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To the consternation and dismay of its critics, the 12-year basic education program is now in full swing in the Philippines. The concerns over the implementation of this purportedly neoliberal educational policy have included the displacement of education workers, the perennial shortage of school facilities (especially in the public schools), and financial impact on low-income families. There has also been a concern over the ostensibly western orientation of the country's educational system because of colonialism. However, as this paper argues, there are also spaces for an empowering and critical pedagogy as defined by Paulo Freire. The principles of critical pedagogy, for instance, can be deployed through the inclusion of non-canonical and insurgent literature in at least two new courses in the curriculum--21st Century Literature from the Philippines and the World and Creative Nonfiction. One particular example of such literature is the testimonial narrative or testimonio, a first-person narrative about experiences of abuse and other forms of injustice. The paper includes a survey of studies that foreground the use of testimonios in education, and argues that the same strategy can be used in the Philippines' new curriculum. The use of testimonios in literature and other disciplines may constitute an attempt at locating alternative knowledges and cultural modalities while surfacing the narratives of Philippine society's marginalized sectors.

Dr. William Alexander, a noted curriculum authority and a central founder of the middle school movement, shared in a presentation in 1963 that teachers must have a goal of stimulating a "love for learning, an attitude of inquiry, a passion for truth and beauty, a questioning of mind." He asserted, "Learning the right answers is not enough, beyond answers alone, we must help children ask the right questions, and discover their answers through creative thinking, reasoning, judging, and understanding." Alexander's ideals have been influential in the development of the Association for Middle Level Education (AMLE) position paper, "This We Believe." This article responds to "This We Believe" by describing one attempt to develop a challenging and integrated curriculum. It also responds to the Common Core State Standards by describing how authentic literature can be used with instructional strategies to support learning across the curriculum. A brief review of related literature is shared. Next, instructional strategies to use with authentic literature are presented. The article concludes with final thoughts about using authentic literature to develop challenging and integrated curriculum. The hope is that this article will help teachers and students create new passions for authentic literature because when students have passion to read, they have passion to learn. Figure 1 provides examplars of authentic literature.

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Presents the non-fiction book 'The South Carolina Rice Plantation: As Revealed in the Papers of Robert F. W. Allston,' edited by J. H. Easterby.

This paper describes the visuals second grade students included in their own information book compositions during a science unit on weather during which multimodal science trade books on the topic of weather were read aloud. First, the multimodal nature of the information books used in the unit are described. Second, the teacher's talk about visual representations during read alouds of books on weather is presented. And third, the children's own information books about weather topics are examined for inclusion of labeled pictorial illustrations with accompanying captions and graphical representations. These analyses reveal that 1) information book authors vary in their use of visual information, 2) some graphics may be more salient for children, and 3) children's use of pictorial illustrations and graphical representations in their own compositions seems to be impacted by both teacher attention to particular types of visual representations and immersion in information book graphics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Travel literature intends to put to record usually the personal experiences of an author touring a place for the pleasure of travel or intentionally for the purpose of research transgressing the cultural, social, racial, ethnic, religious and gender based boundaries that exist among humanity. Travel writing is another genre that has, as its focus, accounts of real or imaginary places. The genre encompasses a number of styles that may range from the documentary to the evocative, from literary to journalistic, and from the humorous to the serious. It is a form whose contours are shaped by places and their histories. Critical reflection on travel literature, however, is a relatively new phenomenon. Moreover in this context, India remains a land of deserts, mountains and plains in most imaginations. Only a few of the stories about India explore its vast rivers actually mention its coasts. This paper aims at exploring an Indian journalist turned writer, Samanth Subramanian's nonfiction, Following Fish: Travels Around The Indian Coast (2010). In this attempt, he observes the cosmopolitanism and diverse influences absorbed by India's coastal cities, the withdrawing of traditional fishermen from their craft, the corresponding growth of fishing as pure and voluminous commerce, and the degradation of waters and beaches from over-fishing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Composing with different modes - image, sound, video and the written word - to respond to and analyze literary and informational text helps students develop as readers and digital communicators. This article showcases five multimodal strategies for engaging children in rich literature-based learning using digital tools and Internet resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A question being asked by teachers across the country is, How can I teach students to acquire both the skills and knowledge demanded by the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) while simultaneously guiding them to read challenging texts such as those presented in Appendix B of the CCSS? Answering this invites the integration of ideas and the innovation of novel instructional plans. Illustrating close reading procedures in two classrooms- one 1st grade and one 5th grade- this article provides an answer by detailing the manner in which a student might approach a challenging science text using annotated reading, partner talk, text-based questioning and reflective writing to build competence and a capacity for reading, writing, listening, and speaking about informational texts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Common Core State Standards place unprecedented emphasis on visual text-appropriately so, as visual components are increasingly ubiquitous in many kinds of text. This shift in emphasis requires substantial changes in our teaching. Concepts of print need to be expanded to include concepts of graphics, and specific graphical devices, such as diagrams, timelines, and tables, need to become the focus of systematic instruction. This article shares research-based instructional practices that may support children's development in this increasingly important area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People who have impacted generations have left legacies we can explore today through biographies. The 5L instructional design introduced in this article includes five components: Listen, Learn, Locate, Link, and Legacy. In the 'Listen' section, teachers use storytelling and read-alouds to introduce individuals who shaped history. During the 'Learn' component, each student selects a historical figure and, using print and online sources, examines his or her life. In the 'Locate' portion of the design, students use graphic organizers to locate and record important events in the person's life alongside related world events or cultural opportunities of the period. In the 'Link' component, students connect with someone else to share their work and receive feedback and questions. The final section, 'Legacy,' encourages students to consider the financial, intellectual, social, or other kind of legacy left by the historical figure as well as the legacies they themselves want to leave the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article tells the story of one second grade teacher and the ways she integrated informational texts into her classroom. Reported by the classroom teacher and a researcher who studied her practice for a year, the manuscripts details the ways Michelle (the classroom teacher) embedded informational texts in her classroom primarily within the context of inquiry. The two authors first report on the ways Michelle integrated informational texts across the school day and school year, and then present in more detail one inquiry unit on habitats. The authors conclude by arguing that that learning about informational texts is most productive when embedded within inquiry-focused classrooms engaged in learning from informational texts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes how one teacher implemented a memoir genre study in her sixth grade classroom using a writing workshop approach. It begins by outlining the author's philosophy and rationale for teaching writing in this manner. This is followed by a discussion of how one could organize one's classroom for a memoir genre study. Several significant mini-lessons are then described which focus on brainstorming, planning, developing effective titles, leads and conclusions, structuring a memoir texts, the use of the senses in memoir writing and strategies for revision. The aim of this article is to equip practitioners with the practical knowledge they need if they are seeking to implement a memoir genre study in their elementary school classroom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]