Academic Language/Literacy Strategies for Adolescents: A "How-To" Manual for Educators

by Debra L. Cook Hirai, Irene Borrego, Emilio Garza, Carl Kloock

Overview

Fast-paced, practical, and innovative, this text for pre-service and in-service teachers features clear, easily accessible lessons and professional development activities to improve the delivery of academic language/literacy education across the content areas in junior/middle school and high school classrooms. Numerous hands-on tools and techniques demonstrate the effectiveness of content-area instruction for students in a wide variety of school settings, particularly English language learners, struggling readers, and other special populations of students.

Based on a strong professional development model the authors have been instrumental in designing, Academic Language/Literacy Strategies for Adolescents addresses:

• motivation
• attributes of academic language
• vocabulary: theory and practice
• reading skills development
• grammar and writing.

A wealth of charts, graphs, and lesson plans give clear examples of academic language/literacy strategies in action. The appendices – a key component of the practical applications developed in the text – include a glossary, exemplary lessons that address key content areas, and a Grammar Handbook.

In this era of increased accountability, coupled with rapid demographic change and challenges to traditional curricula and pedagogical methods, educators will find this book to be a great resource.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780805863918
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	10/28/2009
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Debra L. Cook Hirai is Associate Professor, California State University Bakersfield, where she teaches Masters courses in the Education Bilingual Multicultural Program.

Irene Borrego is Associate Professor and BCLAD Coordinator at California State University Bakersfield, and a State of California School Assistance and Intervention Team member identified by the California State Department of Education.

Emilio Garza is Assistant Professor, School of Education, California State University, Bakersfield, where he teaches in the Advanced Educational Studies Department.

Carl T. Kloock is in the Department of Biology at California State University Bakersfield, where he teaches courses for biology majors and integrated science for pre-professional teacher candidates.

Table of Contents

FOREWORD

PREFACE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

CHAPTER 1 BACKGROUND

A short history of the term "Academic Language"

Instruction from an Academic Language perspective

Why should we teach Academic Language?

How this book can help

CHAPTER 2 MOTIVATION

The importance of motivation

Research on student motivation

Setting a purpose for learning: The anticipatory set

Active learning and hands-on activities

Modeling and guided practice

CHAPTER 3 ATTRIBUTES OF ACADEMIC LANGUAGE

Receptive and expressive language

Application of receptive and expressive strategies

Professional input and feedback for Academic Language literacy Instruction

CHAPTER 4 VOCABULARY: THEORY AND PRACTICE

Developing vocabulary

Learning and acquisition: The importance of multiple exposures

Cognates, root words, and affixes

Contextualizing vocabulary

Personalizing and operationalizing vocabulary

Strategies for teaching vocabulary

Specific activities/techniques

A sample lesson

Summary

CHAPTER 5 READING SKILLS DEVELOPMENT

Importance of reading in the content areas

Research on reading and reading comprehension

Literacy and reading

Content literacy

Expository vs. narrative text

The phases of reading: Reading into, through, and beyond

Strategies for getting students "INTO" reading

"Into" activities

Strategies for getting students "THROUGH" reading

"Through" activities

Strategies for getting students "BEYOND" reading

Integrated activities

Sample lesson Geometry proofs

Summary

CHAPTER 6 GRAMMAR & WRITING

The importance of grammar to language acquisition

How should grammar be taught?

Brick and mortar words

Why should content area teachers teach grammar?

Writing and Academic Language literacy

The relationship between verbal and written language

Student writing skills

Building the academic register for writing

Assessing writing in order to develop writing skills

Writing: "Into, through and beyond"

Activities that develop writing skills

Sample lesson: Three search paper on the Holocaust

Summary

CHAPTER 7 SUMMING UP

GLOSSARY

APPENDIX 1 Expressive and Receptive Language Strategies and Model Lesson Plan Format

APPENDIX 2 Sample Lesson Plans Including Expressive and Receptive language Prompts

Sample Lesson Plan 2.1 Sentence analysis and rephrasing (Earth Science)

Sample Lesson Plan 2.2 Using the text (Algebra)

Sample Lesson Plan 2.3 Classifying the elements (Chemistry)

Sample Lesson Plan 2.4 Using a science notebook (General Science)

Sample Lesson Plan 2.5 Stem-and-leaf plots (Graphing)

APPENDIX 3 Sample Lesson Plans Without Expressive and Receptive Language Prompts

Sample Lesson Plan 3.1: Unit Analysis (Math and Science)

Sample Lesson Plan 3.2: Word Problems(Math)

Sample Lesson Plan 3.3: Scientific Method (General Science/Biology)

Sample Lesson Plan 3.4: Linear Equalities in 2 Variables (Math)

Sample Lesson Plan 3.5: Intro to Relations and Functions (Math)

APPENDIX 4 Sample Writing Rubric

APPENDIX 5 List of Useful Websites for Math and Science

APPENDIX 6 Common Cognates

APPENDIX 7 Grammar Handbook

REFERENCES

Editorial Reviews

"Attention, teachers of all content areas, here is a manual to help with your writing instruction....As a former middle school language arts teacher, this reviewer wishes that she had this book as a reference manual….Highly recommended."—CHOICE

From the Publisher