Participation in the Virginia Capstone Academy

Anne & Christine are participating in the Virginia Capstone English Academy: http://education.wm.edu/centers/sli/surn/Capstone/index.php.  On August 8-9 2011, 50 high school from across the state and 10 university English educators from the College of William and Mary and James Madison University met at William and Mary to start designing a high school elective course for students to help them further develop the skills needed to succeed in college and in careers. The course will help students to develop their critical reading, thinking, writing, and speaking skills. The educators will return to William and Mary on November 7th, 2011 and March 19th, 2012.  At the first Capstone workshop, Anne & Christine presented a general overview of our work and gave insights about how language variation is key to the secondary English classroom. In addition, we also directly modeled exercises from the first book that emphasize the transfer and transition of English skills from the high School English class to collegiate notions of writing across the curriculum. We noted the role that linguistics and research and courses at the intersection of language, literacy, and culture can play in this process.