Language Arts, Vol. 78, No. 6, July 2001

Table of Contents

Issue Theme: "Changing The Way We Think About Language Arts" Revisited

• I Won't Tell You about Myself, but I Will Draw My Story

  Katy Bussert-Webb

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  Abstract: In this article, Bussert-Webb illustrates how art provides a medium through which a group of young, pregnant, middle school women connected their reading and writing to their lives.

  Keywords: Elementary, Middle, Diversity, Literacy, Literature, Media Studies / Journalism, Pedagogy, Research, Writing

• Troubling Stories: Valuing Productive Tensions in Collaborating with Families

  Jo-Anne Wilson-Keenan, Judith Solsken, and Jerri Willett

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  Abstract: In this article, the authors illustrate how classroom talk that includes student, families, and teachers can create spaces in which students from diverse cultural backgrounds negotiate purposeful literacy practices.

  Keywords: Elementary, Diversity, Pedagogy, Research, School-Community Relation

• Ode to That Kind of Paper

  Catherine M. Sjostedt

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  Abstract: Memories of texture, color, and feel permeate this poetic reminiscence. What kinds of memories will our current generation of keyboarders have? … Thoughts of spongy keyboard action, the smell of the packaging on new software or hardware, or digitized color in thousands of pixels. Doe these seem so far away from Sjostedt's yearned-after silver, copper, and gold crayons?

  Keywords: Elementary, Technology

• Grammar Standards: It's All in Your Attitude

  Barbara Birch

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  Abstract: In this article, Birch offers a challenge for language arts teachers to reconsider their beliefs about the teaching of written grammar.

  Keywords: Elementary, Middle, College, Language, Literacy, Pedagogy

• The Arts Meet the Language Arts in Kindergarten: A Photo Essay

  Susan Keehn Strecker and Jane Wells

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  Abstract: The arts and language arts are mutually supportive. Music is a natural form of listening to language; theater is the mechanism for performing language; and art is a way of visualizing language. The arts, rather than being a "frill" unrelated to literacy learning, are media of human innovation and conceptualization that offer alternative ways to construct meaning and to communicate ideas. As such, the arts can be a powerful avenue to the language arts for young children.

  Keywords: Elementary, Literacy, Pedagogy

• Cinderella Meets Ulysses

  Robin Mello

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  Abstract: Mello's study of boys' and girls' conversations about traditional folktales reveals the power of stories to "furnish students with a broader cultural lens in which to view the world.

  Keywords: Elementary, Diversity, Literature, Pedagogy, Research

• Critical Reflection in the Elementary Grades: A New Dimension in Literature Discussions

  Penny Silvers

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  Abstract: In this action research project, Silvers and a teacher researcher use literature discussion as a vehicle for encouraging fourth-grade students to reflect critically on injustice in their own lives.

  Keywords: Elementary, Literacy, Literature, Pedagogy, Research, Reading

• What's New in the English Language Arts: Challenging Policies and Practices, ¿y qué?1

  Kris D. Gutiérrez

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  Abstract: In this article, Gutierrez examines "the ways in which we have not taken up social and cultural understandings of the teaching and learning of literacy.

  Keywords: Elementary, Middle, Secondary, College, Assessment, Language, Literacy, Pedagogy, Standards

• Teachers’ Knowledge and Children’s Lives: Loose Change in the Battle for Educational Currency

  Karen Gallas

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  Abstract: Imagine a world in which classroom teachers recognize research as descriptive and relevant to their practice. The ideas of classroom teacher and researcher Karen Gallas can serve as inspiration to university-based researchers and teacher researchers alike.

  Keywords: Elementary, Middle, Secondary, College, Pedagogy, Research

• A Last Word from the Editors: Changing the Way We Think about Language Arts

  Curt Dudley-Marling and Sharon Murphy

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  Abstract: In their final issue, the editors review three versions of educational reform: the professionalization of teachers; over-regulation of teachers' work; and the deregulation of schooling, arguing that over-regulation and deregulation work together as part of a larger market-oriented strategy for reform that seeks to limit the professional autonomy of classroom teachers. Finally, they speculate on how language arts educators might best resist destructive, market-oriented reforms of education.

  Keywords: Elementary, Middle, Secondary, College, Pedagogy, Standards

• Pairing Fact and Fiction for Deep Understanding

  Carol Gilles and Kathryn Mitchell Pierce et. al.

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  Abstract: Do you ever wonder how much fiction or nonfiction students should be reading? Keep this article close at hand as you plan curriculum experiences that pair the two together and deepen students' understanding of the topics of study!

  Keywords: Elementary, Secondary, Literacy, Literature, Pedagogy, Reading

• Editors' Pages

  Sharon Murphy and Curt Dudley-Marling

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  Abstract: Reflects on the Mass Observation Project, an archive of written observations written by British citizens on various topics, which began in the 1930s and continuing to the present. Language Arts, too, is an archive of trends and a record of enduring issues. In this, their final issue, the editors urge readers and writers to change the way they look at Language Arts, the journal, and language arts.

  Keywords: Elementary

• Index for Volume 78

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  Abstract: Abstract for this article is currently not available.

  Keywords: Elementary

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