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Teaching Language Arts in the Elementary School

December 5

In the News
Books vs. Movies: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1134742,00.html
"In the beginning was the word. Later came the film. And now comes the fight over which is better"

Do Visual, Auditory, and Kinesthetic Learners Need Visual, Auditory, and Kinesthetic Instruction?:
http://www.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/issues/summer2005/cogsci.htm
"How does the mind work—and especially how does it learn? Teachers’ instructional decisions are based on a mix of theories learned in teacher education, trial and error, craft knowledge, and gut instinct. Such gut knowledge often serves us well, but is there anything sturdier to rely on?
Cognitive science is an interdisciplinary field of researchers from psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, philosophy, computer science, and anthropology who seek to understand the mind. In this regular American Educator column, we consider findings from this field that are strong and clear enough to merit classroom application."

Generation Gap: http://www.edweek.org/tm/articles/2005/11/23/1105trends_gap.html
The teaching profession is undergoing a significant “generational shift,” and schools have been slow to adapt to it, says a Harvard professor.

LANES-League for the Advancement of New England Storytelling: http://www.lanes.org/index.html
"The League for the Advancement of New England Storytelling is dedicated to the appreciation and promotion of the art of storytelling in all its aspects: traditional, creative, educational, cultural, personal, and therapeutic."

Lure of the spoken word: http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/news/13317531.htm
"'What's called the dominant culture will fade away as soon as the electricity goes off," predicts poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti in a recent New York Times Magazine interview. He calls readers "an endangered species,' echoing the results of a 2004 survey by the National Endowment for the Arts which tracked a decline in the number of readers of literature. That survey concluded that while fewer than half of American adults read literature, young adults aged 18-24 read the least."

NEA urges bee season for poetry: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05331/611477.stm
" Norman Mailer is 82 and Lawrence Ferlinghetti 86. Their sizable contributions to the nation's literature were duly noted with medals at the National Book Awards ceremony Nov. 16 in New York, Mailer for his lifetime achievements as an author and Ferlinghetti for his support of literature.
Both in traditional tuxedoes, they delivered the same message in their speeches:
Literature is dying. Novels will become "a footnote to our technological and advertising age," warned Mailer.
"Literature is an endangered species," intoned Ferlinghetti."

This site began in March 1998 and was created by Janet Luch.  This page was last updated on December 5, 2005 .
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