One aim of this article is to shift mindsets from the traditional identification of written language abilities that are "missing" in students with specific learning disabilities (SLDs) to writing assessment as the discovery of more complex language strengths foundational to success across disciplines. The multiple language-levels (MLL)…

This study aimed to describe 1-year changes in students' vocabulary in written narratives. Secondary aims included examination of accuracy and the relationship between lexical diversity and achievement. Participants included 749 students in first through eighth grades. Within-subjects 1-year change in diversity, productivity, and accuracy was…

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), first administered in 1969, is the largest nationally representative and continuing assessment of what the nation's students know and can do in various subjects such as civics, geography, mathematics, reading, science, U.S. history, and writing. The results of NAEP are released as The…

Academic language has been identified as an important focus for instructing students about the quality of written composition they need to be successful in college and career. However, the role of academic language in written composition achievement is not well understood. This study explores the role of academic language skills in students'…

To assess text comprehension and concept mastery, standards-aligned measures have moved from using multiple-choice questions to using source-based writing tasks (sometimes referred to as Reading-to-Write tasks). For example, it is now common for students to be asked to read a text and then to produce a written response, often a summary or…

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is the largest nationally representative and continuing assessment of what the nation's students know and can do in various subjects such as mathematics, reading, science, and writing. The results of NAEP are released as The Nation's Report Card. District staff play an essential role in NAEP.…

Dysgraphia, a specific learning disability, impairs legible and automatic letter production by hand, which can interfere with written composing. The goal of the current study was not to investigate effective methods for teaching self-regulated writing to students with dysgraphia, but rather to investigate their self that is involved in their…

Dysgraphia, a specific learning disability, impairs legible and automatic letter production by hand, which can interfere with written composing. The goal of the current study was not to investigate effective methods for teaching self-regulated writing to students with dysgraphia, but rather to investigate their self that is involved in their…

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is the largest nationally representative assessment of what the nation's students know and can do in subjects such as the arts, mathematics, reading, and writing. The results of NAEP are released as The Nation's Report Card. District staff play an essential role in NAEP. Superintendents and…

This article explores the range of ways two teacher educators and preservice teachers engaged with and learned from writers and their families in town and village schools during a faculty-led study abroad experience in Belize, Central America. During this experience, the authors drew on three guiding principles: engaging in side-by-side writing…

The National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) is the largest nationally representative assessment of what the nation's students know and can do in subjects such as mathematics, reading, science, and writing. The results of NAEP are released as The Nation's Report Card. The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), within the U.S.…

Learning to write in middle school requires the expansion of sentence-level and discourse-level language skills. In this study, we investigated later language development in the writing of a cross-sectional sample of 235 upper elementary and middle school students (grades 4-8) by examining the use of (1) lexico-grammatical forms that support…

Writing about the teaching artist practice should mean writing about art making. As both teacher and artist, the authors are required to be cognizant of their own art-making processes, both how it works and why it is important to them, in order to make this process visible to their students. They also need the same skills to write about how and…

"This Book Is Not About Drama" explores issues around storytelling, silent speech, writing and imagination and shows teachers how to use role play and discussion to build language experiences that are meaningful for learners. This authoritative resource is full of simple strategies that begin with the simple and evolve in to more complex…

The present paper intends to investigate the lexical gap-filling behaviour of primary and secondary Spanish learners of English. When there is a mismatch between the learners lexical knowledge and their communicative needs, then a lexical gap arises. Learners resort to different mechanisms to compensate for that lack of lexical knowledge.…