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This paper presents the actions of two high school English language arts teachers as they engage in writing instruction with adolescent English learners. Using a naturalistic, qualitative methodology we investigate the actions two high school English language arts teachers engage in to meet the needs of their students. Findings suggest that embraci...
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... teachers in this study participated in a professional development ap- proach called "Culturally Mediated Writing Instruction" (CMWI) funded by the National Writing Project (NWP) ( Patterson et al., 2010;Wickstrom et al., 2011). For a semester the teachers were immersed in "research-based ideas and guidance" to support the writing needs of English learners in their ELA classrooms. Using inquiry (Dewey, 1910;Short & Burke & Hartse, 1996;Wilhelm, 2007) and a writer's workshop (Atwell, 1987;Gallagher, 2006) ap- proach, the teachers studied funds of knowledge ( Moll et al., 1992) and the use of social action issues (e.g., immigration, poverty, family) as meaningful writing themes. Documentation of the instructional decisions and practices made by these teachers was created during the spring of 2010. The purpose was to determine what decisions and actions these teachers took to make learning meaningful for their students. Prior inductive analysis (Araujo, 2013) on two instructional units for these same two teachers informed the analysis of this inquiry. For Carmen (pseudonym) the units were, The Catcher in the Rye (Salinger, 1951) and The Hunger Games (Collins, 2008). For Janet (pseudonym), the units were The House on Mango Street (Cisneros, 1984) and The Odyssey (Homer, trans. 1996). The analysis yielded the following (Araujo, 2013): Decisions that attend to the shifts in culture of the classroom make a difference for students. Decisions that focus solely on delivering the explicit curriculum make little difference to student learning. When teachers take into account the available resources (student, personal, textual, and contextual), they are able to expand the learning zone (see Figure 1) and create a deep integrated curricular ex- perience for students. The shaded area represents the "resources in ac- tion" or affordances teachers tap into with effective decisions making. Teachers are aware of possible resources and use them when appropriate to meet the needs of students. As teachers grow in expertise about the available resources, they are able to more closely meet the needs of the students. ...
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... It is unclear whether they took for granted the embedded skills lessons, or whether they did not find the lesson objective relevant to their own writing. Research (Araujo and Wickstrom 2017) shows that writing instruction involves a great deal of decision-making on the part of both the teacher and the student. Writing teachers must be prepared to match texts to students' needs and interests. ...
Today, reading aloud is considered ‘a significant component of instruction across grade levels’; particularly as a tool for teaching reading in elementary classrooms. It is basically an essential literacy practice for all student teachers to understand how to implement. In this study, authors understand the importance of modelling effective read-aloud practices and they demonstrate how they support engagement in reading and writing instruction with undergraduate students. Student teachers responded to the read alouds using reflective essays, and tables. Themes emerged that indicated that the use of read alouds in the undergraduate classrooms enhanced their understanding of identity, pedagogy, and empathy.
... One might argue that if teachers concentrated on teaching the required writing skills over the course of grades K-12, students should be able to produce critical writing as a natural result of 13 years of public schooling. On the contrary, research has shown that test-driven, formulaic writing does not automatically translate into enduring skills that enable students to produce appropriately written texts for all purposes (Araujo & Wickstrom, 2017;Dean, 2010). We suggest that ESL and ELA teachers who seek critical literacy should have their students engage in writing about social or community issues that are directly relevant to their lives (Teitelbaum, 2010). ...
The authors showcase critical, participatory literacy as a motivator for English learners’ literacy development. The urban middle school English learners reported in this narrative metamorphosed from reluctant to empowered writers when they inserted themselves into the local politics of school district zoning. Their investment in the zoning issue provided a base for learning argumentative writing as part of state English language arts standards. The students experienced writing as an action that brings about change after receiving a personal response from the superintendent of the school district: a profound realization that the way they view the world matters. Most important, they learned that as active participants, their voices can contribute to the making of a just society.
This article explores how one urban high school under threat of state closure developed a multifaceted literacy program to transform the teaching and learning of literacy in a novel university/school partnership. Analyses of ethnographic and quantitative school data illustrate how the evolution of the literacy program could be understood as a consequence of generative frictions which produced changes in the program and some indication of changes in understanding of literacy and of students’ needs. We weave a story of multiple layers of changed curriculum, scheduling, assessments, and pedagogy to argue that we need to rethink the continuum of autonomous and ideological literacy to focus more on what the intersections of literacy ideologies generate.
