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Language Arts

• "I Know English so many, Mrs. Abbott": Reciprocal Discoveries in a Linguistically Diverse Classroom
  Describes a first-grade classroom to illustrate a classroom environment that supports second-language learners while drawing on linguistic diversity to enrich the language learning of all students. Discusses resources and routines; as well as risks and rewards both in a rich language arts curriculum as well as in the social environment.
• A Multicultural Approach for Empowerment in Language Arts Classrooms
  It is argued that the increasing linguistic and cultural diversity in public schools requires teachers to be more sensitive to how children maintain effective cross-cultural communication, and be aware of barriers that affect interaction in culturally diverse classrooms. Sociocultural factors that shape the perspectives of all students should be considered in language arts programs.
• An Alternative Approach for Language Arts and Social Studies Assessment
  This paper explores issues related to alternative assessment approaches in language arts and social studies classrooms. A rationale for a more comprehensive assessment approach within a democratic framework is developed, and ideas for constructing rubrics in language arts and social studies classrooms are presented.
• An Integrated Language Perspective in the Elementary School: An Action Approach. Third Edition
  This updated third edition is a handbook for teachers to bring the reflective inquiry emphasis of integrated curriculum theory to life in the elementary and middle school classroom. It takes an action approach to implement theory and practice in educating students for a democratic, multicultural society.
• Beyond "Multicultural Moments" (Middle Ground)
  Discusses how to teach students the values of "understanding, tolerance, caring, and respect," and to help them understand and appreciate cultures other than their own. Focuses on five levels: building a classroom library of multicultural literature; using "lit sets" (multiple copies of the same book) to promote multicultural understanding; the whole-class novel; interdisciplinary study; and beyond literature.
• Books That Invite Talk, Wonder, and Play
  Focusing on children's books identified as "notable" for their rich use of language, this book presents essays that discuss literary genres and literary language, responding to the language of Notable Books, and developing an appreciation for language diversity. The book also presents brief essays by well-known children's authors regarding their writing processes.
• Check Out the Real America: Many Hued, Many Tongued, and Many Storied
  Describes how a high school English teacher went looking for and found Mexican-, Filipino-, African-, European-, and Native-American Literature, in order to bring all her students' worlds and voices into the classroom. Argues that all students must be included in an education that socializes them to a multicultural rather than a monocultural America.
• Confessions of a Canon-Loving Multiculturalist. School Reform and the Language Arts Curriculum
  Bitter ideological battles exist over hegemonic control of classroom exchange in high school language arts classes. Discusses the debate over the selection of literature that students will read, noting the influence of the dominant culture, the resistance to inclusion of multicultural literature in these classrooms, and the importance of promoting a multicultural emphasis.
• Cultivating Hybrid Texts in Multicultural Classrooms: Promise and Challenge
  Explores the potential of hybridity for supporting critical pedagogies that seek to transform the knowledge, texts, and identities of the school curriculum. Draws on microanalyses of oral and written texts constructed by a Latina student perceived to be struggling academically.
• Developing Reading-Writing Connections: Strategies from "The Reading Teacher."
  Using literature in the classroom yields rewards. Literature for children is being recognized as increasingly important in children's literacy development.
• Effects of Language Arts Activities on Preservice Teachers' Opinions about Multiculturalism
  Examined the effects of reading children's literature about diversity and participating in related interactive activities on student teachers' opinions about multiculturalism. Intervention and control-group students heard lectures on multiculturalism.
• Exploring Culture through Children's Connections
  Shares one teacher's attempts to highlight diversity and children's cultures in authentic ways. Examines three children's connections to culture and their own cultural identities by looking at issues they explored across the school year (family, family and religion, and ethnicity).
• How to Choose the Best Multicultural Books
  This article presents information on 50 books recommended for teaching elementary students about various cultures, offering interviews with some of the most well-respected children's book authors and illustrators, pointers for choosing appropriate and accurate children's books, and lists of notable authors. (SM).
• How to Choose the Best Multicultural Books
  This article presents information on 50 books recommended for teaching elementary students about various cultures, offering interviews with some of the well-respected children's book authors and illustrators, pointers for choosing appropriate and accurate children's books, and lists of notable authors. (SM).
• Immersion and Submersion Classrooms: A Comparison of Instructional Practices in Language Arts
  Using the Communicative Orientation of Language Teaching (COLT) observation theme, this study compares the second-language-learning environments of elementary-level students of French in four submersion and four immersion classrooms in Montreal, Canada. Results indicate clear differences between the two environments.
• Multicultural Literature in the Classroom
  Discusses three recent books for educators that deal with the challenges of teaching literature in a diverse society; ways in which multicultural literature creates opportunities for both transformation and resistance; ways to use multiethnic literature in elementary and junior high classrooms; and multicultural perspectives in teaching literature. (SR).
• Multicultural Technology Integration: The Winds of Change Amid the Sands of Time
  This case study describes how a high school language arts teacher in a poor border community in southern New Mexico combined technology-based teaching strategies with multicultural elements to ensure learning and equitable access to technology for her minority students. Discusses bilingual and bicultural students, constructivist classrooms, and instructional flexibility.
• National Diffusion Network: Project Enrichment Exemplary Program
  The United States Department of Education recognizes and supports exemplary programs through the National Diffusion Network (NDN). Established in 1974, NDN is based on the belief that there are few problems encountered by schools that have not been solved successfully in some other location.
• Providing a Culturally Relevant Curriculum for Hispanic Children
  A culturally relevant curriculum lets Hispanic students learn from a familiar cultural base and connect new knowledge to their own experiences, thus empowering them to build on personal knowledge. Teachers must understand Hispanic culture to help students embrace the authentic information they receive.
• Reflections on Multicultural Language Practices across a District and within a School
  Describes the school climate, the building-level specifics, and some effective teaching strategies that make Western Hills Elementary School an appropriate and successful setting for the development of multicultural language practices. Discusses the partnership between the school district and the University of Colorado at Boulder, and the role this partnership plays in supporting the development of multicultural language practices.
• Salad Bars & Smorgasbords: The Management of Culture in Sweden & the United States
  Investigates multiculturalism and education in Sweden through historical accounts, national course plans and guidelines, current theory, discussions with scholars, classroom observations, and 23 interviews of late-secondary/early postsecondary teachers of civics and Swedish language arts. (EMS).
• Seeking Our Students in Literature: Teachers' Perspectives (The Research Connection)
  Presents results of a survey of Florida teachers of English/language arts regarding the teaching of literature, the literary canon, and multicultural literature. Suggests that teachers must accept and embrace the fact that they are multicultural educators--not because of the literature they teach, but because of the students they teach.
• The Digital Divide and Its Implications for the Language Arts. ERIC Digest D153
  In the early years of the Internet, there was an expectation that the availability and easy access to online resources of unparalleled abundance would increase educational equity throughout the socio-economic spectrum. In fact, research suggests that patterns of technology access often mirror existing inequalities rather than mitigate them, and if corrective steps are not taken, technology may worsen rather than solve equity disparities.
• The Family Tree: Nurturing Language Growth through "All the Parts of Me."
  Describes a month-long project in an eighth-grade English classroom in which students (from many countries, many of them immigrants) read an array of bicultural literature, and each researched, wrote, and compiled a many-faceted Family Tree notebook. Shows how students can achieve both their own cultural authenticity and English language competence without loss of personal voice.
• Trends and Issues in English Instruction, 1998 Summaries of Informal Annual Discussions of the Commissions
  Information on current trends and issues informally discussed and then delineated by the directors of six National Council of Teachers of English commissions, is presented in this 15th annual report.
• Trends and Issues in English Instruction, 1999--Six Summaries. Summaries of Informal Annual Discussions of the Commissions of the National Council of Teachers of English
  This 16th annual report presents information on current trends and issues informally discussed by the directors of six National Council of Teachers of English commissions.
• Using One of the "Standards for the English Language Arts" To Foster a Positive Relationship between Culture and Literacy
  Argues that integrating the arts in culture and literacy can help children become proficient users of language and be accepting and empathetic toward others, as advocated in standard nine of the "Standards for the English Language Arts." Describes two ways the author integrated the arts into a language arts unit on Japan, dealing with storytelling/mask making and poetry/illustration. (SR).
• Ways that Work: Putting Social Studies Standards into Practice
  This book presents a collection of ideas about how social studies and language arts can be combined to promote learning and to create an active, informed citizenship for the 21st century.
• White Students' Resistance to Multicultural Literature: Breaking the Sullen Silence
  Describes a writing assignment in which students study and imitate the language of a minority author. Discusses how the assignment helps negotiate conflicts when students resist multicultural literature, as their creative responses mediate between themselves and works they might otherwise find foreign and antagonistic.
• Who's New in Multicultural Literature Part Two (Rainbow Teachers/Rainbow Students)
  Describes the Multicultural Project at a high school in Colorado that uses literature by people of color in the 11th-grade curriculum. Presents brief descriptions of four Latino/a and five Native American writers and their works.