Preservice teacher candidates acquire and develop numerous competencies in their teaching programs, including how to teach writing. Effective writing instruction is critical across all ages and content areas, especially when working with students with and at risk of emotional and behavioral disorders, making it an important aspect of teacher…

Research shows that cognitively demanding text-based writing assignments increase students' reading comprehension skills and analytic writing competencies. In this article, we describe the steps that upper-elementary grade teachers can take to develop cognitively demanding assignments that build these higher-level literacy skills and put students…

Expectations for high-level academic writing, especially in the Common Core era, have never been higher. Middle school and high school students are being asked to do close readings of complex texts and then respond in writing using academic discourse. This is a challenging task for many students, but perhaps none as great as for English language…