Best Practices Language Arts

1. Best PracticesLanguage Arts Presented by Jeremy Clark

2. What’s wrong with this picture?

3. Fashion Statement? FOOTHILL RANCH, California, Jan. 26 (UPI) -- California women's clothing brand Wet Seal said a grammatically incorrect T-shirt slogan was an intentional error. The T-shirts, bearing the slogan "If your single, so am I," using "your" in the place of the grammatically correct "you're," set off a number of posts to the company's Twitter account from spelling-minded consumers, the New York Daily News reported Wednesday. But the company's Twitter writer responded to the criticisms with a tongue-in-cheek message substituting "you're" for "your." "It's a fashion statement. ... I am jealous for you're keen eye for grammatical errors though," the Twitter message said. Taken from: www.upi.com

4. Grammar "This dismissal of grammar teaching is unfortunate not only because practice has shown that teachers must know grammar to analyze student errors, but also because many questions regarding grammar instruction are worth studying.  Fundamental questions concerning what kind of grammar is being taught, how it is being taught, and what the rationale for teaching is.  Finally, we as a profession need to ask if we understand grammar and the nature of language."     - Brosnahan, Irene and Neulieb, Janice, Chapter Five of Teaching Developmental Writing

5. Activity • On a sheet of paper you will be writing eight sentences: • One for each form of “there” • One for each form of “to” • One for both forms of “your”

6. Their, There, They’re Their • Their is a plural possessive adjective, used to describe something as belonging to them. Their is nearly always followed by a noun. • Where is their car? • Their books are on the table. There • There has several different uses. • Adverb that means the opposite of "here" • He's over there. • Do you want to sit here or there? • Pronoun that introduces a noun or clause. • There is something strange going on. • Is there a phone? • Adjective that emphasizes which person. • That guy there seems to be in trouble. • Noun that means "that place." • From there, we drove to Boston. • I'm not going in there! They're • They're is the contraction of "they are.” • They're going to be late. • Is that what they're saying?

7. To, Too, Two To • To has two functions. First, as a preposition, in which case it always precedes a noun. • I'm going to the store. • This belongs to David. • Secondly, to indicates an infinitive when it precedes a verb. • I need to study. • We want to help. Too • Too also has two uses. First, as a synonym for "also." • Can I go too? • He went to France, too. • Secondly, too means excessively when it precedes an adjective or adverb. • He's walking too quickly. • I ate too much. Two • Two is a number. • One, two, three... • I have two cars. • She ate two pieces of pie.

8. Your and You’re Your • You’re a possessive adjective, used to describe something as belonging to you. • What is your name? • Is this your pen? • Your book is on the table. You're • You're is the contraction of "you are.” • You're going to be late. • Is that what you're wearing? • I think you're lying.

9. In today’s society of text messaging, instant informational gathering, and unfiltered media content, it is the job of the teachers to keep students on the right path.Students need to understand the importance of reading different texts, as well as properly using grammar in written and oral communications.It is surprising and unacceptable that even some professionals, while teaching or working towards graduate level degrees, do not speak or write correctly.

10. According to the ELA Vision Statement found in the Michigan Content Standards and Benchmarks, a literate individual is one who, among other things: Communicates skillfully and effectively through printed, visual, auditory, and technological media in the home, school, community, and workplace; Thinks analytically and creatively about important themes, concepts, and ideas; Uses the English language arts to identify and solve problems; Understands and appreciates the aesthetic elements of oral, visual, and written texts.

11. ELA Content Standards and Working Draft BenchmarksMiddle School Meaning and Communication Content Standard 1: All students will read and comprehend general and technical material. • Use reading for multiple purposes, such as enjoyment, clarifying information, and learning complex procedures. • Read with developing fluency a variety of texts, such as short stories, novels, poetry, plays, textbooks, manuals, and periodicals. • Employ multiple strategies to construct meaning, such as generating questions, studying vocabulary, analyzing mood and tone, recognizing how authors use information, generalizing ideas, matching form to content, and developing reference skills. • Employ multiple strategies to recognize words as they construct meaning, including the use of context clues, word roots and affixes, and syntax. • Respond to a variety of oral, visual, written, and electronic texts by making connections to their personal lives and the lives of others.

12. Content Standard 2: All students will demonstrate the ability to write clear and grammatically correct sentences, paragraphs, and compositions. • Write fluently for multiple purposes to produce compositions, such as personal narratives, persuasive essays, lab reports, and poetry. • Recognize and use authors’ techniques that convey meaning and build empathy with readers when composing their own texts. Examples include appeals to reason and emotion, use of figurative language, and grammatical conventions which assist audience comprehension. • Plan and draft texts, and revise and edit their own writing, and help others revise and edit their texts in such areas as content, perspective, and effect. • Select and use appropriate language conventions when editing text. Examples include various grammatical constructions, subject-verb agreement, punctuation, and spelling.

13. Content Standard 3: All students will focus on meaning and communication as they listen, speak, view, read, and write in personal, social, occupational, and civic contexts. • Integrate listening, viewing, speaking, reading, and writing skills for multiple purposes and in varied contexts. • Begin to implement strategies to regulate effects of variables of the communication process. An example is selecting a format for the message to influence the receiver’s response. • Read and write fluently, speak confidently, listen and interact appropriately, view critically, and represent creatively. • Practice verbal and nonverbal strategies that enhance understanding of spoken messages and promote effective listening behaviors. • Select appropriate strategies to construct meaning while reading, listening to, viewing, or creating texts. • Determine the meaning of unfamiliar words and concepts in oral, visual, and written texts by using a variety of resources. • Recognize and use varied techniques to construct text, convey meaning, and express feelings to influence an audience. • Express their responses and make connections between oral, visual, written, and electronic texts and their own lives.

14. Language Content Standard 4: All students will use the English language effectively. • Compare and contrast spoken, written, and visual language patterns used in their communication contexts, such as community activities, discussions, math and science classes, and the workplace. • Investigate the origins of language patterns and vocabularies and their impact on meaning in formal and informal situations. • Investigate idiomatic phrases and word origins and how they have contributed to contemporary meaning. • Demonstrate how communication is affected by connotation and denotation and why one particular word is more effective or appropriate than others in a given context. • Recognize and use levels of discourse appropriate for varied contexts, purposes, and audiences, including specific to a particular field.

15. Literature Content Standard 5: All students will read and analyze a wide variety of classic and contemporary literature and other texts to seek information, ideas, enjoyment, and understanding of their individuality, our common heritage and common humanity, and the rich diversity in our society. • Select, read, listen to, view, and respond thoughtfully to both classic and contemporary texts recognized for quality and literary merit. • Describe and discuss shared issues in the human experience that appear in literature and other texts from around the world. • Identify and discuss how tensions among characters, communities, themes, and issues in literature and other texts are related to one’s own experience. • Investigate and demonstrate understanding of the cultural and historical contexts of the themes, issues, and our common heritage as depicted in literature and other texts. • Investigate through literature and other texts various examples of distortion and stereotypes.

16. Voice Content Standard 6: All students will learn to communicate information accurately and effectively and demonstrate their expressive abilities by creating oral, written, and visual texts that enlighten and engage an audience. • Analyze their use of elements of effective communication that impact their relationships in their schools, families, and communities. Examples include use of pauses, suspense, and elaboration. • Demonstrate their ability to use different voices in oral and written communication to persuade, inform, entertain, and inspire their audiences. • Compare and contrast the style and characteristics of individual authors, speakers, and illustrators and how they shape text and influence their audiences’ expectations. • Document and enhance a developing voice through multiple media. Examples include reflections, audio and visual tapes, and submissions for publications.

17. Skills and Processes Content Standard 7: All students will demonstrate, analyze, and reflect upon the skills and processes used to communicate through listening, speaking, viewing, reading, and writing. • Use a combination of strategies when encountering unfamiliar texts while constructing meaning. • Monitor their progress while using a variety of strategies to overcome difficulties when constructing and conveying meaning, and develop strategies to deal with new communication needs. • Reflect on their own developing literacy, set learning goals, and evaluate their progress. • Demonstrate a variety of strategies for planning, drafting, revising, and editing several different forms of texts for specific purposes. Examples include persuading an audience to take action and capturing feelings through poetry.

18. Genre and Craft of Language Content Standard 8: All students will explore and use the characteristics of different types of texts, aesthetic elements, and mechanics – including text structure, figurative and descriptive language, spelling, punctuation, and grammar – to construct and convey meaning. • Select and use mechanics that enhance and clarify understanding. • Describe and use characteristics of various narrative genre and elements of narrative technique to convey ideas and perspectives. Examples include foreshadowing and flashback. • Describe and use characteristics of various informational genre and elements of expository text structure to convey ideas. • Identify and use aspects of the craft of the speaker, writer, and illustrator to formulate and express their ideas artistically. • Explain how the characteristics of various oral, visual, and written texts and the textual aids they employ are used to convey meaning.

19. Depth of Understanding Content Standard 9: All students will demonstrate understanding of the complexity of enduring issues and recurring problems by making connections and generating themes within and across texts. • Explore and reflect on universal themes and substantive issues from oral, visual, and written texts. Examples include coming of age, rights and responsibilities, conflict, creativity, and resourcefulness. • Synthesize content from multiple texts representing varied perspectives in order to formulate principles and generalizations. • Develop a thesis using key concepts, supporting evidence, and logical argument.

20. Ideas In Action Content Standard 10: All students will apply knowledge, ideas, and issues drawn from texts to their lives and the lives of others. • Analyze themes and central ideas in literature and other texts in relation to their own lives. • Perform the daily functions of a literate individual. Examples include acquiring information from multiple sources and then evaluating, organizing, and communicating it in various contexts. • Use oral, written, and visual texts to identify and research issues of importance that confront adolescents, their community, their nation, and the world.

21. Inquiry and Research Content Standard 11: All students will define and investigate important issues and problems using a variety of resources, including technology, to explore and create texts. • Generate questions about important issues that affect them or topics about which they are curious; narrow the questions to a clear focus; and create a thesis or hypothesis. • Explain and use resources that are most appropriate and readily available for investigating a particular question or topic. • Organize, analyze, and synthesize information to draw conclusions and implications based on their investigation of an issue or problem. • Use different means of developing and presenting conclusions based on the investigation of an issue or the problem to an identified audience.

22. Critical Standards Content Standard 12: All students will develop and apply personal, shared, and academic criteria for the enjoyment, appreciation, and evaluation of their own and others’ oral, written, and visual texts. • Differentiate sets of standards for individual use according to the purpose of the communication context. An example is maintaining different sets of individual standards when creating texts for formal and informal situations. • Demonstrate understanding of individual, shared, and academic standards used for different purposes and contexts. • Develop critical standards based on aesthetic qualities, and use them to explain choices in reading, writing, speaking, listening, viewing, and representing. • Create a collection of personal work based on individual, shared, and academic standards, reflecting on the merit of each selection. • Refine their own standards to evaluate personal and public communications within a responsible and ethical system for the expression of ideas.

23. Focus on WritingBackwards Design • Summit Meetings held by De La Salle and Regina High Schools enable grade level and content based discussions between schools across the Archdiocese. • Without multiple classes of grade levels in our schools, this gives an opportunity for PLCs at the beginning and end of the school year • Grade level teachers meet with one another and discuss best practices • Representatives from the high schools then meet with the groups to keep them informed as to what is expected out of their students when entering ninth grade • This information is helpful for using best practices in my own classroom and applying them to our curriculum

24. Standards and Assessments Writing Process

25. Grammar and Usage Spelling

26. Writing Genres

27. Personal Style Handwriting Writing Attitude

28. America and Me Essay Contest To read the top ten essays, click here Taken from: http://www.farmbureauinsurance-mi.com/pages/events/essay.htm

29. Studentreasures Student Books Why Student Publishing Works Do you want to create a fun learning experience for your students? Do you want them to get excited and motivated about writing? Studentreasures publishing is the perfect tool to help guide your students through the writing process! Students will take pride in their work knowing it will be published into a hardbound book for family and friends to read. Don’t miss this opportunity to create writing excitement. We offer several Free K-6 student publishing programs. Our most popular is the Free School-Wide publishing program that provides your school with $2,000 in free books. Taken from: www.studentreasures.com

30. Michigan Educational Assessment Program - English Language Arts Rubric

31. Writing Checklist

32. Story Element Development • Characters • Character Types • Flat, Round, Static, Dynamic • Ways to Describe a Character • What they look like • What they do • What they say • What others say about them • Theme • What’s the moral of the story? • Point of View • Setting • Time • Place • Weather Conditions • Social Conditions • Atmosphere • Plot • Introduction • Rising Action • Climax • Conflict • Falling Action • Conclusion (Resolution) • Conflict • Physical • Social • Classical (circumstances) • Psychological Students apply prewriting techniques (free writing, graphic organizers, lists, etc.) for each story element, before going through the rest of the writing process while writing their stories.

33. You have to READ to write. • Book Reports throughout the year • Learn to enjoy reading • Build vocabulary • Examples of proper writing techniques, descriptive language, literary devices, etc. • Finding a voice • Including a summary and personal evaluation, each book report focuses on a specific element.

34. Mr. C’s Cafe

35. MENU Weekly Specials! Ballad Free verseLyric Sonnet CinquainQuatrain Limerick Name Poem Concrete Poem Haiku SenryuTanka AlliterationAssonanceBalladBlank verseConnotation CoupletEpicFigurative languageFree verseIamb ImageryIronyMetaphorMeterOnomatopoeia PersonificationQuatrainRhymeSimileStanza sdfsf Weekly Poetry Readings Mr. C’s

36. Japanese Poetry • I begin with the examples found in the Prentice Hall Literature book. (see handouts) • The students and I then go outdoors for inspiration and some peace and quiet. • Poems are graded using a rubric and later go into a book of poems by each student, complete with illustrations.

37. Japanese Poetry Rubric

38. Best Practices in English Language Arts Recommendations on Teaching Writing Continued…

39. Best Practices in English Language Arts Recommendations on Teaching Writing *Steven Zemelman, Harvey Daniels, Arthur Hyde Best Practice (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1998).

40. The Importance of Reading and Writing “Every man who knows how to read has it in his power to magnify himself, to multiply the ways in which he exists, to make his life full, significant and interesting.” ~Aldous Huxley (English Novelist) “Writing is a form of personal freedom. It frees us from the mass identity we see in the making all around us. In the end, writers will write not to be outlaw heroes of some underculture but mainly to save themselves, to survive as individuals.” ~Don Delillo (American Novelist) “Thinking cannot be clear till it has had expression. We must write, or speak, or act our thoughts, or they will remain in a half torpid form. Our feelings must have expression, or they will be as clouds, which, till they descend in rain, will never bring up fruit or flower, So it is with all the inward feelings; expression gives them development. Thought is the blossom; language the opening bud; action the fruit behind it.” ~H.W. Beecher (Clergyman, Social Reformer, Abolitionist, Speaker)

41. Thank you.