Engaging in the Language Arts

Description

CONTENTS FOR BOXED FEATURES

PREFACE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

PART 1 FOUNDATIONS

    What Is Important about Classroom Language Use? 4

    What Is the Authors’ Perspective? 6

    What Are Important Aspects of Language Study? 7

    How Do We Organize and Structure Ideas? 13

    How Do Our Communities Influence Language Development? 14

    What Is Your Role? 17

    What Does Good Instruction Look Like? 20

    How Can the Standards Help Your Teaching? 26

    How Can You Get Started in This Study of Language Arts? 28

    What Are Your Interests and Questions? 29 

    Why Is Language Arts Assessment Important? 34

    How Are National Language Arts Standards Related to State and School District Language Arts Standards? 34

    What Are Principles to Follow in Language Arts Assessment? 39

    How Can You Assess Language Arts? 40

    When Do You Assess Language Arts? 58

    How Do We Define Diversity?

    What Do You Need to Know When Teaching English Learners?

    How Does Diversity Affect Your Classroom?

    How Can You Differentiate Instruction?

    How Can You Support Students Who Struggle with Language Learning?

    What Intellectual and Social Needs Are Important to Consider?

    What Is Language?

    Why Is Oral Language Important?

    What Do We Know about Oral Language Development?

    How Does Language Develop?

    How Does Language Change during the Preschool Years?

    Is Language Development “Finished” When Children Enter School?

    What Do We Know about Dialects?

    How Do Students Use Language?

    How Can We Promote Language Growth?

    Why Is Children’s Literature Important for Reading and Writing?

    What Do We Know about Children’s Literature?

    What Do We Know about How Children Learn about Literature?

    How Can We Teach Children’s Literature?

    How Can We Assess Students’ Understanding of Literature?

    How Can We Support Diversity and Differentiated Instruction in the Classroom?

    How Can We Support Technology Use and Children’s Literature?

    How Do State and National Standards Inform Oral Language Instruction?

    How Can Social Interaction and Communication Be Developed?

    How Can You Develop Exploratory Uses of Language?

    How Can You Help Students Gain Confidence in Speaking?

    How Can Students Learn to Use Language to Inform Others?

    In What Ways Can You Develop Students’ Ability to Listen?

    How Can You Support Students Who Struggle with Classroom Communication?

    What are Important Factors for Successful Beginning Reading?

    How Does Beginning Reading Develop?

    How Can You Support Reading Development?

    How Can You Assess Early Reading Development?

    How Can You Support Students Who Struggle with Story Comprehension?

    What Are Goals for Literacy beyond the Primary Grades?

    What Instructional Strategies Are Supported by Research and Best Practices?

    How Can Students Be Encouraged to Read for Literary Purposes?

    How Can Literacy Be Developed across the Content Areas?

    Why Is Visual Literacy Important?

    How Can Visual Literacy Be Developed?

    How Can You Organize Classroom Instruction to Accomplish Your Goals?

    How Can Integrated Units of Instruction Enhance Learning?

    How Can You Support Students Who Struggle with Reading?

    Why Is Spelling Important for Reading and Writing?

    What Do We Know about English Spelling?

    How Can We Teach Spelling?

    How Can We Assess Spelling?

    How Can We Help English Learners with Spelling?

    Why Teach Handwriting? 

    What Do We Know about Vocabulary Development during the Elementary Years?

    What Does a Good Instructional Program Include?

    What Role Does the Dictionary Play?

    How Can Students’ Word Knowledge Be Assessed?

    What Is Effective Vocabulary Instruction for Students Who Struggle with Word Learning?

    How Do Students Develop into Writers?

    What Is the Writing Process?

    How Can You Help Students Become Writers?

    How Can You Assess Students’ Writing?

    How Can You Support Struggling Writers?

    What Are Writing Conventions for English?

    What Do We Know about Teaching Writing Conventions?

    How Can You Teach Writing Conventions?

    How Can You Assess Writing Conventions?

    How Can You Assist Students Who Struggle with Subject-Verb Agreement?  

    How Do You Define, Teach, and Assess Personal Writing?    

    How Do You Define, Teach, and Assess Story Writing?

    How Do You Define, Teach, and Assess Informational Writing?    

    How Do You Define, Teach, and Assess Poetry Writing?

    What Strategies Can You Use with Students Who Struggle with Writing Genres?

REFERENCES 

INDEX

This innovative text focuses on helping teachers ensure that students learn to use language to communicate with others in our increasingly culturally and linguistically diverse society. It also guides teachers to draw upon a great resource in their classrooms: the language power of their students themselves.

Readers get a firsthand look at the language challenges teachers face, and how teachers identify language possibilities and make optimal use of them in their classrooms. With lively narrative, clear organization, and exceptional pedagogy, distinguished authors Donna Ogle and Jim Beers bring the language arts to life for teachers through a focus on contemporary communication and visual literacy. They also bring students into the classroom in their new feature, Key Teaching Strategy, with rubrics teachers can use to evaluate their instruction.

In Engaging the Language Arts, the key focus is on helping teachers ensure that students learn to use language to communicate with others, to explore ideas, and to demonstrate their learning orally and in written formats. All of the basic writing processes are covered, while the book places a unique emphasis on the actual purpose behind teaching writing. Included are classroom-based assessments and activities reflecting state and national standards that provide important resources to help teachers differentiate instruction.

·         NEW! Key Teaching Strategy with rubrics appears in all of the instructional chapters and present an effective language arts strategy that can be used in the classroom with a corresponding rubric to help teachers evaluate their own success in teaching with the strategies. Examples include Language Experience, DR-TA, K-W-L, Shared Writing, and more.

·         NEW! Discussions of Response to Intervention (RtI) and applications of RtI throughout the instructional chapters and in introduction to RtI in the introductory section.

·         NEW! The new common core standards being implemented across the US are included so that students will be able to know and use the standards in all of the language arts.

·         NEW! The newly revised NCTE/IRA standards are included and referenced throughout the book.

·         NEW! Sections on Children Who Struggle are included in all instructional chapters, providing clear guidelines for teaching these students effectively.

·         NEW! Exploring Technology boxes are included within the instructional chapters, making them accessible for teachers.

·         NEW! Marginal A+RISE® Teaching Strategies align with relevant concepts in the main body of the text and give teachers in grades K-12 quick, research-based strategies to get to the “how” of targeting their instruction and making content accessible for all students, including English language learners.

Donna Ogle is Professor of Reading and Language at National-Louis University in Chicago, Illinois, and is actively involved in staff development projects work in the Chicago Public Schools, the Reading Leadership Institute, and in other American school districts. Dr. Ogle serves as a literacy consultant internationally, including Critical Thinking International and as a part of the editorial review boards of Lectura y Vida and the Thinking Classroom. She recently finished her term as president of the International Reading Association (IRA). Donna also conducts research on visual literacy and content comprehension, having developed both the K-W-L and PRC2 (partner reading in content, too). She is the author of many books, book chapters, and professional articles and conducts national and international workshops on teaching for comprehension and higher order thinking, as well as using the arts in teaching. Her K-W-L procedure has become so renowned that teachers use it all over the world.

James Beers is Professor of Reading, Language, and Literacy in the School of Education at the College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia. He is also the Director of the Eastern Virginia Writing Project of the National Writing Project, which helps teachers help their students become better writers. He has a B.A. in English from Johns Hopkins University, an M.A. in English, and Ph.D. in Reading from the University of Virginia.  Dr. Beers has taught reading, writing, and spelling to students at all grade levels and has published books, chapters, and articles on reading, writing, and spelling. Among these publications are Developmental and Cognitive Aspects of Learning to Spell and Writing for Competency. James is also an author on the Scott Foresman Reading and Spelling Programs. He has given numerous in-service workshops throughout the United States and Canada for teachers and administrators on the teaching of reading, writing, and spelling and has assisted a number of school systems in developing K-12 reading and writing curricula and the three- to four-year plans for implementing the curricula. Along with his wife, Dr. Carol S. Beers, James has participated in the Reading and Writing for Critical Thinking Project through the International Reading Association’s International Volunteer Program. This project has helped teachers in eastern European countries promote critical thinking and independent learning through reading and writing in their students. James and Carol are currently co-authoring a book that addresses what every principal should know about reading.

·         Includes and carefully explains classroom-based assessments for all areas of language arts development, giving teachers a solid handle on how to determine what their students are able to do and how they respond to instruction.

·         The book helps teachers integrate all of the language arts into their teaching.

·         The focus on visual literacy helps teachers develop a language for talking about visual forms of communication by both analyzing visuals and by helping students create their own.

The book’s rich pedagogy makes understanding and then incorporating the concepts in the classroom much simpler. Included are:

·         Classroom Challenge. Chapters open with a narrative vignette that shares a language arts teacher’s experience in an active classroom. Each vignette models key concepts and demonstrates the challenges of today’s classrooms and considerations for addressing the needs of diverse students.

·         Questions for Reflection. Students are asked to reflect on their knowledge of the subject matter before reading and to connect their experiences to those within the chapter-opening Classroom Challenge.

·         Focus Questions. Each chapter begins with a series of key questions that guide students’ reading of the chapter and outline important topics.

·         Anticipating the Chapter sections are expanded and prominently displayed in an opening spread to help provide structure for the chapter.

·         Revisit the Classroom Challenge. Each chapter concludes with a return to the chapter opening Classroom Challenge section that encourages students to monitor their learning of key concepts in relation to the development of the teacher and student scenarios.

·         Chapter Review. Each chapter closes with a review section that is presented in a question and answer format so that students can revisit chapter materials and assess their understanding of key topics.

The text include feature boxes that appear in each chapter, which enhance student understanding and include:

·         Engaging in Visual Literacy shows how to incorporate viewing with lessons in reading and writing. This feature provides examples and ideas for reading visual images, developing strategies for interpreting visual information, drawing and visualizing, and connecting visual and narrative information.

·         Engaging in Oral Language gives ideas for in-class activities, assessments, and lessons that connect students’ use of oral language with the other language arts.

·         Exploring Children’s Literature features are a resource for teachers, providing an annotated list of materials to use in the classroom, organized by theme and also by grade level. These features include books, journals, newsletters, magazines, Manga, dictionaries, and web-based resources for classroom teachers.

·         Exploring Diversity gives readers examples of how to consider factors of diversity, differentiate classroom activities, and help students access their language strengths as they relate to academic instruction and management.

·         Engaging in Assessment illustrates practical applications or brief “case studies” that build on and enhance each chapter’s coverage of assessment.

·         Exploring Technology provides readers with information about assistive and instructional technologies that can be employed with all students.

Engaging in the Language Arts: Exploring the Power of Language, written by distinguished authors Donna Ogle and Jim Beers, brings the language arts to life for teachers through a focus on contemporary communication and visual literacy, coupled with varied genre and electronic resources. The guide unique in that it is all about helping teachers ensure that students learn to use language to communicate with others in our increasingly culturally and linguistically diverse society–and to draw upon a great language resource in their classrooms to do this: the language power of their students themselves.

In this innovative text, distinguished authors Donna Ogle and Jim Beers bring language arts to life for teachers through a focus on contemporary communication and visual literacy, coupled with varied genre and electronic resources. This book focuses on helping teachers ensure that students learn to use language to communicate with others effectively in our increasingly culturally and linguistically diverse society —a nd to draw upon the greatest resource at their disposal to do this: the language power of their students themselves. 

Unlike any other book on the market, Engaging in the Language Arts offers readers a firsthand look at the language challenges teachers face in today’s classrooms, how to identify language possibilities, and how to make optimal use of these possibilities in their own classrooms.

The new second edition improves upon the well-lauded first edition in a number of ways, including:

• Key Teaching Strategy with rubrics appears in all of the instructional chapters and present an effective language arts strategy that can be used in the classroom with a corresponding rubric to help teachers evaluate their own success in teaching with the strategies. Examples include Language Experience, DR-TA, K-W-L, Shared Writing, and more.
•   The new common core standards being implemented across the US are included and highlighted.
•   The newly revised NCTE/IRA standards are included and referenced throughout the book.
•   Sections on Children Who Struggle are included in all instructional chapters.
•   Exploring Technology boxes, found in all chapters, include useful URLs that teachers can use in the classroom or to help them find meaningful content, or that they can use with student who struggle .
•   Marginal A+RISE® Teaching Strategies align with relevant concepts in the main body of the text and give teachers in grades K-12 quick, research-based strategies to get to the “how” of targeting their instruction and making content accessible for all students, including English language learners.

Additional information