Teaching Middle School Language Arts: Incorporating Twenty-first Century Literacies

About the Book

Teaching Middle School Language Arts is the first book on teaching middle school language arts for multiple intelligences and related 21st century literacies in technologically and ethnically diverse communities. More than 670,000 middle school teachers (grades six through eight) are responsible for educating nearly 13 million students in public and private schools. Thousands more teachers join these ranks annually, especially in the South and West, where ethnic populations are ballooning.

Teachers and administrators seek practical, time-efficient ways of teaching language arts to 21st century adolescents in increasingly multicultural, technologically diverse, socially networked communities. They seek sound understanding, practical advice, and proven strategies for connecting diverse literature to 21st century societies while meeting state and professional standards. Teaching Middle School Language Arts provides strategies and resources that work.

Roseboro's book provides an entire academic year of inspiring theory and instruction in multimedia reading, writing, and speaking for the 21st century literacies that are increasingly required in the United States and Canada. An appendix includes supplementary documents to adapt or adopt, and a companion web site is designed to continue communication with readers.

Table of Contents:

Foreword: Amazing Grace
Preface: Teaching at the Intersection of Old and New Literacies
Introduction
Chapter 1 Networking Socially at the Start of a School Year
Chapter 2 Unpacking the Story and Understanding the Genre
Chapter 3 Exploring Traditional and Contemporary Grammars
Chapter 4Discussing and Writing Short Stories: Where Story Meets Genre
Chapter 5 Checking Out a Twentieth Century Novel
Chapter 6 Teaching Classical Fiction: Where the Ghosts of the Past Speak Today
Chapter 7 Taking T.I.M.E. to Teach Poetry
Chapter 8 Versing Life Together
Chapter 9 Opening the Past Imaginatively: Teaching Historical Fiction
Chapter 10 Playing It Right: Reading, Performing and Writing Drama
Chapter 11 Speaking of Grammars: Public Speaking and Media Arts
Chapter 12 Celebrating Names: A Unit about Community and Identity
Chapter 13 Congratulations and Bon Voyage!

About the Author :
Anna J. Small Roseboro is a former National Board Certified Teacher with forty years of experience. Anna has been a faculty leader at the NCTE Affiliates Leadership Conference and served as master teacher for the San Francisco Bay Area Teachers Center in an online teaching environment. In 2009, she was honored with the California Association of Teachers of English 2009 Distinguished Service Award.

Review :
If only I had had a mentor like Roseboro to ease my way into the classroom. If only someone had handed me Teaching Middle School Language Arts to help me plan a coherent year of learning for them. . . . Data on teacher attrition demonstrates that we are a profession that eats its young. Between 40 and 50 percent of teachers leave the profession in the first five years. Anna Roseboro's book can help to turn these numbers around by helping new teachers be successful right from the first year. It also provides a much-needed tonic for experienced teachers who may have lost their way and are wondering if there isn't an easier way to make a living. As a teacher educator, I look for any help that I can find for my future language arts middle school teachers. After reading Teaching Middle School Language Arts by Anna J. Roseboro, I realized that my search has ended. This book is everything I could possibly hope for in a text for future middle school language arts teachers as well as veterans. This is a comprehensive text. It covers almost everything a teacher could imagine as part of a language arts middle school curriculum. This book has a friendly personal voice. Roseboro's teaching experiences are documented throughout. You will find the author in this text. The wisdom offered in these chapters builds the student's interest, comfort, and confidence concurrently with the elements of literature, writing, and speaking. Every astute teacher knows that before you can teach students, you must reach students. Then you can help them develop language skills and the art of communicating effectively through a wide variety of methods and technology to succeed in a global and diverse society. Anna J. Roseboro not only knows this firsthand but also understands how to convey this to teachers in the most practical and useful handbook for novice middle school language arts teachers or experienced teachers looking for more ideas. In her latest book, Anna J. Roseboro has provided middle school English language arts teachers with a guide to the curriculum that everyone can use. Novice teachers will find the text easy to understand and adapt, and veteran teachers will be reminded of what they might need to add to enhance or alter what they are already are doing. Roseboro's text has appeal to all who work with middle schoolers looking for interesting and challenging English classes. This book—a worthy successor to Nancie Atwell's In the Middle—should be a staple of teacher preparation programs and staff development efforts for years to come. Teaching Middle School Language Arts was a joy to read. . . . Reading this book of instruction for teachers new at the work as well as veterans has my interest in the field of teaching, specifically children in middle school, perked. . . . [This is a] book of instruction to assist middle school language arts/ English teachers with lesson examples, stories, and assignments but . . . lays highest significance and emphasis on the importance of the students as individuals. Roseboro provides a valuable map for traveling through the challenging world of middle school language arts. She includes descriptions of specific lessons aimed at helping students demonstrate their understandings through writing, speech, music, and art. These lessons develop language skills using library and online research while meeting language arts standards. They use both print and electronic forms. Of particular use to teachers who may not be as familiar with electronic formats as their students are suggestions for incorporating new options for language expression. For example, group or individual video journaling, podcasts, wiki sites, using digital photos to scan drawings, posting on the class or school Web site, etc. YouTube and other video posting Web sites can be a source for fan readings of poetry or literary excerpts that can be downloaded or played directly from the Internet in class. The author reminds readers of the need to establish rules for civil engagement while using electronic formats. Postings can be saved and shown later to provide a record of learning. A rich teacher resource appendix should prove an invaluable aid for implementing these suggestions. Roseboro has truly shown how to address 21st-century literacies. Summing Up: Highly recommended.