Teaching Language Arts in Secondary Schools II

Catalog description

Exploration of language, literacy, and culture and development of curricular designs for teaching language arts in secondary schools. LL ED 412W Teaching Language Arts in Secondary Schools II (3) This three-credit course addresses the theory, practice, and implications of teaching the English language arts at the secondary level. The course is the discipline-specific component of the Secondary Education block taken by majors in Secondary Education prior to student teaching. In this course, students explore issues in language, literacy, and culture and development of curricular designs for teaching language arts in secondary schools. Through in-class and out-of-class activities completed both independently and in collaboration, students read about, talk about, and practice teaching all of the language arts-reading, writing, speaking, listening, and thinking. Activities highlight ways of planning for instruction and ways of assessing student learning as teachers implement those plans. In addition, students will take up the professional issues facing beginning teachers of the English language arts-issues of professionalism and the teaching role, relationships with students, and how teaching can fit into a life. The course builds upon content developed in other courses in the major, including theories of reading, composition, media literacy, teacher inquiry, and pedagogy. Students engage in a variety of writing tasks both in support of developing course content and as a means of making their work public. This writing includes (but is not limited to) lesson planning, reflective writing on experiences both in the course and in related field experience, inquiry proposals, and other professional documents. During class sessions, informal writing is used for a variety of purposes such as brainstorming, facilitating collaborative work, or framing discussion.