RDNG/508 - Adolescent Literature

Course Description

This course focuses on evaluating, selecting, integrating, and understanding adolescent literature in 6th-12th grade classrooms. Participants investigate gender, language, and individual preferences in adolescent literature. Participants analyze various techniques and formats for teaching diverse learners using an array of culturally responsive, age-appropriate, classic, contemporary, and award-winning literature. Participants examine the use of text sets, choice books, technology links, tradebooks, audio books, author studies, performance assessments, and book-to-film features to incorporate across the curriculum.

This graduate course is 4 weeks.

PLEASE NOTE:
Attendance and participation are mandatory in all university courses, and specific requirements may differ by course. If attendance requirements are not met, a student may be removed from the course. Please review the Course Attendance Policy in the Catalog for more information.

This course is not available for enrollment to residents of Alabama, Arkansas, and Kentucky.

Course Objectives

Foundations for Teaching Adolescent Literature; Established and Emerging Genres of Adolescent Literature

• Describe cultural heritage, reader response, and cultural criticism orientation within the context of teaching young adult literature.
• Identify familiarities with exceptional learners and how they encounter the reading of young adult literature.
• Analyze the importance of adolescent reading across a broad range of young adult literature both for pleasure and informational purposes.
• Explain the historical development of young adult literature and the influence of realism.
• Explain how fiction and fantasy genres manipulate time and events to create mystery, tension, and surprise.
• Evaluate the criteria for selecting high-quality, young adult fiction within a variety of genres.
• Identify how to engage students in cultural criticisms in order to critique historical fiction.
• Compare the different types of emerging genres within adolescent literature.

Nonfiction and Contemporary Forms of Adolescent Literature

• Analyze the criteria for selecting texts within nonfiction and contemporary genres, identifying how they relate to Common Core Standards.
• Explain how to use a wide variety of nonfiction texts to determine the trustworthiness and validity of Internet sources.
• Compare contemporary forms of young adult literature.
• Evaluate the importance of students having access to contemporary forms of literature, especially in relationship to canonical texts.

The Study of Adolescent Authors and Literature Types

• Compare the elements of postmodern texts and various strategies for exploring young adult literature.
• Analyze how authors select theme, setting, characters, and plot within young adult literature.
• Examine how authors structure texts and order events within young adult literature.
• Explain the distinction between multicultural and global young adult literature.

Critical Issues in Adolescent Literature

• Examine the ways by which young adult literature may be challenged or censored.
• Evaluate the role that gender plays in the classroom in regard to differences in selecting relevant and culturally responsive literature for all students.
• Identify the role of technology in enhancing and altering traditional literacy classroom practices.
• Differentiate between a variety of strategies for using young adult literature and content area texts in a secondary classroom.

Disclaimers

The University of Phoenix reserves the right to modify courses.

Although our continuing teacher education courses are accepted by some state agencies in the United States toward teacher certifications and endorsements, this may not be the case in all states or foreign jurisdictions. If you plan to use courses for certification or endorsement, please check with your own state agency and your school district for applicability. Continuing teacher education courses are not eligible to apply to degree programs at University of Phoenix. These courses are not eligible for federal financial aid.

Transferability of credit is at the discretion of the receiving institution. It is the student’s responsibility to confirm whether or not credits earned at University of Phoenix will be accepted by another institution of the student’s choice.

While widely available, not all programs are available in all locations or in both online and on-campus formats. Please check with an Enrollment Representative.