A collaborative partnership was developed within a school division, inner-city school and nearby daycare to provide an intervention program for children in nursery school and kindergarten known to be at-risk for school success. The plan was to offer an additional half-day of programming focused on a whole-child vision including language, literacy,…

Boys' attitude to writing is widely perceived as an issue in English primary and secondary schools. Prior research has identified a link between negative attitudes to writing and lower achievement and raised the issue of the stereotyping of boys as underachievers in literacy. The study reported here suggests that if we are to understand the…

This study examined the impact of a mobile-based writing intervention with embedded self-regulated learning strategies on the persuasive writing performance and perceived self-efficacy beliefs of fifth-grade struggling writers in five inclusive classrooms. In addition, the study examined the impact of adult feedback on the writing performance and…

The primary focus of this study was to determine the feasibility of teacher implementation of peer-assisted writing strategies (PAWS) in improving the writing outcomes of kindergarten children. Six classrooms were recruited, and 3 were randomly assigned to the experimental condition. Results indicated that the content, length, and formatting of…

The Houston Independent School District offers two different English as a Second Language (ESL) programs for language minority students. One of these is a Content-Based ESL (CBESL) program where ESL methodology is used to deliver English instruction across a variety of subject areas. The second is a Pullout ESL program (PO-ESL) where students…

The aim of this study was to measure the impact of the overall school facility condition for traditional Colorado elementary schools, according to Colorado's Facilities Conditions Index (FCI), on student achievement, as measured by the Colorado Student Assessment Program (CSAP). Control variables included Special Education (SPED), English Language…

As writing is a complex and resource demanding task, high-quality writing instruction is indispensable from primary grades on to support beginning writers in developing effective writing skills. Writing research should therefore provide teachers and schools with evidence-based guidelines for teaching writing in daily practice. In this respect, the…

The purpose of this explanatory sequential mixed methods study was to explore elementary students' (N = 263) salient experiences with writing and the ways in which their perceptions of teacher writing instructional enthusiasm relate to writing success. In the quantitative phase, we examined how student perceptions of teacher and peer enthusiasm…

In this study, the effect of writing attitude and writing self-efficacy beliefs on the summarization achievement of the 4th grade primary school students was examined using the structural equation modeling. The study employed the relational survey model. The study group constructed by means of simple random sampling method is comprised of 335…

This memorandum presents results from a scan of states' English language arts (ELA) standards for writing, with specific attention to references of cursive writing. This work was conducted by the Center on Standards and Assessment Implementation (CSAI). Using information posted on public web sites for each state and the District of Columbia, the…

A comprehensive, statistical review of gender differences in verbal performance has not been conducted in several decades and the majority of previous work on this topic used published studies that often include small, non-representative samples. The introduction of national legislation in US public schools required schools to assess and publicly…

Writing is a complex academic task--it involves numerous mental processes. Given the necessity for developing writing skills from elementary to secondary school, this study aimed to investigate the role of broad cognitive abilities derived from the Cattell-Horn-Carroll (CHC) theory of intelligence in predicting skills associated with writing…

Our study tested whether learning is shaped by fundamental cognitive and motivational forces in the academic domain of writing. We examined whether strategic writing behavior and motivation (attitudes toward writing and self-efficacy) made a statistically significant and unique contribution to the prediction of writing quality and number of words…

Background: College- and career-ready standards cite the "special place of argument writing" in preparing students to be college students, professionals, and engaged citizens in an information-rich society (NGA, 2010). To support these critical skills, the National Writing Project (NWP) developed the College, Career, and Community…

In most assessments of students' argumentive writing and in most research on the topic, students write on topics for which they have no specific prior preparation. We examined development in the argumentive writing urban middle school students did as part of a two-year dialogic-based intervention in which students engaged deeply with a series of…