ABSTRACT
As an English language arts teacher, it is important that you think about how reading, writing, speaking, listening, and viewing can be meaningfully and continually integrated rather than treated as separate activities. Even though these activities are addressed in separate standards in the Common Core, effective teaching brings them together in mutually supportive ways. For instance, as students read narratives, drama, poetry, and the whole range of literary and informational genres, they can be invited to engage in the literacy practices of framing events as well as synthesizing and connecting meanings of texts through acquiring knowledge of the conventions-using reading to acquire knowledge and skills that will support their own writing of narratives, drama, poetry, and other genres. And, as they write in different genres, students can use the literacy practices of constructing and enacting identities and creating texts and objects to learn about the techniques writers employ in creating these texts and to subsequently enhance their ability to read, interpret, and appreciate them.
