The Tapestry Journal

Editors’ Note | pdf

Deciding When to Step In and When to Back Off: Culturally Mediated Writing Instruction for Adolescent English Learners

Leslie Patterson, Carol Wickstrom, Jennifer Roberts, Juan Araujo, and Chieko Hoki

pp. 1-18 | pdf

Abstract

Culturally Mediated Writing Instruction invites students to take an inquiry stance toward issues of interest and significance—exploring issues, framing questions, gathering information, synthesizing findings into messages, publishing or presenting their findings, and assessing their efforts before moving on to other inquiries. CMWI can be seen as a rich and dynamic landscape of literacy tasks, routines, practices, materials, and dialogues that invites students to ask questions and to look for answers to those questions. Data from four high-school classrooms illustrate that CMWI teachers made interdependent and layered instructional decisions in response to students' needs, and that they provided mediation toward for primary goals or instructional targets: confidence and risk-taking; concept development and content knowledge; skills and strategies for meaning-making; and linguistic awareness and cross-linguistic transfer.

“You Got the Word Now”: Problematizing Vocabulary-Based Academic Language Instruction for English Learners in Science

Katherine Richardson Bruna, Roberta Vann, and Moisés Perales Escudero

pp. 19-36 | pdf

Abstract

With increasing numbers of English Learners enrolling in public schools, teachers of core academic subject area classes are facing the challenge of integrating English language development into instruction. This article describes how teachers' understanding of infusing language into science teaching can shape instructional practices and consequently influence the simultaneous English language development and science learning of English Learner students.

Book Review

Alex Poole, Western Kentucky University

pp. 37-40 | pdf

Text

Lems, K., Miller, L. D., & Soro, T. M. (2010). Teaching reading to English language learners: Insights from linguistics. New York: The Guilford Press.