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In her third book, Sometimes I Can Be Anything, Karen Gallas explores young children’s experience and understanding of gender, race, and power as revealed by the interactions within her first and second grade classroom. Presenting classroom research conducted over a four-year period, this experienced teacher-researcher focuses on the ways in which children collectively develop their social world. To bring that world to life, the author presents the voices and actions of specific children. The reader will meet the "bad boys," Tony and Tom; Josie, a "tom boy"; "beautiful" Dierdre; Latia and Alexis, "proud and taking no risks"; and Rachel, a "silent girl." Because Gallas watches the same children for several years, she uncovers classroom dynamics that remain obscure in most studies of teaching and learning. For example, she has seen the effects of physical beauty on a child’s behaviour, has noted how some children play with the idea of being the other sex, and has tracked the alliances of silent girls. This provocative book will enable the reader to look again with new eyes at his or her own classroom.
Written by members of one of the best-known and longest-standing teacher study groups, this compelling collection of essays explores the intersection of thought, language, and culture as revealed in classroom discourse. Focusing on classroom issues, this insightful volume: Shows teachers how to make reflection play a key role in their teaching and planning and how to translate research into improved teaching and learning in the classroom. Includes research with diverse groups of students in a variety of settings, including pre–K, elementary school, high school, and special education classrooms. Features a chapter on the evolution of the renowned Brookline Teacher Researcher Seminar. Descri...
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One of the most important ways to scaffold a successful transition from high school to college is to teach real-world, gate-opening writing genres, such as college admission essays. This book describes a writing workshop for ethnically and linguistically diverse high school students, where students receive instruction on specific genre features of the college admission essay. The authors present both the theoretical grounding and the concrete strategies teachers crave, including an outline of specific workshop lessons, teaching calendars, and curricular suggestions. This text encourages secondary teachers to think of writing as a vital tool for all students to succeed academically and profes...
This book brings literacy research and culturally relevant pedagogy together to offer a comprehensive vision of what socially just teaching looks like in the secondary English classroom. The author, an experienced professional developer and teacher, provides a powerful framework for analyzing classroom instruction with regard to ideals of stance, relevance, access, identity, and agency. Chapters provide models that have worked in real classrooms, including a model for developing units of study in social justice. The final chapter addresses how educaitonal leaders can create conditions for socially just teaching and learning in today's diverse schools. This book features: a focus on the challenges teachers are likely to face, particularly in schools with struggling, disengaged students; strategies for responding to critical moments in the classroom; lesson plans and vignettes from urban schools; and leadership principles for putting socially just teaching into action.
This text provides an innovative new framework for the formative and holistic assessment of students' digital writing. It also addresses the rapid evolution of writing assessment tools, analyzing the research in clear terms for both techno-phobic and techno-savvy teachers. The author critiques computer automated scoring of student writing, for example, but also considers the possibilities and potential of the future of technology assisted assessments.
Building on the groundbreaking research of the MacArthur Foundation's Digital Media and Learning initiative, this book crosses the divide between digital literacies and traditional print culture to engage a generation of students who can read with a book in one hand and a mouse in the other. Reading in a Participatory Culture tells the story of an innovative experiment that brought together playwright and director Ricardo Pitts-Wiley, Melville scholar Wyn Kelley, and new media scholar Henry Jenkins to develop an exciting new curriculum to reshape the middle- and high-school English language arts classroom. This book offers highlights from the resources developed for teaching Herman Melvilles Moby-Dick and outlines basic principles of design, implementation, and assessment that can be applied to any text.
This powerful book demonstrates how culturally responsive teaching can make learning come alive. Drawing on his experience as a fifth-grade teacher in a multiethnic school where children spoke over 14 different home languages, the author reveals how he created a language arts curriculum from the students’ own rich cultural resources, narratives, and identities. Illustrating the challenges and possibilities of teaching and learning in a large urban school, this book: Documents how a culturally engaged pedagogy improved student achievement and increased standardized test scores.Examines the literacy practices of children from immigrant, migrant, and refugee backgrounds, and includes powerful...
In this age of standardization, many English teachers are unsure about how to incorporate creative writing and thinking into their classroom. In a fresh new voice, Luke Reynolds emphasizes that “creativity in our lives as teachers and in the lives of our students is one of our most vital needs in the 21st century.” Based on his own journey as an English teacher, A Call to Creativity is a practical guide that shows teachers how they can encourage and support students’ creativity in the English/language arts classroom. The book offers both the inspiration and practical steps teachers need to engage their students through a variety of hands-on projects and worksheets that can be used imme...
The student projects presented in this book demonstrate a powerful approach to teaching writing, one that requires no special equipment or resources and can be adapted for students of any age. The key is getting students involved in action research and in writing about issues that are important to them and their communities. Written by public school teachers, these chapters describe projects covering a variety of issues, including avoiding teenage health risks, preserving oral histories, fighting racism, investigating environmental hazards, decreasing instances of teen pregnancy, and much more. Based on a process-model of writing instruction, these projects will show teachers how to engage their students while also teaching the basic skills that appear in educational standards and assessment frameworks.