Graduate Courses at the University of Wisconsin – Madison

Literacy Across the Curriculum
Summer 2010 and Spring 2011
This course explores how reading specialists, literacy coaches, and other educators can support literacy across the curriculum in secondary schools. Students will focus on how to make connections between students’ culturally valuable ways of knowing and communicating and the discipline-specific Discourses. This will include discussions of how to meet the needs of English language learners.

Literature and Literacy
Fall 2009
Literature and Literacy investigates how literature across the curriculum can facilitate hands-on learning, critical thinking, and classroom discussion.  Students will learn how to select and implement print and digital texts into the secondary classroom that are culturally informed, sensitive, and relevant to children’s interest in and interpretation of literature.

Literacy and Language Development
Fall 2008 and Fall 2010
This course examines balanced approaches to the teaching of literacy at the elementary level, sociocultural aspects of literacy learning, and new literacies engendered by a digital age.  Included in this course is a project that asks students to conduct action research within the context of their own classroom.

.

Undergraduate Courses at the University of Wisconsin – Madison

The Teaching of Reading
Spring 2011
This methods course is part of the literacy semester and it investigates the theories, research and practices involved in reading instruction in order to prepare pre-service teachers to design elementary and middle school curriculum. Drawing on a balanced literacy approach, this course situates reading within a sociocultural view of language and learning.  Students learn how to design and implement a variety of reading assessments, interpret results, and plan interventions.  There is a focus on meeting the needs of diverse learners, including English language learners.

Language and Literacy Across the Secondary Curriculum
Spring 2010
Language and Literacy Across the Secondary Curriculum explores how content area teachers can foster middle school and high school students’ reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills. There is a focus on process approaches to learning, classroom discourse, and the use of digital tools.  As part of this course, pre-service teachers engage in action research at their practicum site.

The Teaching of Children’s Literature
Spring 2010
This course is part of the literacy semester and is designed to help pre-service elementary teachers plan ways of sharing, discussing, and using literature that are culturally informed, sensitive, and relevant to children’s interests in and interpretations of literature. The course is designed to foster social justice education and propels pre-service teachers toward developing strategies to address issues of equity through literacy.

Young Adult Literature for Schools
Spring 2009
Young Adult Literature for Schools examines the theory and practice of teaching young adult literature and other media in secondary schools. In addition, issues of selection, censorship, and publishing trends are addressed.

Elementary Teaching Practicum
Fall 2008, Fall 2009, and Fall 2010
This involves the supervision of practicum students enrolled in the elementary education program at several field sites. In addition, weekly seminars provided a space for practicum students to discuss issues related to elementary education.

.

Post-Baccalaureate Courses at Concordia University Wisconsin

Language Arts Development and Strategies
Spring 2009
This course offers pre-service elementary teachers a comprehensive perspective on language arts development, including phonemic awareness and phonics methodology, strategies for classroom instruction, and accommodations for a wide range of learners. This is a required course for the accelerated elementary teacher certification program.

Teaching Writing
Spring 2009
Teaching Writing examines both the theory and practice of teaching writing in schools, with a focus on the middle grades. Pertinent units of study include research writing, expository writing, narrative writing, state standards and assessment, instructional strategies for use with writing, the writing conference, and working with exceptional writers.