Internet Research in \"Language Arts and STS,\"

Internet Research

In "Language Arts And STS," Teresa Olson, a 6th grade teacher, discusses her approach to integrating language arts instruction with STS themes. She suggests subscribing to newspapers and periodicals for the classroom rather than new textbooks, as well as using a number of free sources available in most communities.

When she sees an article that is a high-interest STS theme, she designs learning tasks to accompany it that meet a language skill goal targeted for the age group. Olson is quick to point out that this approach does have weaknesses, such as the fact that much of the material cannot be saved for use from year to year. Thus, it requires more work than simply walking through a reading basal series or finding duplicating masters in a teaching store. However, it allows a stronger match to some of the most important factors affecting the development of the reading process. Olson believes that using current mass media sources for reading lessons creates a high interest level for students.

Olson cautions about copyright infringements, but says that most major newspapers have an educational newspaper program, and offer newspapers at a fifty percent reduction price. She also suggests using materials such as shopper's guides, brochures of rental properties, sale brochures, car dealership brochures, government pamphlets, and take-out menus. Olson also includes several examples of lesson plans.

The article was well written and informative. Moreover, it conveyed her enthusiasm and dedication for her work. From reading the article, it is apparent that Olson truly enjoys teaching and takes her work very seriously. Teaching is not merely a job, but a learning experience not only for her class, but for herself as well.

In "The Integration of Social Studies and Language Arts is Long Overdue," Adam Waxler expresses his belief that teaching reading should not be the sole responsibility of the language arts department. According to Waxler, in order for students to become readers who read for understanding, teaching reading should be incorporated into every subject area throughout the system, including elementary, middle, and high school.

Waxler goes so far as to advocate an end to teaching language arts as a separate subject area. As a social studies teacher, he believes social studies can and should be integrated with language arts. He says that he has his social studies class write formal essays, creative stories, poetry, songs, and dialogues. His students also present skits that apply public speaking skills, historical fiction and historical non-fiction. Waxler says he does everything in his class that a language arts teacher does in their class, only he teachers those skills around the historical content that the class is studying.

Waxler says that due to low ELA scores, the focus at the elementary level has been on increasing reading and writing time, however this has come at the expense of social studies and science curriculums. He believes that integrating the social studies and language arts curriculums would solve this problem. He also is convinced that students' comprehension will increase as a result of this integration. Waxler feels that since life is not departmentalized, students should not be forced to learn things in a vacuum, that departmentalizing content areas is in direct conflict to how learning is achieved.