Background/Context: Educators have considered how Minecraft supports language and literacy practices in the game and in the spaces and circumstances immediately surrounding gameplay. However, it is still necessary to develop additional conceptualizations of how children and youth's online and offline worlds and experiences are blurred by and…

In this article, the author discusses composition studies by examining how incorporating "songwriting" into a first-year writing course enables students to begin expressing their own ideas/perspectives, while also developing the ability to create the concise, detailed texts associated with academic writing. The discussion offers a…

This collaborative self-study examines the influence of engagement in the core practices movement on the course designs, instruction, and perspectives of three novice teacher educators at a large mid-Atlantic research university. Through core practices work, we integrated repeated cycles of analysis, practice, and reflection into our courses,…

Purpose: In this article, the author discusses 2 points raised by Kamhi (2014) in his lead article to this clinical forum: (a) the need for speech-language pathologists to consider typical language development as they plan intervention and (b) the importance of addressing complex syntax. Method: A hypothetical scenario of a 7th grade English class…

Every teacher knows the challenge of trying to engage reluctant readers and struggling writers--students whose typical response to a writing prompt is a few sentence fragments scribbled on a sheet of paper followed by an elaborate shrug of the shoulders. The best way to engage less confident readers and writers is to give them something powerful…

This essay explores what the development of writing might look like and how it might take shape in a secondary English classroom. The study problematises current definitions of progress. In direct opposition to standards-driven models, I propose an alternative way of thinking about the development of writers through a series of narrative accounts…

Many of today's adolescents are constantly engaging with information through texting, watching videos, listening to music, and even writing papers. Learning to interact properly with information through writing presents a challenge for the students because they are employing all of these applications at once and believe that they are multitasking…

This article explores and interrogates the common practice of asking students to write personal narratives within elementary English Language Arts classrooms, addressing some of the difficulties that may arise when students are required to share personal details. Using interview and focus-group data from a study of internationally adopted children…

The Common Core State Standards produce a need to understand how digital tools can support literacy instruction. The purpose of this case study was to explore how a language arts teacher's integration of computers and iPads empowered and constrained her and the resulting classroom instruction. Constraining factors included (a) inadequate…

This is an empirical examination of the quality of teacher assignments and student work in Singapore schools. Using a theoretical framework based on principles of authentic assessment and intellectual quality, two sets of criteria and scoring rubrics were developed for the training of expert teachers to judge the quality of assignments and student…

This document presents writing samples that have been annotated to illustrate the criteria required to meet the Common Core State Standards for particular types of writing--argument, informative/explanatory text, and narrative--in a given grade. Each of the samples exhibits at least the level of quality required to meet the Writing standards for…

As a part of the teacher licensure program at the graduate level at The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC), the M.Ed. Licensure candidate is required to complete an action research project during a 3-semester-hour course that coincides with the 9-semester-hour student teaching experience. This course, Education 590 Culminating…