This book is not one of the main sources, but it is very interesting and somewhat related to what our project is about. This book is about a curriculum theory in which the teachers stop reading children’s literature as teachers, with the idea of planning a curriculum, and instead read the books for fun and let the ideas for curriculum follow.
Unlike other sources I have read on this subject, the author is putting emphasis on the imagination and thinking and experiencing as a child would when reading these books. The author says it is important to look at popular culture and children’s and young adult’s books that students may be reading outside of class. This can help to generate discussions that the students can relate to by comparing them to books read in class.We picked this book for the bibliography because it would be a great book for any aspiring elementary English teacher to read.
Coody, Betty and David Nelson. Teaching Elementary Language Arts: A Literature Approach. Illinois: Waveland Press, Inc. 1982.
This book goes in-depth into teaching English at the elementary level. It talks about the best ways to engage a class and how to teach reading and writing skills. For the purpose of this assignment, we focused on chapter 2, Planning Instruction and Evaluating the Plan: A Look at the Language Arts Unit Plan. This chapter talks about the elements of the unit plan: Brief Description, Major Concept, Goals, Teaching Objectives, List of Materials, List of References, Motivating Questions, Learning Experiences, Projects and Activities, Culminating Activities, and Evaluation.
This chapter breaks down and summarizes each of these elements and gives a sample unit plan for Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books. The main argument of this chapter is that evaluation is the most important element in the unit plan. It emphasizes the evaluation of both the teacher and the students, and gives examples of how one can obtain these evaluations. This chapter also describes how in creating lesson plans, English teachers can relate the literature they are reading to curriculum of other subjects like social studies, science, art, and math.
Myers, Julia and Cathy Burnett. Teaching English 3-11. New York: Continuum, 2004
This book is great how-to guide for English teachers at the elementary or secondary level. Like other books, it is a generalization of how to improve your skills as an English teacher, and it also contains several chapters on curriculum setting and planning to teach English. It talks about preparing to teach English and how to create the most effective plan for teaching your students.
The main argument for this book is that teachers should take into consideration curriculum requirements set down by higher education programs, but first and foremost should think about and evaluate the learning needs of the students. It comments a lot on the importance of group work and discussion from the children. The book mentions that teachers should facilitate open discussion and not ask questions hoping to get a specific answer, as this could potentially stifle discussion. The authors of this book also believe in imaginative and creative ways of teaching by using popular culture and technology. While the old idea is to stay away from these things, this author argues that since children are familiar with these things they can be used as an aid in learning about a particular novel.
Gorelik, Kimberly. "But What Do You Want Us To Do? The Internet as Scaffolding." ERIC full text. (2000): p1-pp9. Print.
Author Kimberley Gorelik discusses how a middle school language arts teacher relates how she used the Internet to scaffold students’ learning. The argument presented in this article is that children need to shift from standardized testing mode to a more independent style of thinking. Gorelik discusses a method created by a middle school teacher that attempts to make assignments clearer through the use of the Internet. The teacher wanted to teach the students to be independent, and did so by scaffolding them through an Internet based website. The Internet site listed homework assignments, web links, and a message board to post questions and answers. This way, the children were able to work on assignments without much guided information from the teacher, but at the same time could be used as a scaffold through the internet website. The page was finished in one week and the teacher logged on each night at the same time to answer any student questions that were emailed to her. Students expressed their appreciation. Here, author Kimberly Gorelik is building on the importance of scaffolding assignments in children’s literature. This is just one example of how teachers are transforming their classrooms to create a higher learning environment for their students.
Ma, Guoping. "Sequencing In Literature Instruction." ERIC Full Text. (1998): p1-pp37. Print.
Sequencing is an important component of the merging theory for the teaching and learning of literature. Literature is a wonderful yet intimidating subject for the study of sequencing strategies on both the curriculum and course level. There are many forms of literature instruction that involve such sequencing strategies as chronology, theme, genre, subject, and author. Author of the article, Guoping Ma, argues that sequencing is an important component of the emerging theory for the teaching and learning of literature. Ma goes on to discuss how literature is used to foster children’s linguistic growth and aid in the development of vocabulary amongst students.
The author goes on to explain the importance of sequencing the instruction according to the intrinsic nature of literature. In other words, instruction should be sequenced along the lines of recurrent and timeless themes, patterns, genres, and conventions to reveal to children the coherence of literature. The author is arguing in this article that when sequenced in this way, literature instruction will heighten children’s awareness of the connections among literary works so that they will treat each individual work as an integral part in the world of literature.
Murphy, P. K., Lee Ann M. Delli, and Maeghan N. Edwards. "The Good Teacher and Good Teaching: Comparing Beliefs of Second-Grade Students, Preservice Teachers, and Inservice Teachers." The Journal of Experiemental Education 72.2 (2004): 69-92. Jstor. Web. 21 Mar. 2010.
Looking into an unusual source to help cultivate the understanding of the importance of creating, sequencing, and scaffolding assignments for children’s English teachers, this article provides insightful ideas about the role model figure teachers play for their students through every aspect of their teaching. It is in this article that the obvious, yet not always thought about idea that every teacher has at one point been a student themselves is realized. After reading and discussing this article it is not surprising that the question of how teachers are able to strengthen their own teaching techniques, viewpoints and perspectives from their own experiences as a student. At the same time, this can pose as a difficult obstacle for some teachers as any particular past experience may surface and negatively influence their teaching duties.
Murphy, Delli and Edwards sought advice and answers from second-grade students on what their beliefs of a “good teacher” meant. While many have argued that for teachers to be effective they must “possess and exhibit competency in content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, and pedagogical content knowledge” (73), this article attempts to prove that, from a young student’s perspective, being nice and understanding defines ‘good teachers.’ It is from this realization that teachers must become aware that in order to be successful with their main audience (i.e. their students), they must be willing to display gentle human characteristics in order to gain approval as well as the possibility of acquiring higher success rates among students as they do not feel threatened. While the article does acknowledge that the “participants are telling us more how they feel about themselves and their environment and less about what they know” (78), it demonstrates the importance of all roles a teacher must play within the classroom to gather wholehearted success among their students. This article proves that it is not simply the creation, sequencing and scaffolding of assignments that results in student success but also the presence of non-judgmental, understanding, approachable individuals as teachers that will create teaching environments, in all aspects, that children can grow in.
Myers, Julia and Cathy Burnett. Teaching English 3-11. New York: Continuum, 2004.
This book is great how-to guide for English teachers at the elementary or secondary level. Like other books, it is a generalization of how to improve your skills as an English teacher, and it also contains several chapters on curriculum setting and planning to teach English. It talks about preparing to teach English and how to create the most effective plan for teaching your students.
The main argument for this book is that teachers should take into consideration curriculum requirements set down by higher education programs, but first and foremost should think about and evaluate the learning needs of the students. It comments a lot on the importance of group work and discussion from the children. The book mentions that teachers should facilitate open discussion and not ask questions hoping to get a specific answer, as this could potentially stifle discussion. The authors of this book also believe in imaginative and creative ways of teaching by using popular culture and technology. While the old idea is to stay away from these things, this author argues that since children are familiar with these things they can be used as an aid in learning about a particular novel.
