English Language and Literature Commons^™

Book Review: What If It's Us, Zach Searle

The Utah English Journal

Ben and Arthur, the co-protagonists of Albertalli and Silvera's first collaborative novel, are brought together by the universe--depending on who you ask. Arthur is in New York City for a summer internship with his mother's law firm, and he firmly believes the universe has a plan for him when he runs into Ben at the post office. Ben is only at the post office to mail off his ex-boyfriend's break-up box, and he is convinced that the universe is out to get him. However, after their chance encounter, Ben and Arthur aren't so sure about what the universe wants. If …

The Utah English Journal, Volume 47, 2019: Full Issue

The Utah English Journal

No abstract provided.

Weaving A Workshop Into Your Writing Instruction, Jacob Rees

The Utah English Journal

Why workshops? When we put students together in groups to discuss their writing, we dramatically expand their audience and increase the opportunities for students to write without increasing our grading load. More importantly, we shift the responsibility back to the students to identify what makes writing work. As it is in our own writing process, the ability to assess always precedes our ability to revise. Always.

The Use Of Children's Literature And Reflective Writing As A Means To Help Primary Elementary Students Cope With Natural Disaster, Connie T. Zenz

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Natural disasters such as hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, tsunamis, and earthquakes frequently happen across the world. Many of these natural disasters bring destruction to homes, loss of loved ones, and emotional or physical trauma. For children who are still developing coping skills, these natural disasters can bring them emotional distress because they are unable to processes their experiences in a healthy way. In a review of literature on the topic of bibliotherapy and reflective writing to help children learn coping skills, I discovered a need for these processes to be introduced in normal settings, such as school and home, to help …

Poetically Composed, Educationally Imposed: Exploring Imagination And Poetics In Curriculum—A Memoir, Whitney J. Presnal

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Through the use of memoir, my work centers on how poetry is situated within public education curriculum. I explore the curricular context of poetry through the lenses of my lived experiences in early childhood, as a K-12 student, and as an early career classroom teacher. My dissertation draws upon a wide array of literature, honing in on the poetic perspectives of philosophers (Aristotle, 1996; Heidegger, 1947 & 1971/2013; Plato, 1955/2007), poets (Hall, 2003; Eliot, 1920 & 2009), and curriculum theorists (Leggo, 1997 & 2018; Pinar, 1994; Sameshima, 2007). The foundation of my work is drawn from my own circular experiences, …

Writing Beyond The Walls: Five Questions To Promote Authentic Writing Experience In The Classroom, Christine C. Thompson

The Utah English Journal

In the fall of 2018, I established the writing objectives in my eighth grade classroom with student and teacher sanity in mind. Heading into my twelfth year of teaching, I was tired of reading predictable, formulaic paragraphs that all but screamed, "This is my topic sentence. Here are my ideas and supporting evidence. And now, let me conclude by restating my topic sentence." Sure, this type of writing is easy to assess; even a computer can grade this structure with moderate accuracy, but there are so many problems with it-problems that generate impersonal pieces lacking in passion, creativity, and risk-taking. …

Scandal, Pop Culture, And Crime In The Classroom: Using Documentaries To Teach Twenty-First-Century Literacy Skills, Johanna Chausow

The Utah English Journal

When two new documentaries appeared on my "Recommended For You" list this past year, I had an epiphany that has enriched my teaching. Fyre Fraud (2019) is a film made for Hulu by Lana Barkin and Julia Nason, while Fyre (2019) was made for Netflix by Chris Smith and Danny Gabai. Both films address the failed music festival in the Bahamas that was heavily promoted by Instagram influencers. The films cover the same topic but present drastically different interpretations of the events leading up to the disaster. While I could never show these documentaries in their entirety to my students …

Juggling The Curriculum: Integrating Vocabulary Into The Rhythms And Routines Of Our Classrooms, Rachel Knecht

The Utah English Journal

At the end of my third year of teaching, I finally felt like I was successfully juggling the many moving parts of an English curriculum. Literature units focused on an essential question? Check! Daily routines including Writer's Notebooks and independent reading? Check, check! Writing units using mentor texts, authentic audiences, and grammar in context? Check, check, and check! And, through all of these practices, I believed I was on my way to creating a student-centered classroom where students' voices, backgrounds, and skills were valued.

I had this English teacher thing down! Or at least I thought I did. There was …

Using Chronotypes In Literature To Enhance Student Perspectives, Heather Fitzgerald Jorgensen

The Utah English Journal

"How do I draw a picture of democracy?" a seventh grader asked. "I know it's a noun."

"That's a good question," I said, stalling for time. It was my first year teaching at a school in the intermountain west, where seventh graders had grammar instruction every Tuesday.

"Why don't you try drawing a symbol of democracy?" I asked. "Like the American flag or Lady Liberty."

"That works," the student said.

Bending Back To Move Forward: Scaffolding Reflection To Develop Student Authors, Liz Thackeray Nelson

The Utah English Journal

When I was teaching high school language arts courses, I used a four-corners activity at the beginning of every year in order to get a quick glimpse of my students' attitudes toward writing. Each corner of the classroom represented a point on a Likert scale: strongly agree, somewhat agree, somewhat disagree, and strongly disagree. I read statements about writing ( such as "I avoid writing whenever possible" or "I like writing my ideas down") and then students moved to the corner that best matched their view. It shouldn't come as a surprise that the majority of students stayed in the …

Book Review: Being The Change, Whitney Hansen

The Utah English Journal

In Being the Change, Sara Ahmed pleads with teachers to seek out and encourage difficult conversations in their classrooms. She acknowledges the fears many teachers associate with bringing up political debates and current events to their students but contends that these conversations are vital for our students. Through classroom conversations and personal stories, she lays out the current political situation that our students are facing. With this tumultuous setting, she pleads that we must teach our students how to talk to one another and, more importantly, how to disagree with one another. Through these disagreements, Ahmed asserts that students …

Book Review: Shout, Kara Trammell

The Utah English Journal

Laurie Halse Anderson's latest book Shout

is "the true story of a survivor who

refused

to be silent."

Book Review: Illegal, Lisa Jones

The Utah English Journal

Ebo's sister has already fled Ghana for a better life in Europe, and now his brother Kwame has disappeared on the same quest to help his family. As much as Ebo appreciates these efforts, he refuses to be left behind once again-especially as Ebo and his siblings are orphaned. Thus, Illegal shows the dangerous journey of a refugee to find his brother and eventually make it to Europe. Told in the form of a beautiful graphic novel, Ebo must cross the brutal Sahara Desert to the dangerous city of Tripoli and eventually travel across the ocean. In each situation, Ebo …

Book Review: The 57 Bus: A True Story Of Two Teenagers And The Crime That Changes Their Lives, Albert Ricci

The Utah English Journal

Dashka Slater pulls her information from various sources-"interviews, documents, letters, videos, diaries, social media posts, and public records" -to craft her nonfiction account of two teenagers whose lives collide one innocent day on November 4, 2013, on the 57 bus. "If it weren't for the 57 bus, Richard and Sasha would never have met. Although they live in the same city, Oakland, they are from radically different worlds. But one single reckless act changes both of their lives forever." Sasha is a senior at Maybeck High School, they love Russian literature, live-action role-playing, the color purple, and skirts: they are …

Book Review: Circe, Tara Pina

The Utah English Journal

The story of Odysseus and his adventures home to Ithaca is familiar one: one that is taught and read in many classrooms, and one that is adapted and borrowed from often. However, Circe by Madeline Miller does not simply retell this familiar story, instead she shifts the well-known tale to focus on the minor goddess Circe. Miller gives a glimpse into Circe's life that is so moving it will change how you look at the story of Odysseus and surely how you approach it with students.

Book Review: Internment, Leah Smith

The Utah English Journal

Internment by Samira Ahmed is an excellent example of realistic fiction that helps students really engage with their political, social, and personal beliefs. Those who find themselves in a minority group will relate well to the themes and characters, and those who are more privileged will find their eyes opened.

Book Review: Pitch Dark, Madison Sheldrake

The Utah English Journal

Pitch Dark is a futuristic story of adventure and survival, set in motion after humanity deems Earth to be uninhabitable and takes to the stars to save both themselves and their future. The book takes place in space, showing events on two spacecrafts that come together in an effort to learn from the past as the characters look to secure their future. However, unbeknownst to most of the crew members, a secret terrorist plot is underway to undermine humanity's last chance to colonize Mars.

“Writing Is Hard, But I Think I Like It”: Identity (Re)Construction Of Female Refugee And Immigrant Adult Language Learners In The Us., Svenja Trommler

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

This paper examines how identity is reconstructed in second language literacy of adult female refugees and immigrants, and how their prior literacy and language experience influences their current literacy usage which develops slowly due to a lack of suitable education for them in the United States, causing difficulties during their integration process. Responding to the low representation of immigrant women in research, three major research methods to collect the qualitative data were used: (1) prompted journal entries as narrative inquiries, (2) observations and field notes, and (3) semi-structured interviews to understand the participants’ previous and current literacy development and identity …

Using Spanish In English-Language Spaces: Identifying Bilingual Composition Students' Translanguaging Practices, Maria Isela Maier

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This Dissertation is a qualitative study that uses ethnographic research methods to examine the translanguaging practices of bilingual students in first-year composition at a university along the U.S.-Mexico border. Specifically, I observe how and why bilingual students employ translanguaging practices, as they are encouraged or invited by their instructors, in contexts where English Standard Language policies exist. The results of this qualitative project demonstrate bilingual students' use of translation as part of their translanguaging practices, as well as a tool that uncovers students' writing processes which also demonstrates their language negotiation. Furthermore, the students' translanguaging practices reveal the rhetorical use …

[Introduction To] Constructing The Adolescent Reader In Contemporary Young Adult Fiction, Elisabeth Rose Gruner

Bookshelf

This book examines the way young adult readers are constructed in a variety of contemporary young adult fictions, arguing that contemporary young adult novels depict readers as agents. Reading, these novels suggest, is neither an unalloyed good nor a dangerous ploy, but rather an essential, occasionally fraught, by turns escapist and instrumental, deeply pleasurable, and highly contentious activity that has value far beyond the classroom skills or the specific content it conveys. After an introductory chapter that examines the state of reading and young adult fiction today, the book examines novels that depict reading in school, gendered and racialized reading, …

Developing A Culturally Relevant Pedagogy Through The Use Of Diverse Literature And Perspective-Taking: A Resource Guide, Katie Dushek

Honors Projects

There is a growing diverse population in today’s secondary schools, yet the literary canon that is taught remains extremely white. Additionally, students today are rarely challenged to step into another’s shoes to see from a different perspective. With this lack of diversity in mind, I have created a resource guide with the goal of helping in-service and pre-service teachers to develop a more culturally relevant pedagogy through the use of diverse literature in their curriculum and the incorporation of more perspective-taking activities into their lessons. This guide provides a list of diverse books, recommendations on how to teach more diverse …

Writing Across The Curriculum In Secondary Education, Katie L. Moles

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Academic writing is an undervalued practice in secondary education. Many teachers outside of the English Language Arts struggle to implement writing into their curriculum due to their lack of confidence in teaching different writing skills and the amount of time teaching and assessing writing can require. Writing is extremely beneficial to students developing content knowledge and discursive writing skills; however, because not many teaching emphasize the importance of writing, students do not develop necessary writing skills. In California, 49.88 percent of students in grades 3-11 who participated in the California Assessment of Students Performance and Progress (CAASPP) did not meet …

Promoting English Fluency Through Peer Feedback And Dialogue Journals In An Esl College Classroom, Sarah L. Stone

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

This study investigated research methodologies which were proven to be successful in promoting English fluency among ESL students in the college level classroom. The history of second language learning was tied to popular teaching practices, such as journal writing, dialogue journals, peer feedback, and teacher feedback. Due to a lack of cohesion between the above methods and a rising gap in related literature, an experiment was formed to determine whether dialogue journals could be combined with peer feedback to facilitate an accelerated comprehension of English as an L2 language. Over a three-month period, 19 ESL students at Gavilan College were …

Lexical Complexity Of Academic Presentations: Similarities Despite Situational Differences, Alla Zareva

English Faculty Publications

The present study examined the lexical complexity profiles of academic presentations of three groups of university students– native English speaking, English as a second language, and English as a lingua franca users. It adopted a notion of lexical complexity which includes lexical diversity, lexical density, and lexical sophistication as main dimensions of the framework. The study aimed at finding out how the three academically similar groups of presenters compared on their lexical complexity choices, what the lexical complexity profiles of high quality students’ academic presentations looked like, and whether we can identify variables that contribute to the overall lexical complexity …

Book Review: You Go First, Laura Jackson

The Utah English Journal

You know it's going to be a fun story when Scrabble letter tiles are on the cover. Tying in a modern phone app version with the elusive charm of the board game, friends are connected. The protagonist struggles to find connection with her parents and friends while providing a positive yet true to life model of how to navigate the struggle. You Go First is a lighter read that has the potential to reach middle school aged students or even a funny reflection for high school students who would benefit from a less difficult level of reading.

Using "Chunks" Of Academic Language, Thomas Henry, Jim Pettersson

The Utah English Journal

Graff and Birkenstein (2018) provide great insights into producing quality academic prose. Likewise, they demystify the textual practices of academic writers by asking students to use (or borrow) patterns of academic language. When examining the patterns found within dozens of academic abstracts/summaries, the following patterns emerged. These "templates" (as we call them) or "chunks" (the term provided by students) may help to guide students to create more academic-style prose; likewise, these sorts of patterns may help students in the practice of writing more complex prose (see Figure 1: The Language of Abstracts).

Beyond Posters And Powerpoints: A Case For Authentic Multimodal Writing In The 21st-Century Ela Classroom, Amber Jensen

The Utah English Journal

When I graduated from high school in 2001, my classmates and I were delighted to be the first graduates of a new century. Ushering in the twenty-first century evoked glittering promises of new and faster technologies, networked global communication, and a wide array of professional possibilities. When I entered my first classroom as a high school English teacher in 2004, however, I noticed that not much about the classroom or the curriculum had changed: I taught many of the same classic novels I had read in high school, I assigned the same kinds of writing tasks I had written as …

Not Just A Princess: Using Cinderella To Teach Adolescents About Power, Rylee Carling

The Utah English Journal

The immortal words "once upon a time" have been ingrained in our society's collective memory, at times to the irritation of those who feel they've outgrown the childish stories that begin with this seemingly trite phrase. However, bringing fairy tales and their legion YA novelizations into the classroom can help adolescent students understand constructs of power while offering a familiar story in which to explore those mature themes.

Autobiographical Multigenre Project, Cindy D'On Jones

The Utah English Journal

This Autobiographical Multigenre Project is designed to incorporate several motivational supports for adolescent students, including promoting development of identify as a reader, a writer, and a user of literacy.

This project also serves as an instructional scaffold for future multigenre projects. Each student is an "expert" on the topic of self This allows students to learn the process of a creating a multigenre project while minimizing the cognitive load of investigation required for multigenre projects about less-familiar topics.

Teaching With Technology: Using A Virtual Learning Community And Peer Mentoring To Create An Interdisciplinary Intervention, Rebecca Mazumdar, Nadia Benakli, Pamela Brown

Publications and Research

This paper describes the development and implementation of engaging and supportive experiences to promote student engagement, persistence and success at a commuter, open enrollment, public, minority serving institution. Project components included faculty development at the SENCER Summer Institute (SSI) 2016, attended by a team comprised of an academic administrator, full-time faculty from English and math, and part-time faculty in chemistry; creation of a virtual learning community of freshmen enrolled in chemistry, English, and math linked by the specific theme of the environmental impacts of deicing roads with salt and the overarching theme of the impacts of human activities on the …