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University-school district partnership helps teachers broaden students’ language skills

By Learning Forward
Categories: English learners
January 2008
Vol. 29 No. 1
Jennie Perez began the 2003- 04 school year with apprehension. Over the summer she had been assigned to teach a mainstream 4th-grade class. Perez (a pseudonym) had experience teaching younger students, including English language learners (ELLs), but she was new to teaching older students to read and write denser, more academ- ic texts. Although her curriculum materials were new and aligned with state standards, she was worried that they would not be accessible to most of her students, half of whom were ELLs and all of whom struggled with reading and writing in academic ways. During the previous year, nearly all of the 4th graders attending this school scored at the “failing” or “needs improvement” levels on the state-mandated English language arts exam. As teacher educators and literacy researchers working in public schools,

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References

August, D., & Shanahan, T. (Eds.) (2006). Developing literacy in second-language learners. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Cope, B. & Kalantzis, M. (Eds.) (1993). The powers of literacy: A genre approach to teaching writing. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.

Gebhard, M., Harman, R., & Seger, W. (2007). Reclaiming recess in urban schools: The potential of systemic functional linguistics for ELLs and their teachers. Language Arts, 84(5), 419-430.

Gebhard, M., Habana Hafner, A., & Wright, M. (2004). Teaching English language learners the lan- guage game of math. In Michael Sadowski (Ed.), Teaching immigrant and second-language learners. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Educational Publishing Group.

Gibbons, P. (2002). Scaffolding language, scaffolding learning. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Harman, R. (2007). Critical teacher education in urban contexts: Discursive dance of a middle school teacher. Language and Education, 21(1) 31-45.

Knapp, P. & Watkins, M. (2005). Genre, text, grammar: Technologies for teaching and assessing writing. Sydney: UNSW Press.

Schleppegrell, M., Achugar, M., & Orteiza, T. (2004). The grammar of history: Enhancing content-based instruction through a functional focus on language. TESOL Quarterly, 38(1), 67-93.

Schleppegrell, M. & Go, A. (2007). Analyzing the writing of English learners: A functional approach. Language Arts, 84(6), 259- 538.

Willett, J., Harman, R., Lozano, M.E., Hogan, A., & Rubeck, J. (2007). Transforming standard prac- tices to serve the social and academic learning of English language learners. In L. Verplaetse and N. Migliacci (Eds.), Inclusive pedagogy for English language learners: A handbook of research-informed practices. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Zeichner, K. (2005). A research agenda for teacher education. In M. Cochran-Smith & K. Zeichner (Eds.), Studying teacher education: The report of the AERA Panel on Research and Teacher Education. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. I

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