Language Arts Classroom Research Articles

Classroom Behavior and Learning Environment Differences Between Resilient and Nonresilient..

In education, conceptual work on resilience has recently gained recognition as an important framework from which we can understand why some students become successful in school, whereas similar students from the same disadvantaged family backgrounds and neighborhoods have not been successful in school. The purpose of this study was to compare the classroom instruction and learning environment of resilient and nonresilient students in elementary schools consisting of predominantly minority students. The participants were 4th- and 5th-grade students and their teachers. Near the end of the school year, all the 4th- and 5th-grade students from 3 elementary schools located in a major metropolitan area in the south central region of the United States completed the My Class learning environment survey. Trained observers also systematically observed the resilient and nonresilient students identified by teachers during regular reading classes, language classes, or both. The results from this study indicate that resilient elementary school students perceive a more positive instructional learning environment and they are more satisfied with their reading and language arts classrooms than nonresilient students. In addition, nonresilient students indicated that they have more difficulty in their classwork than both average students and resilient students. The observational results revealed that resilient students spent significantly more time interacting with teachers for instructional purposes, whereas nonresilient students spent more time interacting with other students for social or personal purposes. Resilient students were also observed watching or listening significantly more often than nonresilient students, whereas nonresilient students were observed more often not attending to task. The percentage of time that resilient students were on task was much higher than that for nonresilient students.

Speaking My Mind: Let’s Keep Language in the Language Arts Classroom

Speaking My Mind: Let’s Keep Language in the Language Arts Classroom

Coming To Terms: Attitude

Examines the origin of the term “attitude,” and how its meaning has changed over the centuries. Discusses theoretical definitions of the term by I. A. Richards and by Kenneth Burke. Discusses its role in the learning process, and how an explicit attention to attitude in the language-arts classroom might help students become better readers and writers.

When the Mockingbird Becomes an Albatross: Reading and Resistance in the Language Arts Classroom

Describes the discomfort experienced by students and teacher as they explored how blackness is portrayed and understood in “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Grapples with fundamental pedagogical questions: how to talk about race with a diverse group of students and how to examine victimization and oppression. Suggests tandem teaching with M. Taylor’s "Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry.”

When the Mockingbird Becomes an Albatross: Reading and Resistance in the Language Arts Classroom

would teach a grade eleven English class. Should it be that highly contested work from the traditional North American literary canon, To Kill A Mockingbird, or should I search for a comparable work by a black writer that examined the multiple and complex, tragic, and absurd interactions of blacks and whites living under Jim Crow? While I searched, I began to teach that grade eleven class, an outspoken and articulate group of 32, including nine of African ancestry, ten of east and south Asian origin, and thirteen of European, predominantly Portuguese, background. Determining that my department had taken considerable effort to ensure that writers of colour were rea-

Censoring Girls' Choices: Continued Gender Bias in English Language Arts Classrooms

A survey and a summer literature group reveal gender bias. he wanted to make a difference in the world... but she followed her heart and married, had children, and passed away happily. This statement by a middle school student captures succinctly the conflicting messages about female roles that our culture and our schools give young people. Writing about Winnie Foster in Tuck Everlasting (Babbitt 1975), this middle school youngster expresses his admiration of Winnie's decision to sacrifice her own ambitions, to eschew the opportunity for professional or societal achievement for the role of wife and mother. Though parents and educators frequently profess that they encourage young females to aspire to careers and lives in the public sphere, considerable evidence remains that American classrooms convey the weighty expectation that girls accept as their preeminent destiny, their first and foremost role in life, the mantle of nurturer and caregiver. Girls are expected to sacrifice their interests, their fair share of teacher attention, and their right to a curriculum that awards their interests and talent on a parity with those of boys. Moreover, girls are expected to do so quietly and without protest. Myra and David Sadker in Failing at Fairness: How America's Schools Cheat Girls (1994) document repeated patterns of gender discrimination. They warn of the ultimate consequences: Sexist lessons transform girls into second-class students. These same lessons resurface at work, where women are listened to less, promoted less, and paid less. Only when their silence is broken in the classroom will women be heard in the board room (196). The Sadkers' compilation of data from kindergarten through post-graduate classrooms is disheartening. The reader is left wondering: after three decades of rhetoric, Title IX, and an active women's movement, has anything really changed?

Censoring Girls’ Choices: Continued Gender Bias in English Language Arts Classrooms

Questions the nexus of girls development, gendered practices in classrooms, and the nature of the English curriculum. Surveys participants in a summer literature discussion group and nearly 1,000 young adolescents. Discusses devaluing girls intelligence; privileging male characteristics; understanding girls silence; observing realities, opting for silence; making a difference in the world; and what teachers can do.

Video Production in the English Language Arts Classroom

must challenge students to analyze critically the texts they view ... [and help them] learn to employ visual media as another powerful means of communication (1996, 1-2). Support for incorporating non-traditional media into the English language arts curriculum also comes from lay persons like Maureen Smith, who covers education for The Minneapolis Star-Tribune. Having observed a high school video production class, she was struck by the way this technology helped students move away from rote learning towards a constructivist classroom, in which students, guided by teachers, explore and assemble the raw materials of skill and

Video Production in the English Language Arts Classroom

Argues that teaching video production techniques in high-school English classes achieves the goals of language arts proficiency, media literacy, and student self-realization. Discusses preproduction; information search; script and storyboard; writing activities; oral communication activities; teamwork; aesthetic judgment; media literacy; affective goals; and vocational opportunities. Describes teaching production techniques to at-risk urban high school students.

The Care and Feeding of the Creative Spirit: Teaching Alice Walker’s "In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens"

Asserts that Alice Walker is one contemporary writer whose voice deserves to be heard in secondary English language arts classrooms. Suggests a number of class activities (dealing with imagery, organization, literary techniques, and writing and identity) for Walker’s essay “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens.”

The Net Effect: Telecommunications in English Language Arts Classrooms

The Net Effect: Telecommunications in English Language Arts Classrooms

Resources and Reviews: The Net Effect: Telecommunications in English Language Arts Classrooms

Available in print issue only.

Integrated Word Study: Spelling, Grammar, and Meaning in the Language Arts Classroom

Most upper elementary-aged readers are beyond phonics, but they can still benefit from learning about how words work.

An Exploratory Study of Mainstreamed Seventh Graders' Perceptions of an Inclusive Approach to Instruction

We conducted a case study of 11 seventhgrade students with mild disabilities who were included in a general language arts classroom. We interviewed students, administered individual reading inventories, and observed lessons. Based on this information, we generated student profiles that provided a framework for planning a unit on the novel the outsiders. During the teaching of the novel, we served as participant observers. At the end of the semester, we administered a reading assessment and conducted follow-up interviews. Results indicated that all 11 students were more engaged in classroom activities during the unit, and 8 of the 11 demonstrated more consistent reading strategies. Results underscore the complexity of inclusion and suggest that some of these students may need more intensive, one-on-one intervention.

Using CD-ROMs in the Language Arts Classroom

using CD-ROMs in the Language Arts Classroom

Approaching Race and Gender Issues in the Context of the Language Arts Classroom

offer many possibilities for integrating race and gender issues into the fabric of the English language arts classroom so that teachers can find a way to begin dealing with these ever-present, extremely important aspects of life and literature. If these issues are never raised, if students are never encouraged to question the assumptions behind gender and race portrayals, the danger seems to be that students will accept the portrayal of characters as the way people really are. RAISING THE ISSUES AND BEGINNING THE CONVERSATIONS 1. Sentence Starters. Ask stu-

Teaching Ideas: Approaching Race and Gender Issues in the Context of the Language Arts Classroom

Teaching Ideas: Approaching Race and Gender Issues in the Context of the Language Arts Classroom

When the Shoe Won’t Fit: Sizing Up Teachers’ Concerns About and Responses to Diversity in the Language Arts Classroom

When the Shoe Won’t Fit: Sizing Up Teachers’ Concerns About and Responses to Diversity in the Language Arts Classroom

Middle Ground: Grammar Tiles: An Opportunity for Manipulatives in the Language Arts Classroom. Coloring Outside the Lines: Creating a Middle School Publications Program

Middle Ground: Grammar Tiles: An Opportunity for Manipulatives in the Language Arts Classroom. Coloring Outside the Lines: Creating a Middle School Publications Program

African Literature in the Secondary English Language Arts Classroom

cluding stanza to Why the Old Woman Limps by the Malawian poet Lupenga Mphande (1990, 153) captures the physical hardships that many Ghanaians and other Africans face. It is the Africa we know from television, newspapers, magazines, and those unsolicited requests for money to save starving children. It is the Africa of poverty, war, tribal conflicts, and coups. It is Rwanda; it is South Africa; it is Somalia.