EDU 37000 - Language Arts & Reading I

This course broadens students’ knowledge of the theoretical and scientifically based reading research to enhance literacy practices throughout the preprimary and primary childhood years. This course will cover structured literacy by emphasizing literacy practices which engage children in integrated, meaningful, and authentic literacy activities, all rooted in best practice teaching strategies and explicit and systematic instruction. Experiential learning in a classroom setting required.

Cr. 3.
Student Learning Outcomes
1. Explain how most people learn to read, how reading acquisition differs from language acquisition, and how writing systems differ from oral language systems.
2. Cite evidence and give practical examples showing how phonemic awareness affects attaining the alphabetic principle, decoding and spelling development, and storage and retrieval of spoken words, and that learning to read affects aspects of language processing, including the extent of phonemic awareness and precision of phonological representations of words in our mental dictionaries.
3. Explain major research findings regarding the contribution of environmental factors to the prediction of literacy outcomes (e.g., language spoken at home, language and literacy experiences, cultural values).
4. Identify the most salient instructional needs of students who are at different points of reading and writing development.
5. Explain the importance of code-emphasis instruction in the early grades and language comprehension once word-recognition skill is established; recognize that vocabulary and other aspects of oral language development must be nurtured from the earliest grades through reading aloud and classroom dialogue.
6. Explain the importance of code-emphasis instruction in the early grades and language comprehension once word-recognition skill is established; recognize that vocabulary and other aspects of oral language development must be nurtured from the earliest grades through reading aloud and classroom dialogue.
7. Administer and interpret informal (e.g., not norm-referenced) diagnostic surveys and inventories for the purpose of pinpointing a student’s strengths, weaknesses, and instructional needs in the following areas: Phonological sensitivity (in preschool) and phonemic awareness (in kindergarten and later); Accuracy and fluency of letter naming, letter formation, alphabet knowledge; Phonics and application of introductory and advanced phonics to spelling and word reading; Oral passage reading fluency and comprehension; Silent passage reading comprehension and recall; Listening comprehension and recall; Morpheme recognition, interpretation, and spelling; Automatic recognition of high-frequency words; Writing performance (punctuation, capitals, syntax, organization, content, spelling, vocabulary).
8. Identify the principles and lesson elements of explicit and teacher-directed lessons for individual or small-group instruction: explain, model, lead, provide guided practice, assess, review.
9. Identify the characteristics of systematic teaching that gradually and cumulatively build students’ skills from easier to more difficult.
10. Explain the limits of whole-class instruction, and cite research indicating the merits of small-group instruction for homogeneously grouped students.
11. Know grade and developmental expectations for students’ writing in the following areas: mechanics and conventions of writing, composition, revision, and editing processes.