Education Commons^™

Improving Literacy Homework In The Primary Grades Through Interactive Family Reading, Lisa Mulder

Culminating Experience Projects

Homework is common practice in most elementary school classrooms as teachers try to reinforce material learned in class through the help of parents and families at home. However, research has shown homework to have little impact on students’ academic achievement in the elementary grades. Homework can even cause an increased stress level in young students, a negative impact on motivation, and friction with family members. Elementary parents and teachers need to reevaluate homework’s effectiveness and its impact on today’s busy families.

This project proposes reframing traditional paper-pencil review homework in favor of family-centered reading time. When students are given too …

Carrying The Stories Of Las Mariposas: Literacy As Collective And Transformative, Deborah Vriend Van Duinen

Michigan Reading Journal

Literacy is often understood as the acquisition of individual skills and knowledge. In this essay, I explore different approaches to understanding literacy that focus on social meaning-making and action. Drawing on historical examples of literacy learning and my recent experiences in a community-wide reading program focused on Julia Alvarez’s (1994) In the Time of the Butterflies, I use the concept of “carrying stories” to reflect on how literacy learning can be collective and transformative for self and society.

Policies, Practices, Places, And People: How Elementary Preservice Teachers Learned Literacy Teaching, Chad H. Waldron

Michigan Reading Journal

This article features cases of how elementary education preservice teachers made sense of teaching literacy. Their contexts for teaching varied in policies, curricula, and demands for their literacy teaching, shaped their learning and understanding of literacy instruction and assessment as beginning teachers. The research featured in this article pushes upon conceptualizations of "good" literacy teaching and how mentor teachers serve a critical role in preparing the next generation of elementary literacy teachers. Recommendations are made on how to best support elementary preservice teachers in literacy instruction and assessment.

Connecting The Dots Between Academic And Social-Emotional Learning With Literacy, Allison Phillippe

Michigan Reading Journal

This article emphasizes the importance of supporting Social Emotional Learning (SEL) with literacy instruction, which could benefit both the academic and emotional success of students in your classroom. Currently in education there is a growing rate of students who have experienced trauma and could greatly benefit from SEL (Price & Ellis, 2018). The ability to incorporate SEL into current literacy instruction can help ensure we are meeting the individual needs of each student. This article will begin by defining SEL and explain its growing importance in education today. Then, it will discuss how social-emotional and academic learning are connected. Finally, …

“We Can Do This At Our School!” Place-Based Education, Literacy, & Learning, Erica R. Hamilton, Janet Staal, Jessica Vander Ark

Michigan Reading Journal

This article highlights the power of using place-based education (PBE) in a K-8 school to support and extend students' literacy and learning. Through PBE, teachers learn to use their local places such as playgrounds, neighborhoods, parks, streams, forests, and urban centers as contexts to make connections and facilitate learning. Moreover, as seen in the examples provided throughout this article, PBE empowers teachers and students to study and read the world, integrate knowledge across disciplines, write for authentic purposes and audiences, create and share narratives connected to local places, and engage in and share research. As a result, students’ excitement for …

Pizza, Pages, And Family Engagement: A Simple Approach To Family Literacy Night, Jennie Baumann

Michigan Reading Journal

Family engagement in schools is a worthy but difficult pursuit. Between scheduling challenges, family needs, and other systemic factors, how can educators encourage family participation? This article details a simple practice using pizza, existing curriculum, and local resources as a way of working smarter to create a culture of family engagement around literacy.

Course Redesign To New Paradigms: Exploring Humanizing Racial Literacies With Pre-Service Teachers, Becky Beucher, Tisha Ortega, Grant Souder, Kimberly Martin-Boyd, Katy Killian

Language Arts Journal of Michigan

Spring 2021, undergraduate students across the country were entering their second year of obligatory online learning. This moment in time correlated with an increased attention to the Black Lives Matter movement by white youth and the mainstream public. This study, guided by a team of teacher educators committed to realizing racial justice in Secondary literacy education, designed and examined the impact of humanizing racial literacies curriculum taught through forced on learning on undergraduate pre-service teacher’s perspectives about anti-racist curriculum design. This study builds upon a growing body of research on realizing humanizing racial literacies in teacher education pedagogy. The curriculum …