Teaching Language Arts, Pearson New International Edition, 7th edition

This book brings the vision of a student-centered classroom to life through clear illustrations of guiding principles, balanced with examples of real teachers in real classrooms with real children, many of whom are English learners.

Engaging, readable, student-friendly, and practical, this text is built on a strong theoretical and research base, and illustrated and clarified with real-life examples of children and teachers from today’s diverse classrooms. Written to reflect cutting-edge theory, new research, the latest policies, the new Common Core State Standards, and best practices in the rapidly changing world of language arts instruction, Carole Cox’s new Seventh Edition continues to guide students as they learn the many skills required to become an effective teacher today.

The book’s unique Snapshotfeature takes readers into the real world of the classroom as they read about actual students and see samples of their work, and hear from the teachers as they describe their philosophies and methods. Well-regarded for its authoritative, comprehensive coverage of the contemporary language arts classroom, the book provides a balance of student-centered and teacher-directed instruction that includes many examples from today’s classrooms. This new edition remains grounded in current theories of constructivism and social interaction combined with a reader-response perspective toward teaching with children’s literature, as well as current research in language and literacy instruction.

Students see how to:

• Use an array of Assessment Toolboxes to observe, assess, plan, and differentiate instruction to ensure that students’ needs are met within the context of a standards-based curriculum.
• Put specific suggestions for teaching language arts into practice readily in the classroom with the help of lesson plans, each with the new Common Core State Standards; a step-by-step approach to teaching; graphic organisers; assessment tools; ideas for integrated teaching across the content areas; and children’s books and media resources.
• Meet the needs of diverse learners by sheltering and differentiating instruction for English learners, students with disabilities and other special needs, nonmainstream speakers of English, and struggling readers and writers throughout the text and in two special boxes called Engaging English Learners and Differentiating Instruction, which appear throughout.
• Link grade-level expected outcomes for students to the specific ideas for language arts instruction in the book’s presentation of the new Common Core State Standards.
• Model learning and teaching in a Web 2.0 world with the help of a new boxed feature in every chapter, Media and Technology.
• Use a variety of ideas for language and literacy experiences, lesson plans, and children’s literature provided in a useful Appendix: A Month-by-Month Guide to Integrated Teaching with Literature.

Along with the book’s unique Snapshots of real life in the classroom this edition also includes:

• Examples of Integrated Teaching with Literature demonstrating thematic, literature-based learning across the curriculum linked to the Common Core State Standards.
• Expanded Lesson Plans and more integrated teaching ideas and lesson plans in an appendix.
• Common Core State Standards and Great Books for Children in marginal notes throughout.
• A Month-by-Month Guide to Integrated Teaching with Literature in the appendix.

Included in each chapter to help readers get the most out of their original reading of the material, as well as their later review, are:

• Chapter opening questions
• Reflections
• Chapter ending answers
• Looking Further features
• Suggested Children’s Books
• References

Substantially updated and reorganized to reflect current issues and developments in teaching language arts, this new edition gives students:

• A framework for planning standards-based teaching linked to the Common Core State Standards for the English Language Arts as well as integrated across content areas through the new special feature Integrated Teaching with Literature.
• Specific ideas for teaching English learners and providing teachers with much-needed assistance in teaching English as a second language and sheltering content instruction through the new boxed feature, Engaging English Learners.
• Ways to connect chapter content to current technology standards, teaching structures, online tools and resources, and best practices for integrating media and technology into language arts instruction through the new boxed feature, Media and Technology, that appears in each chapter.
• Two new Assessment Toolboxes: 1) a web-based Online Literature Discussion Rubric to use with Online Literature Discussion Boards, and 2) a Differentiated Rubric for Language Conventions for English Learners: Beginning, Intermediate, and Advanced Levels of English Proficiency.
• A focus on two types of texts, literary and informational, in the two new chapters, “Reading and Writing Literary Texts” (Ch. 12) and “Reading and Writing Informational Texts” (Ch. 13).
• Chapter-by-chapter changes are included in the Preface to the book.