New Reviews: Voces English Language Arts

Voces® provides three supplemental, online courses to support English language arts instruction at grades 9 and 10. The courses are ELA Literature Digital Courseware, ELA Full-Spectrum Nonfiction Courseware, and Grammar & Writing. Resources for each course are compatible with interactive whiteboards and LCD projectors and include eBooks and printable materials. Learning List has recently completed reviews of these courses.

ELA Literature Digital Courseware includes full-text selections in short-stories, drama, poetry, novels and novellas, epics, and non-fiction. Lessons begin with a pre-reading activity that provides background on the author and genre, new vocabulary, and a set of open-ended questions to focus students’ thinking. Content includes cross-curricular readings in social studies, math, and science and vivid visual elements, such as artwork, illustrations, photographs, and historical documents. The course provides interactive writing prompts that develop students’ skills in using literary devices (e.g., setting, dialogue). Interactive prompts present a panoramic 360⁰-photograph and ask students to write a response to the image using the specified literary device.

ELA Full-Spectrum Nonfiction Courseware includes units addressing a range of informational texts, such as essays, biographies and autobiographies, speeches, film reviews, research articles, and letters. The course provides cross-curricular readings in social studies and has units addressing media literacy (e.g., documentary films and advertising). Each unit contains an introduction to the genre, several full-text readings and/or excerpts representative of the genre, related activities, and a feature summarizing students’ work and notes for the unit. Readings are accompanied by visual elements, such as artwork, illustrations, and photographs. Units addressing media include television ads and short documentaries.

Grammar & Writing presents instruction in writing, grammar, and punctuation in an engaging format that includes vivid imagery (e.g., zombies), photographs, and videos designed to appeal to high-school students. Writing Instruction addresses the writing process (e.g., prewriting, drafting, revising) and writing for different purposes (e. g., personal, narrative, persuasive, research paper). Grammar units address the parts of speech, parts of the sentence, phrases, sentence structure, verb tenses and voice, subject-verb agreement, and correct usage of pronouns and modifiers. Punctuation instruction covers the range of punctuation marks used in Standard English.

About Voces: Each Voces® title is a complete array of digital resources organized to parallel the organization of the traditional textbooks that schools already use. They are called digital courseware because students and teachers access them by any type of electronic device, such as computers, tablets, laptops, and smartphones – accessible anywhere there is Internet. Voces takes full advantage of the digital potential with video, audio, interactive reinforcement games, and an abundance of illustrations to enhance a complete text. Voces Digital Courseware is created as a tool for use by classroom teachers.