A key practice of teachers in any discipline is to select a wide range of high quality texts for students to read and view. The quality of the text is determined not only by the content presented in the text but also by how well it matches the pedagogical purpose of the context and the students’ reading abilities.
Through the text set, you will demonstrate your ability to 1) effectively choose young adult materials for the classroom 2) provide an effective rationale for the young adult materials you want to use in a classroom context 3) utilize your creativity when making choosing materials and considering how they can be used to teach various English/language arts concepts and your creativity in encouraging teens to read 4) provide accommodations to students whose first language is not English.
You will select or “curate” a set of 7 different texts according to a chosen concept/theme/inquiry topic/YA lit genre. Examples of themes/concepts might be environment, sports, violence, love, identity, freedom, pain, happiness, coming of age, etc. Examples of YA lit genre might include: nonfiction, realistic fiction, coming of age, etc
These texts are geared for your students to read or view (not for you as the teacher). You are encouraged to define “text” broadly. To ensure a wide range of texts, you will gather a mix of texts that would be of high interest to students in a hypothetical middle or high school ELA learning context. This assignment is also designed for you to focus on researching current educational issues and allow you to consider how the current field of YA Lit is situated to support ESOL/English Language Learners
Your text set must consist of the following (you will be expected to read, watch, etc all of the following):
1. One Middle Grade Level YA Book
2. One High School Level YA Book
3. One Nonfiction Text (book, article, etc)
4. One Classic Middle Grade or High School Level Book
5. One Movie/Video
6. A Three-song playlist for the text set
7. One other text of your choice (a piece of art, a poem, a podcast episode, a photo essay, an interactive visualization, a news article, a primary source like interviews, documents, artifacts)
The purpose of this assignment is to assess your ability to: 1) effectively choose young adult materials for your classroom 2) provide an effective rationale for the young adult materials you want to use in a classroom context 3) choose materials and consider how they can be used to teach various English Language Arts concepts 4) creatively encourage young adults to read 4) provide accommodations to students whose first language is not English.
Your written assignment should consist of 4-6 double-spaced pages that explain:
(1) the theme/concept you chose and how/why you hope your young adult students will connect to it (this includes how you selected the items for the text set and how it fits into your vision for your classroom community and the four qualities of YA pedagogy (see Buehler, Ch.3, p. 53)
(2) the relationship among the various resources and the aspect of the concept represented in each
(3) an example and description of a “classroom task” (see Buehler, Ch. 5) you might use with your text set
(4) an example and description of an assessment (see Buehler, Ch. 6) you might use with your text set
(5) thoughtful accommodations for ESOL students for #4-5 (ESOL Standard 4)
Don’t forget to provide bibliographic information (author, title, publisher, date) for each of the text set items.
