Language Arts Curriculum Research Articles

“I Must Be Emerald and Keep My Color”: Ancient Roman Stoicism in the Middle School Classroom

In this essay, Leah Guenther, a middle school teacher on Chicago's South Side, discusses her practice of the ancient philosophy of Stoicism in her classroom, arguing that this misunderstood philosophy with roots in Ancient Greece and Rome has application in today's complicated educational terrain. She explains how she used Stoicism first to improve her own sense of tranquility and then how she used it to add a behavioral awareness component to a rigorous, standards-based English language arts curriculum.

UNTANGLING BINARIES: WHERE CANADA SITS IN THE “21st CENTURY DEBATE”

This article examines the extent to which the competencies of the 21st century learner are reflected in the learning outcomes within the English language arts curriculum standards documents for the Canadian provinces. Manifest summative content analysis was used to code learning outcomes in accordance with themes derived from the competencies of 21st century learners. For all provinces, there were few learning outcomes that required students to use digital resources to access information or create knowledge / solutions; there were no learning outcomes related to competencies in the context of core subjects or using social media to communicate and learn. Espoused learning pedagogies need to be galvanized into English language arts curriculum standards that are consistent with 21st century and digital literacy learning competencies.

Aspects of categorizing the content in the Korean Language Arts Curriculum and Implications for improvement

Aspects of categorizing the content in the Korean Language Arts Curriculum and Implications for improvement

Comparative Study on Language Arts Curriculum for Kindergarten and First Grade in the United States(CCSS) and Korea based on Continuity

Comparative Study on Language Arts Curriculum for Kindergarten and First Grade in the United States(CCSS) and Korea based on Continuity

“I'm Not Teaching English, I'm Teaching Something Else!”: How New Teachers Create Curriculum Under Mandates of Educational Reform

This study presents how beginning teachers create and teach an English Language Arts (ELA) curriculum in urban schools in the context of an educational reform movement driven by mandates such as Common Core State Standards (CCSS), high stakes tests, and prescribed curricula. They serve in schools with each using unique and individual curricula due to frequent administrative turnover and reorganization. Through the use of participants' classroom writings, interviews, and records of their classroom teaching, this study presents that the participants are neither teaching the content they wish, nor able to use pedagogies they see as effective. They experience confusion about the nature of the curricula imposed on them which differs significantly from their understanding of the ELA curriculum. The curricula they teach has little to do with either personal understandings of ELA, or how it is presented it in their educational coursework.

Unpacking disability-related curriculum in the Language Arts classroom

PurposeThe purpose of this paper was to understand what disability-related curriculum (DRC) looked like in the middle school Language Arts classroom. DRC refers to any curricular material and related pedagogical approach intended to address students’ understanding of disability. The authors drew on the experiences of three in-service middle school Language Arts teachers to understand what disability-related texts they selected, and why they chose to incorporate DRC into their classrooms.Design/methods/approachThe authors used a qualitative, exploratory multi-case design to understand the what and why underlying three middle school language arts teachers’ use of DRC.FindingsFindings from this study revealed that teachers leveraged DRC to broaden students’ understanding of diversity, increase empathy and provide exposure to disabilities; teachers gathered resources both online and within existing curriculum; and DRC varied in curricular and pedagogical structure.Research limitationsThe results of this study are exploratory. Although the aforementioned findings are promising, they are limited, due to the small sample size and relatively homogeneous participant demographics. Additional research that incorporates a larger and more diverse sample of participants would serve to broaden, or potentially confirm, the results of this study.Practical implicationsThe results of this study provide insight into current practice around DRC while illustrating some of the limitations that teachers may encounter when integrating this practice.Originality/valueWhile Language Arts curriculum often explores diversity in relation to race or class, it rarely focuses a lens on disability. This study fills a void in current research by providing empirical data on how educators approach the design and implementation of disability programming in their respective classrooms.

How Can Digital Personal(ized) Books Enrich the Language Arts Curriculum?

AbstractDigital personal(ized) books are a relatively recent addition to the rich repertoire of literacy resources available to pre‐K and elementary school teachers. This article summarizes the key ways in which personal(ized) books can enrich the language arts curriculum, drawing on a series of empirically based examples. The value of personalization in the digital stories is explained theoretically using the framework of five As: autonomy, authorship, authenticity, attachment, and aesthetics. The five As apply to personal(ized) stories created for, or by, young students and are used to generate some practical suggestions for future use of touchscreens in the classroom.

Tailoring Multicomponent Writing Interventions: Effects of Coupling Self-Regulation and Transcription Training

Writing proficiency is heavily based on acquisition and development of self-regulation and transcription skills. The present study examined the effects of combining transcription training with a self-regulation intervention (self-regulated strategy development [SRSD]) in Grade 2 (ages 7–8). Forty-three students receiving self-regulation plus transcription (SRSD+TR) intervention were compared with 37 students receiving a self-regulation only (SRSD only) intervention and 39 students receiving the standard language arts curriculum. Compared with control instruction, SRSD instruction—with or without transcription training—resulted in more complex plans; longer, better, and more complete stories; and the effects transferred to story written recall. Transcription training produced an incremental effect on students’ composing skills. In particular, the SRSD+TR intervention increased handwriting fluency, spelling accuracy for inconsistent words, planning and story completeness, writing fluency, clause length, and burst length. Compared with the SRSD-only intervention, the SRSD+TR intervention was particularly effective in raising the writing quality of poorer writers. This pattern of findings suggests that students benefit from writing instruction coupling self-regulation and transcription training from very early on. This seems to be a promising instructional approach not only to ameliorate all students’ writing ability and prevent future writing problems but also to minimize struggling writers’ difficulties and support them in mastering writing.

Teaching Trans*: Transparent as a Strategy in English Language Arts Classrooms

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how to incorporate a popular television series about being trans*gender into the secondary English Language Arts curriculum. The authors conduct a series of two-hour interviews with the creative and writing teams of the popular television show, Transparent, and examine how to incorporate this material in the English Language Arts classroom along with their combined 16 years of teaching experience. The paper discusses how to incorporate fuse writing assignments and literature activities with adolescents in order to educate young adults about the experiences of being trans*gender as well transform teaching practices as they relate to trans* students. As the population of trans*gender students continues to increase, the implications for this research cannot be overstated. The paper concludes with recommendations for how ELA teachers can address issues of gender and sexuality in their secondary classrooms.

Designing, Creating and Instituting a Korean Language Arts Curriculum for the IB School Program: Focusing a Local International School

Designing, Creating and Instituting a Korean Language Arts Curriculum for the IB School Program: Focusing a Local International School

Aspects of setting the content elements in the Korean Language Arts Curriculum

Aspects of setting the content elements in the Korean Language Arts Curriculum

Disciplinary Crisis and Curriculum Repositioning: A Case Study on the Sustainable Development of English Departments in China

The unprecedented expansion of English as a Lingua Franca has largely shaped the state of English language education worldwide, particularly in Asian countries where a number of countries used to be British colonies. With English being spoken as a second or foreign language in almost all Asian countries and required as an essential skill for nearly every profession, English majors, who in the past possessed the competitiveness of being proficient English users, are rapidly losing their advantages. English departments are criticized for developing graduates who can merely use English as a tool but lack critical, independent and innovative thinking skills. This phenomenon, significantly evident in China, is mainly caused by the outdated design of national curriculum for English majors. The present research takes the form of a case study in a Chinese university English department. Classroom observation and in-depth interviews are employed to investigate the problems of and solutions to the current curriculum. Participants believe that excessive language training has led to the weakening of English Language and Literature as an academic discipline and that a return to the humanities-oriented approach for future development of English departments should be adopted. A language plus liberal arts curriculum model is proposed and relevant issues regarding disciplinary construction are discussed. It is hoped that research questions in this study can be further explored with a larger sample elsewhere in China and that the findings could shed some light on the development of English departments in other Asian countries.

Web 2.0 Technologies and Parent Involvement of ELL Students: An Ecological Perspective

This study explores how ELL students’ parents participated in a blog-mediated English language arts curriculum in a second grade classroom at a U.S. urban school, and how they supported their children’s learning of school-based writing. Adopting ecological perspectives on technological affordances, this study views digital literacy as discursive practices that are shaped by one’s social, cultural, and political access, as well as material access. The findings indicate that parents used blogging to support their children’s academic and social goals, bringing expanded audiences and meaningful purposes to school writing. However, their linguistic and cultural capital related to Web 2.0 technologies generated different levels of participation and affordances. The study contends that parental involvement through Web 2.0 technologies needs to be critically examined, in consideration of discursive factors operating in the contexts in which those technologies are used.

A Study on the Appropriateness of the “Curriculum Goals and Contents” of Reading in 2011 Chinese Language Arts Curriculum

A Study on the Appropriateness of the “Curriculum Goals and Contents” of Reading in 2011 Chinese Language Arts Curriculum

Popular Culture goes to school in Hong Kong: a Language Arts curriculum on revolutionary road?

English teaching and learning has taken an interesting shift in Hong Kong schools with the implementation of the New Senior Secondary (NSS) curriculum under the ‘334’ education reform. Situating the paper within the broader considerations of the intersection of Cultural Studies and English teaching, this paper examines the challenges and prospects of teaching the new Language Arts elective called Learning English through Popular Culture module. It is argued that while the module endeavours to connect and motivate Hong Kong students to learn English through popular culture materials, the official curriculum and schemes of work, however, narrowly articulate the teaching of popular culture texts conceived as ‘text-types’. Such a formulaic approach to using popular culture in the classroom is limiting and locks students into a procedural way of ‘thinking’ and ‘doing’ popular cultural texts. The paper concludes by offering some ways forward that might deliver what is otherwise a revolutionary and innovative curriculum. Beyond the specific case of Hong Kong, the curriculum challenge discussed is instructive for other education systems and curriculum scholars looking to develop new pedagogies from the intersecting disciplines of Cultural Studies and English teaching.

중국 2011 개정 국어과 교육과정 쓰기 영역 ‘교육과정 목표와 내용’의 적합성 평가 연구

중국 2011 개정 국어과 교육과정 쓰기 영역 ‘교육과정 목표와 내용’의 적합성 평가 연구

An international comparative study on national language arts curriculum for young children: New Zealand, the United States, England, Australia, and South Korea

An international comparative study on national language arts curriculum for young children: New Zealand, the United States, England, Australia, and South Korea

It’s Elementary: Social Skills Boost Academics

It’s Elementary: Social Skills Boost Academics

The Histories and Mysteries of Grammar Instruction

The reemergence of grammar instruction in the Common Core State Standards has likely left teachers confused. On the one hand, they have been told repeatedly that grammar instruction does not improve student outcomes, and can, in fact, be “harmful” to students. However, on the other hand, many Anglophone countries, including the United States, have re-introduced grammar instruction as an important component of the English language arts curriculum. The purpose of this paper is to clarify some of the controversies around grammar instruction by beginning with a brief historical review. Following, we offer teachers various pedagogical suggestions to enable them to address grammar in an engaging, meaningful fashion, as opposed to the isolated, decontexualized activities that have traditionally plagued grammar instruction.

TRANSLATE

AbstractThis teaching tip shares a research‐based instructional model that uses translation to improve the English reading comprehension of English Learners. Within this instruction, English learners work collaboratively in small groups and use translation to facilitate understandings of their required English language arts curriculum. Students are taught to identify key excerpts and to use selected cognitive strategies to facilitate translation and comprehension. After students create translated texts, they compare and evaluate their translations, and then summarize their newfound understandings. The three main lesson components are described and examples and instructional resources are provided to help educators implement the model within their own teaching. We also provide suggestions of productive teacher moves for teachers who do speak students’ native languages.