Engaging Students in Academic Literacies Genre-based Pedagogy for K-5 Classrooms

The Common Core State Standards require schools to include writing in a variety of genres across the disciplines. Engaging Students in Academic Literacies provides specific information to plan and carry out genre-based writing instruction in English for K-5 students within various content areas. Informed by systemic functional linguistics?a theory of language IN USE in particular ways for particular audiences and social purposes?it guides teachers in developing students? ability to construct texts using structural and linguistic features of the written language. This approach to teaching writing and academic language is effective in addressing the persistent achievement gap between ELLs and "mainstream" students, especially in the context of current reforms in the U.S. Transforming systemic functional linguistics and genre theory into concrete classroom tools for designing, implementing, and reflecting on instruction and providing essential scaffolding for teachers to build their own knowledge of its essential elements applied to teaching, the text includes strategies for apprenticing students to writing in all genres, features of elementary students? writing, and examples of practice.

Contents

Preface
Acknowledgments
Part I: Content and Pedagogy
Chapter 1:  Principles for Practice
Chapter 2:  Teaching and Assessing Writing
Chapter 3:  Language Resources that Support Writing
Part II: Genres
Chapter 4: Genre: Procedures
Chapter 5: Genre: Recounts and Historical Genres
Chapter 6: Genre: Reports
Chapter 7: Genre: Explanations
Chapter 8: Genre: Arguments
Chapter 9: Genre: Fictional Narratives
Part III: Conclusion: Implementing a Schoolwide Academic Genre-based Writing Curriculum
Appendix A
References

María Estela Brisk is Professor, Boston College, USA.