Facilitating Middle Level Pre-Service Teachers’ Literacy Integration in Early Field Experiences

This study explored how pre-service teachers integrated literacy in middle level social studies. This study was conducted in the context of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and their focus on disciplinary literacy, the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP) Standards and their focus on rich clinical experiences, and concepts of interdisciplinary and integrated curriculum central to middle level philosophy (NMSA, 2010). Three pre-service teachers in their first extended field practicum took part in this collective case study (Yin, 2009). We identified two key findings. First, these pre-service teachers primarily integrated literacy in ways that were brief, teacher-directed, and sometimes optional for students. Second, and more promising, the pre-service teachers integrated more complex disciplinary literacy tasks when they made connections among literacy strategies, the content, and their students\u27 needs. These more complex literacy tasks often were developed through collaborative, structured conversations between each pre-service teacher and the university supervisor

Cultural Issues

This Grants Collection uses the grant-supported open course ESED 5234 from Georgia Southern University: http://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/esed5234-master/ This Grants Collection for Cultural Issues was created under a Round Four ALG Textbook Transformation Grant. Affordable Learning Georgia Grants Collections are intended to provide faculty with the frameworks to quickly implement or revise the same materials as a Textbook Transformation Grants team, along with the aims and lessons learned from project teams during the implementation process. Documents are in .pdf format, with a separate .docx (Word) version available for download. Each collection contains the following materials: Linked Syllabus Initial Proposal Final Reporthttps://oer.galileo.usg.edu/education-collections/1005/thumbnail.jp

Curriculum Integration: An Overview

Curriculum integration is a tenet of middle level education. This We Believe, the position paper of the Association for Middle Level Education, advocates for curriculum that is exploratory, relevant, integrative, and meaningful for young adolescents. Teachers can integrate curriculum across content areas by anchoring units of study in issues and themes that are determined along with students. Researchers have studied curriculum integration in different capacities, and further research can continue to explore the impact of this approach to curriculum

Changes in our Future

Letter from the Editors- Updates about the journa

Happy New Year!

Letter from the Editors- Updates about the journa

Reading Among Former English Language Learners: The Importance of the Teacher and the Possibilities for Text

This dissertation is a case study that explores how 8th grade former English language learners, or RFEP students, interacted with texts in their social studies class across a unit of study on World War II. This study is based on three assertions: we have a limited understanding of language and literacy among newly reclassified adolescent English language learners due to a shift in state language policy, examining students' interactions with texts in a secondary content classroom is a valuable perspective, and the decisions teachers make to meet the perceived needs of their students warrants examination. The primary source of data in this study was the text annotations students completed when reading the teacher adapted texts. Annotations included any underlining, circling, questioning or commenting on the texts. Annotations were analyzed for patterns across students and across texts. Analysis of texts for linguistic features and structures was completed using the Coh-Metrix (Graesser, McNamara & Kulikowich, 2011) text analysis tool. Analysis of teacher talk during whole class text annotations as well as interviews with teachers and students showed additional patterns. Three key findings emerged: the teacher is a designer or relevant, meaningful and comprehensible instruction, teacher modeling matters to RFEP students, the adapted texts were used as instructional tools to promote content learning. These findings suggest directions for future research and have implications for practice. A critical area for research is the selection and adaptation of content area texts. With the advent of the Common Core State Standards and their emphasis on primary source documents and complex texts, it is essential to explore which texts are used and how they are adapted to facilitate access to those texts. This study also indicates the possibility for the further use of text annotations as a primary source of data for research and to facilitate instructional decisions by the teacher

Preparing English Language Learners for Academic Writing: A Functional Linguistic Approach

In this presentation, we share a unit of lesson plans for teaching academic writing to middle school English language learners. Based on functional perspectives of language development and social practice theory, we illustrate how game-based activities can be structured to help ELLs move from less-literacy demanding, context-rich tasks to more literacy demanding, de-contextualized tasks in order to assist their development of academic vocabulary and understanding of theoretical concepts in writing such as audience and purposes. Implications for classroom structure and scaffolding for ELLs are discussed and demonstrated

Writing as Active Participation in STEM Discourses

The presenters advocate one way to address sometimes problematic relations between STEM experts and diverse public audiences. By incorporating an active participation heuristic into current STEM writing initiatives (beginning with middle school), they prepare experts to participate reciprocally with public audiences

Language for Science: Pre-Service Teachers Develop Science Concepts Through Language Study

An increasing focus on academic language across content areas, including science, prompted this study of the ways in which preservice teachers integrate academic language in middle grades science. Academic language is part of the discourse that students need for success in school, and it includes both what words are used and how those words are used. Three preservice teachers, all enrolled in an applied linguistics course for an English for Speakers of Other Languages endorsement, were part of this case study. Through content analysis, we explored how they incorporated academic language into middle grades science units on thermal energy, Newton’s laws of motion, and the classification of living things. Findings indicated that each preservice teacher selected language functions to complement and extend middle school students’ understanding of scientific content concepts. In other words, science concepts drove their integration of academic language and informed their evaluation of the success of their teaching those concepts

English Language Learners in Georgia: Describing a Ghost Population in the Shadows

This presentation provides quantitative and qualitative representations of growing Hispanic and Asian ELL populations in Georgia. The growth of Hispanic and Asian linguistic minority groups in Georgia has been sudden and rapid (Census Brief, 2001, 2011, 2002, 2012; Kochhar, Suro, & Tafoya, 2005; Passel, Cohn, & Lopez, 2011); (b) This rapid and sudden growth of Hispanic and Asian linguistic minorities has presented new challenges for educators in Georgia and the Southeast (Beck & Allexsaht-Snider, 2001; Beck & Stevenson, in press; Monroe, 2013); and, (c) Education policy makers and other education officials in Georgia have just begun to address these new challenges (Baudette, 2015; Kochhar, Suro, & Tafoya, 2005). This presentation begins to describe Hispanic and Asian ELL populations in Georgia using recent statistical and qualitative data representations. References Baudette, P. (2015). Mapping Trends in Georgia’s Student Population over the Past Ten Years. https://gosa.georgia.gov/mapping-trends-georgia%E2%80%99s-student-population-over-past-ten-years (Retrieved July 2015). Beck, S.A. & Allexsaht-Snider, M. (2001). Recent language education policy in Georgia: Appropriation, assimilation, and Americanization. In S. Wortham’s, E. Murillo, Jr., & T. Hamman (Eds.), Education in the new Latino diaspora: Policy and the politics of identity. Westport, CT: Ablex Press. Beck, Scott & Stevenson, Alma. (In press for publication in September 2015). Migrant Students Scaffolding and Writing their Own Stories: From Socio-Culturally Relevant Enabling Mentor Texts to Collaborative Student Narratives. Voices from the Middle(Special Issue on Motivation), 23(1), 59-67. Census Brief. (2002). The Asian population. Washington, DC: The US Census Bureau. Census Brief. (2012). The Asian population. Washington, DC: The US Census Bureau. Census Brief. (2001). The Hispanic population: Washington, DC: The US Census Bureau. Census Brief. (2011). The Hispanic population: Washington, DC: The US Census Bureau. Kochhar, R.; Suro, R.; & Tafoya, S. (2005). The new Latino South:The context and consequences of rapid population growth. Pew Hispanic Research Center: Washington, DC. Passel, J.S.; Cohn, D.; & Lopez, M.H. (2011). Hispanics account for more than half of nation’s growth in past decade. Pew Hispanic Research Center: Washington, D.C