In the present study it has been examined how children's creative writing tasks may contribute to teachers' understanding of children's values. Writings of 300 elementary school children about what they would do if they were the boss of The Netherlands were obtained and seemed to reflect different types of values. Most children were concerned with…

Being a critical reader of data is an integral part of being fully literate in today's information age. In this article the authors underscore the interdisciplinary importance of this stance by drawing upon theoretical perspectives from both the fields of language and mathematics. They argue that all texts, including statistical ones, must be…

This narrative inquiry aims to better understand and document how a bilingual Latina preservice elementary teacher's experiences as an immigrant student and English learner (EL) inform the construction of her professional identity and practice as an English language arts (ELA) educator. Although the study participant voices a lack of confidence,…

This article looks at best practices in basic writing instruction in terms of non-traditional audiences and writerly authority. Much conventional wisdom discourages participation in service-learning projects for basic writers because of the assumption that their writing is not yet ready to "go public." Countering this line of thinking, the author…

This article examines how Grade 5 students read and responded to two wordless picturebooks by Istvan Banyai, "Re-Zoom" (1995) and "Zoom" (1995). Analysis of the students' written responses revealed that they wrote about the books' structure and format, as well as their sense/meaning making processes. (Contains 1 figure, 1 footnote, and a list of…

This study explored the apprenticeship of students with high-incidence disabilities into the discipline of history through mediation of a web-based instructional environment, the Virtual History Museum (VHM). Thirteen students with high-incidence disabilities spread across two co-taught classrooms participated. They engaged in two units of…

In this article, the author takes a different approach in teaching U.S. history to young people. His approach is derived from economics but not economics as a long list of concepts embalmed in huge textbooks written for use in Econ 101 and 102. Instead, he suggests, history teachers can do much to improve their instruction by drawing upon a…

The findings in the study suggest "reading-as-the-reader" can improve 5th- and 9th-grade writers' ability to compose descriptive writing consistent with their readers' informational needs. Participants included: 154 writers (78 fifth-graders and 76 ninth-graders) and 52 ninth-grade readers. The study adapted the referential communication design…