interview …

Bilingualism: Bringing World Language To The Youth, Kyle Villella

Modern Languages, Philosophy and Classics Theses

This research thesis focuses on world language education in the United States, more specifically, in the state of Rhode Island. In a changing world, learning a second language is key to creating more culturally competent citizens of the world. This thesis pushes for world language education in elementary schools, particularly in first grade. The first section of the thesis focuses on the reasoning behind beginning this education and how a child’s brain is more capable of second language learning This thesis then looks into how this style of education can be successful and the best pedagogical approaches. It analyzes how …

Educational Policies For Spanish Speakers In The United States, Allenby Lyson Iii

Modern Languages, Philosophy and Classics Theses

Schools across the United States implemented educational policies to help students succeed. These policies are often implemented at the state level allowing differences between each state. Considering the increasing presence of Spanish speakers in the United States, many of these policies are put in place to help Spanish speaking students as well as other native speaking children. These policies, and by extent programs, have changed over time, both helping and in some cases harming students. Analyzing these policies improves our understanding of what is most beneficial for students.

Review: Unwell Writing Centers: Searching For Wellness In Neoliberal Educational Institutions And Beyond, Aurora Matzke

English Faculty Articles and Research

“Unwell Writing Centers: Searching for Wellness in Neoliberal Educational Institutions and Beyond” blends narrative, mixed methods research, and rhetorical analysis to make a case for the possibilities inherent in homegrown wellness practices that are “communal, political, and rooted in defiance of white supremacy.”

Pulling It All Together: Teaching Genre, Disciplinary And Career Literacies, And The Framework For Information Literacy In An Associate Degree Capstone Course, Linda Miles, Elisabeth Tappeiner

Publications and Research

We team teach a semester-long credit-bearing information literacy course for urban community college students in New York City’s South Bronx. It is a capstone course, designed to support students at the end of their first two years of college as they consider the next stage in their own development, be that transferring to a four-year institution or entering the workforce. For this course, we have constructed an approach to critical reading that combines explicit exploration of academic and disciplinary genres with an investigation into the processes of knowledge production and communication shared by the individuals who produce them. This chapter …

Teaching Grammar: One Day At A Time, Jenny Dunn

The Utah English Journal

When I first started teaching grammar to my high school students, I had to study up every class period to make sure I was teaching things correctly. It took me several years to feel comfortable and confident in my abilities.

However, even after seven years of teaching grammar to high schoolers (and five before that teaching junior high students), there are multiple times a year when my students ask me a question I do not know the answer to. Instead of panicking, making something up, or brushing it off as an unimportant principle, I simply say, "That's a good question. …

What Matters Most: Vision Boards For Unit Planning In The English Classroom, Johnny Allred, Corinne Downs

The Utah English Journal

In his first year as a high school teacher, Johnny sat down at the computer to plan a narrative writing unit centered on the text Chasing Lincoln's Killer. He stared at a blank unit plan template for a few minutes while crickets chirped loudly in his head-he had no idea where to begin! Sure, he was a first year teacher, but he had been well-trained in the art of lesson and unit-planning, and he was confident in his ability to teach. Why was this so difficult? What skills and knowledge really mattered for his students? What assessments could he develop …

Book Review: A Snake Falls To Earth, Heidi Stone

The Utah English Journal

Nina, a Lipan girl from Earth, and Oli, a Cottonmouth Snake from the Reflection World, are drawn together to save those who they love the most. Little Badger utilizes traditional Lipan Apache storytelling techniques to draw the reader into the stories of the animal people, monsters, and the importance of family.

Book Review: Kaleidoscope, Justin Scholes

The Utah English Journal

Characteristic of his award-winning style, Brian Selznick's newest book, Kaleidoscope (2021) blends text and beautiful pencil drawings that push readers to consider meaning in words and images. The book features twenty-four short stories, and as the title suggests, each story is a glimpse into a world, a life, a perspective.