A number of teachers, authors, and researchers were presented with awards last week during NCTE’s Annual Convention. Here, we will feature some of the awards for books and journal articles and suggest how you can use these publications in your classroom.
Nonfiction: Look to the Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children to find the best nonfiction titles for your students. See the “Children’s Literature Review” in Language Arts to learn more about the 2015 winner: Drowned City: Hurricane Katrina & New Orleans by Don Brown. Learn more about teaching with content-rich nonfiction and informational texts with resources from NCTE and ReadWriteThink.org.
Fiction: The Charlotte Huck Award for Outstanding Fiction for Children was established in 2014 to promote and recognizes fiction that has the potential to transform children’s lives by inviting compassion, imagination, and wonder. The winner for 2016 is Stella by Starlight by Sharon M. Draper. Set in the Depression, bravery battles prejudice when the Ku Klux Klan’s unwelcome reappearance rattles Stella’s segregated southern town.
Poetry: NCTE established its Award for Excellence in Poetry for Children in 1977 to honor a living American poet for his or her aggregate work for children ages 3–13. The most current winner is poet and author Marilyn Singer. She has published over one hundred books for children and young adults in a wide variety of genres. View more from NCTE and ReadWriteThink.org about teaching poetry.
Secondary Classroom: The Paul and Kate Farmer Writing Award is given for articles in English Journal written by classroom teachers. The first winning article is by Chris Gilbert, “A Call for Subterfuge: Shielding the ELA Classroom from the Restrictive Sway of the Common Core”. In this timely article, Gilbert clearly articulates the importance of prioritizing both teacher and student values with regards to selecting of texts and approaching the Common Core. The second winning article, “My Year of Sports” by Jennifer Rossuck looks at how banned books can offer an illuminating glimpse into social constructions of “healthy” and “normal” adolescent development.
Working with Preservice Teachers: The winners of the CEE Janet Emig Award for exemplary scholarship for an article in English Education are Denise N. Morgan and Kristine E. Pytash for their article in English Education, “Preparing Preservice Teachers to Become Teachers of Writing: A 20-Year Review of the Research Literature”. This article attempts to address this gap by presenting a 20-year literature review (1990–2010) of peer-reviewed studies focused on preparing preservice teachers to teach writing.
Multilingualism: The Alan C. Purves Award for an article in Research in the Teaching of English is presented annually to the author(s) of the Research in the Teaching of English article from the previous year’s volume judged as likely to have the greatest impact on educational practice. Robert Jiménez, Sam David, Keenan Fagan, Victoria J. Risko, Mark Pacheco, Lisa Pray, and Mark Gonzales authored “Using Translation to Drive Conceptual Development for Students Becoming Literate in English as an Additional Language”. The article focused on using translation to ultimately improve ELL students’ reading comprehension.
Teacher Leadership: This year the CEL English Leadership Quarterly Best Article Award went to Emily S. Meixner for “Nurturing Teacher Leadership through Homegrown Professional Development“. In this article, the author explains how tuning in to her students’ requests for more specific instruction helped her form meaningful professional learning experiences for her preservice teachers.
Higher Ed: The Richard Ohmann Award for Outstanding Article in College English recognizes an outstanding article published in College English in the past volume year. This year’s winner, Steph Ceraso, authored “(Re)Educating the Senses: Multimodal Listening, Bodily Learning, and the Composition of Sonic Experiences”, challenging us to reimagine how soundscapes can change the writing classroom.
See the NCTE website for information on all of the awards and a complete list of 2015 winners.