Language Arts - Volume 93, Issue 6, 2016

In this article, we examine the multimodal, digital autobiography of Cindy, an eight-year-old student with autism. We first describe the process we went through with Cindy to make her video in an inclusive, general education classroom setting. Then we examine the different modes through which Cindy made meaning in her video, focusing on the ways she used images, sound, titles, and video within the video. We then discuss the ways Cindy exploited certain affordances of multimodality, such as overcoming blocks to verbal communication by recording and editing voiceovers. Finally, we sketch some lessons teachers and researchers might learn from Cindy in terms of working with children with autism in general education language arts classes and in terms of working with all children from an assets-based approach.

We employ Bonny Norton’s idea of investment to explore the ways middle school emergent bilingual students negotiated their language identities during participation in a culturally responsive intervention that draws upon students’ translanguaging practices to improve their English reading comprehension. Students exerted agency by negotiating the ways they were positioned by other students, the research team, and their school. The dynamic nature of their identities highlights the instructional promises and challenges of honoring student agency. We provide a framework for implementing collaborative translation in teachers' classrooms.

The authors present and discuss an instructional strategy—collaborative translation—that builds upon the cultural and linguistic strengths that many bilingual and emerging bilingual students bring to school. Collaborative translation involves six steps: choosing appropriate texts, connecting students to texts, independent reading, sharing the main idea, requesting a translation, and sharing/critiquing those translations. We discuss and explore aspects of collaborative translation to help language arts teachers enact this instructional strategy in the classroom. We view collaborative translation as an important way for teachers to simultaneously teach literacy concepts and support the development of bilingual students.—

The six books brought together in this column provide us with ways to critically consider and re-evaluate our beliefs about inequities in education, e.g., the education of bilingual, bicultural children, and African American children, the tangible challenges associated with urban education, the re-evaluation of reading and writing workshops, and the responsibility of teacher education programs to meet the needs of teachers and schools in today’s educational climate. The texts reviewed in this column go beyond critique to provide the reader with hope. While helping us broaden and deepen our understanding about language, literacy, race, and the education of teachers, they also describe ideas teachers can experiment with and detail the very real and positive impact these ideas can have upon our practices and out students’ learning.—

This children's literature review column presents notable poetry books published in 2015.

For our last issue as editors of Language Arts, we decided to take the opportunity to reflect on our process and journey as Language Arts editors from 2011 to 2016. We share our surprises, favorites, insights, and processes, and along the way, we recall important moves we made as an editorial team. Participating in this conversation are Peggy Albers, Amy Seely Flint, Teri Holbrook, and Laura May. Unfortunately, Caitlin Dooley was not able to participate in the conversation, but she has been an integral member of the team.