Reimagining Language Instruction


Book Description

Use this unique volume to transform the learning and teaching of language so that all students are empowered to succeed. This book offers insight into how to teach language--a core component of developing skilled readers and writers across all content areas--in ways that value the rich and diverse language assets students bring to the classroom. The authors provide guidance to help K-12 teachers move beyond current approaches to teaching language in the classroom to support equitable student outcomes in both linguistically diverse and linguistically homogeneous classrooms. The text provides a step-by-step process to uncover conceptions of language and its instruction that undercut opportunities to learn. Readers will gain new strategies for teaching the language of school tasks while integrating students' distinctive language experiences as resources for learning. School leaders will learn how to implement a schoolwide exploration into teaching language that promotes equity, all while building collaboration among administrators, teachers, and students. Book Features: Promotes linguistic equity by providing teaching strategies and whole-school practices critical for optimizing student success and access to instruction, assessment, and reading. Provides classroom examples that show readers how to engage in the core practices described in the book across developmental levels and academic disciplines. Includes reader-friendly and user-supportive features, such as text boxes that describe the principles that undergird the approaches. Offers classroom vignettes depicting common instructional challenges and tensions to show how teachers can engage in equitable, evidence-based practices for student success. Uses reflection questions to help readers track their developing understanding of ideas and to reflect on their own values and teaching goals.




Transforming Education


Book Description

Working away from trends in government policy, this book takes a future-oriented re-imagining of schools with a focus on four innate human capacities: collaboration, critical reflection, communication and creativity. Miranda Jefferson and Michael Anderson draw together examples of practice from around the world to provide a reimagining of education. They show how our schools can be sustainably transformed to be places of support, challenge and joy in learning, responsive to students' needs and the needs in our workplaces and wider society. Readers are empowered to use knowledge and experience to create the reality they would like to see in their school, building engaged, innovative and active learning, pedagogy curriculum and leadership. Key ideas are summarised at the end of each chapter along with an extensive referencing and bibliography, and a supporting glossary.




Reimagining Writing Assessment


Book Description

"This book is for teachers who want to honor their students' experiences as writers and readers-and their own." -Maja Wilson In Reimagining Writing Assessment,Maja Wilson shows us that by replacing the scales embedded in rubrics with new tools--an array of interpretive lenses designed to observe and describe growth-we can create healthier readers and writers who are more proficient in the long run and more motivated to read and write. She reminds us that "assess" in its Latin derivation means "sit beside." In this book she models new ways of "sitting beside," listening to student stories of the writing, respecting the writer's intentions, and telling stories of our reading. Taking the form of conversations, Maja's new definition of writing assessment is not an outcome or final evaluation: it is an ongoing process in which writers and readers make meaning from texts and attempts, from intentions and effects. In this process, teachers come to understand how to teach and talk with each student about writing differently. And students learn to understand and take control of their own development as decision-makers.







Teaching for Joy and Justice


Book Description

Teaching for Joy and Justice is the much-anticipated sequel to Linda Christensen's bestselling Reading, Writing, and Rising Up. Christensen is recognized as one of the country's finest teachers. Her latest book shows why. Through story upon story, Christensen demonstrates how she draws on students' lives and the world to teach poetry, essay, narrative, and critical literacy skills. Teaching for Joy and Justice reveals what happens when a teacher treats all students as intellectuals, instead of intellectually challenged. Part autobiography, part curriculum guide, part critique of today's numbing standardized mandates, this book sings with hope -- born of Christensen's more than 30 years as a classroom teacher, language arts specialist, and teacher educator. Practical, inspirational, passionate: this is a must-have book for every language arts teacher, whether veteran or novice. In fact, Teaching for Joy and Justice is a must-have book for anyone who wants concrete examples of what it really means to teach for social justice.







Heritage Language Teaching


Book Description

This innovative, timely text introduces the theory, research, and classroom application of critical approaches to the teaching of minoritized heritage learners, foregrounding sociopolitical concerns in language education. Beaudrie and Loza open with a global analysis, and expert contributors connect a focus on speakers of Spanish as a heritage language in the United States to broad issues in heritage language education in other contexts – offering an overview of key concepts and theoretical issues, practical pedagogical guidance, and field-advancing suggestions for research projects. This is an invaluable resource for advanced students and scholars of applied linguistics and education, as well as language program administrators.




(Re)Imagining Content-Area Literacy Instruction


Book Description

Today’s teachers need to prepare students for a world that places increasingly higher literacy demands on its citizens. In this timely book, the authors explore content-area literacy and instruction in English, music, science, mathematics, social studies, visual arts, technology, and theatre. Each of the chapters has been written by teacher educators who are experts in their discipline. Their key recommendations reflect the aims and instructional frameworks unique to content-area learning. This resource focuses on how literacy specialists and content-area educators can combine their talents to teach all readers and writers in the middle and secondary school classroom. The text features vignettes from classroom practice with visuals to demonstrate, for example, how we read a painting or hear the discourse of a song. Additional contributors: Marta Adair, Diane L. Asay, Sharon R. Gray, Sirpa Grierson, Scott Hendrickson, Steven L. Shumway, Geoffrey A. Wright Roni Jo Draperis an associate professor in the Department of Teacher Education in the David O. McKay School of Education.Paul Broomheadis associate professor and coordinator of the Music Education Division in the School of Music.Amy Petersen Jensenis an associate professor in the College of Fine Arts and Communications.Jeffery D. Nokesis an assistant professor in the History Department.Daniel Siebertis an associate professor in the Department of Mathematics Education. All editors are at Brigham Young University, Utah. “This is a must-read for educators engaged in professional development efforts aimed at improving students’ learning across the content areas. The editors and chapter authors are to be applauded for taking up the call to place content-area literacy squarely in the disciplines.” —From the Foreword byThomas W. Bean, University of Nevada, Las Vegas “A great tool for developing disciplinary literacy.” —Douglas Fisher, San Diego State University “Draper and her colleagues successfully convey the complex and subject-specific nature of effective content area literacy instruction. This book reminds us in refreshing ways that there is more to effective reading than decoding and prior knowledge.” —George G. Hruby, Executive Director, Collaborative Center for Literacy Development, University of Kentucky “From its grounding in inquiry and collaboration, to its contemporary views of literacy and text, this book is an important response to recent calls to redress century-old recommendations for teaching reading. It is exciting to recommend(Re)ImaginingContent-Area Literacy Instructionfor any course or in-service project with a focus on content-area literacy instruction.” —Kathleen Hinchman, Syracuse University, School of Education




Social Justice through Multilingual Education


Book Description

The principles for enabling children to become fully proficient multilinguals through schooling are well known. Even so, most indigenous/tribal, minority and marginalised children are not provided with appropriate mother-tongue-based multilingual education (MLE) that would enable them to succeed in school and society. In this book experts from around the world ask why this is, and show how it can be done. The book discusses general principles and challenges in depth and presents case studies from Canada and the USA, northern Europe, Peru, Africa, India, Nepal and elsewhere in Asia. Analysis by leading scholars in the field shows the importance of building on local experience. Sharing local solutions globally can lead to better theory, and to action for more social justice and equality through education.




Rethinking Bilingual Education


Book Description

In this collection of articles, teachers bring students' home languages into their classrooms-from powerful bilingual social justice curriculum to strategies for honoring students' languages in schools that do not have bilingual programs. Bilingual educators and advocates share how they work to keep equity at the center and build solidarity between diverse communities. Teachers and students speak to the tragedy of languages loss, but also about inspiring work to defend and expand bilingual programs. Book jacket.