Teaching Literature-Based Instructional Units: From Planning to Assessment provides an accessible roadmap to planning, designing, and implementing literature-based instructional units for the English Language arts (ELA) classroom. Understanding that unit plans are the building blocks of the ELA curriculum, Hansen and Vásquez outline the theoretical foundations and approaches behind teaching ELA and offer a framework to help readers make sound decisions about their content pedagogy. In so doing, this text offers research-based and straightforward guidance on planning instruction around key literary texts. Placing literature at the center of the ELA curriculum, the approaches in this book not only support students’ reading, writing, listening, speaking, and digital media skills, but will also motivate and inspire them. Part 1 addresses how to choose unit themes and texts, discusses the importance of having a rationale for choices made, and examines the practical, philosophical, and historical approaches to teaching literature. Part 2 provides step-by-step instructions for designing literature-based units of instruction by using backwards design. The text focuses on assessment before moving into how to scaffold and sequence lessons to meet learning objectives, and concludes with consideration given to teaching ELA in virtual environments. The wealth of activities, strategies, exercises, examples, and templates in this book make this text essential reading for instructors and pre-service teachers in ELA pedagogical methods courses and for practicing teachers of literature instruction.

A literature-based approach to building reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills.

This practical and engaging book will help you learn how to teach literature with an inquiry-based approach. Inquiry-based literature instruction is an effective method to facilitate student engagement, motivation, and understanding in middle and high school English Language Arts (ELA) classrooms. Easy-to-implement and adaptable for many types of texts, this method encourages students to make authentic connections between texts, their lives, and real-world issues. In this classroom-ready resource, Ruday and Caprino walk through this instructional approach to demonstrate how using essential questions and a variety of texts will engage students in thought-provoking inquiry and promote meaningful learning. This book features: Three inquiry-based units applicable for middle and high school ELA and English classrooms. A range of models of what inquiry-based literature instruction looks like in practice. A chapter on culturally responsive teaching and supporting English Language Learners (ELLs). Guides, templates, and resource lists to help you plan your own inquiry-based literature teaching. Throughout the book Ruday and Caprino share a wealth of insights and resources to support you when putting inquiry-based instruction into practice.

Teaching English by Design has become a classic resource for preservice teachers as well as in-service teachers who consider it their go-to guide to creating lessons and units organized around key concepts. In the Second Edition, Peter Smagorinsky updates the content for today's teachers with discussions of New Literacies, using technology in the classroom, LGBTQ issues, and an expansive new chapter on preparing for Beginning Teacher Performance Assessments. He also brings in a fresh new voice and outlook from Darren Rhym, a high school teacher in rural Georgia. Following a new chapter on "Teaching Stressed Students Under Stressful Circumstances," Peter and Darren collaborated to create a unit on Power and Race. Designed to help students develop agency in improving their lives and those of the people in their communities, this sample unit provides a practical framework for addressing the needs of low-SES students who rely on limited resources. Together with Peter's unique insight about students, how they learn, and the kinds of classrooms that support their achievement, Teaching English by Design, 2/e is more valuable and relevant than ever.

Using favorite picturebooks for her mini-lessons models, teacher Susan Lunsford shares 15 easy-to-do writing lessons. Mini-lessons include: Where do story ideas come from? Great First Lines, Exploring Settings, Painting Pictures with Words, Writing a Complete Story, and Great Endings. Her teacher-student dialogues make it all easy to replicate in your own classroom. Each mini-lessons includes follow-up strategies and activities and picturebook suggestions. Writing conference and management tips too! For use with Grades 1-3.

What is understanding and how does it differ from knowledge? How can we determine the big ideas worth understanding? Why is understanding an important teaching goal, and how do we know when students have attained it? How can we create a rigorous and engaging curriculum that focuses on understanding and leads to improved student performance in today's high-stakes, standards-based environment? Authors Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe answer these and many other questions in this second edition of Understanding by Design. Drawing on feedback from thousands of educators around the world who have used the UbD framework since its introduction in 1998, the authors have greatly revised and expanded their original work to guide educators across the K-16 spectrum in the design of curriculum, assessment, and instruction. With an improved UbD Template at its core, the book explains the rationale of backward design and explores in greater depth the meaning of such key ideas as essential questions and transfer tasks. Readers will learn why the familiar coverage- and activity-based approaches to curriculum design fall short, and how a focus on the six facets of understanding can enrich student learning. With an expanded array of practical strategies, tools, and examples from all subject areas, the book demonstrates how the research-based principles of Understanding by Design apply to district frameworks as well as to individual units of curriculum. Combining provocative ideas, thoughtful analysis, and tested approaches, this new edition of Understanding by Design offers teacher-designers a clear path to the creation of curriculum that ensures better learning and a more stimulating experience for students and teachers alike.

Understanding student and teacher motivation and developing strategies to foster motivation for students at all levels of performance are essential to effective teaching. This text is designed to help prospective and practicing teachers achieve these goals. Its premise is that current research and theory about motivation offer hope and possibilities for educators —teachers, parents, coaches, and administrators—to enhance motivation for achievement. The orientation draws primarily on social-cognitive perspectives that have generated much research relevant to classroom practice. Ideal for any course that is dedicated to, or includes coverage of, motivation and achievement, the text focuses on two key roles teachers play in supporting and cultivating motivation in the classroom: establishing the classroom structure and instruction that provides the environment for optimal motivation, engagement, and learning; and helping students develop the tools that will enable them to be self-regulated learners and develop their potential. Pedagogical features aid the understanding of concepts and the application to practice: Strategy boxes present guidelines and strategies for using the various concepts. Exhibit boxes include forms for different purposes (for example, goal setting), examples of teacher beliefs and practices, and samples of student work. Reflection boxes stimulate readers’ thinking about motivational issues inherent in the topics, their experiences, and their beliefs. A motivational toolbox at the end of each chapter helps readers identify important points to think about, lingering questions, strategies to use now, and strategies to develop in the future. NEW IN THE THIRD EDITION Updated research and new topics are added throughout as warranted by current inquiry in the field. Chapters are reorganized to provide more coherence and to account for new findings. New and updated material is included on issues of educational reform, standards for achievement, and high-stakes testing, and on achievement goal theory, especially regarding performance goals and the distinction between performance-approach and performance-avoidance goals as relevant to classroom practice.

This volume offers a unique glimpse into the teaching approaches and thinking of a wide range of well-known literacy researchers, and the lessons they have learned from their own teaching lives. The contributors teach in a variety of universities, programs, and settings. Each shares an approach he or she has used in a course, and introduces the syllabus for this course through personal reflections that give the reader a sense of the theories, prior experiences, and influential authors that have shaped their own thoughts and approaches. In addition to describing the nature of their students and the program in which the course is taught, many authors also share key issues with which they have grappled over the years while teaching their course; others discuss considerations that were relevant during the preparation of this particular syllabus or describe how it evolved in light of student input. The book is organized by areas within literacy education: reading; English/language arts; literature; emergent literacy; content-area literacy; literacy assessment and instruction; literacy and technology; and inquiries into literacy, theory, and classroom practice. It is accompanied by an interactive Web site: http://msit.gsu.edu/handbook. This online resource provides additional information about the authors' courses including complete syllabi, recommended readings, grading rubrics, and sample assignments. Readers are invited to respond and contribute their own syllabi and teaching experiences to the discourse generated by the volume.

This text for pre-service and in-service English education courses presents current methods of teaching literature to middle and high school students. The methods are based on social-constructivist/socio-cultural theories of literacy learning, and incorporate research on literary response conducted by the authors. Teaching Literature to Adolescents – a totally new text that draws on ideas from the best selling textbook, Teaching Literature in the Secondary School, by Beach and Marshall – reflects and builds on recent key developments in theory and practice in the field, including: the importance of providing students with a range of critical lenses for analyzing texts and interrogating the beliefs, attitudes, and ideological perspectives encountered in literature; organization of the literature curriculum around topics, themes, or issues; infusion of multicultural literature and emphasis on how writers portray race, class, and gender differences; use of drama as a tool for enhancing understanding of texts; employment of a range of different ways to write about literature; integration of critical analysis of film and media texts with the study of literature; blending of quality young adult literature into the curriculum; and attention to students who have difficulty succeeding in literature classes due to reading difficulties, disparities between school and home cultures, attitudes toward school/English, or lack of engagement with assigned texts or response activities. The interactive Web site contains recommended readings, resources, and activities; links to Web sites and PowerPoint presentations; and opportunities for readers to contribute teaching units to the Web site databases. Instructors and students in middle and high school English methods courses will appreciate the clear, engaging, useful integration of theory, methods, and pedagogical features offered in this text.