This textbook book is an English course intended for use during the seventh and eighth grades and provides for study along both lines of language work, grammar and composition. The book includes a section on dictionary use. The final chapter is devoted to word analysis and was designed especially for the benefit of that great majority of grammar…

Grounded in integrated and excerpt style (Emerson, et al., 1995), this article chronicles Mr. Lehrer, an English teacher who provides his students access to standard and nonstandard writing conventions. Student writing samples and discursive practices illustrate enhanced awareness of distinctions between nonstandard language (African American…

The spin on Frazer School Librarian Laurie LeFever's entry for Syracuse University's 2007 E*LIT competition is what made her school literacy project for children with disabilities really unique. Instead of working with students to create a project that would be targeted toward children with disabilities, she actually used students with…

This textbook book is an English course intended for use during the seventh and eighth grades and provides for study along both lines of language work, grammar and composition. The book includes a section on dictionary use. The final chapter is devoted to word analysis and was designed especially for the benefit of that great majority of grammar…

Writing comes to life when students remember to watch for and express detail--name names. Examples from favorite authors, classroom exercises and discussion, and practice with absolutes and appositives all support students as they focus the "camera" on vivid descriptive elements. (Contains 3 figures.)

Middle school students are often asked to reflect on what they read by writing in journals or writing analytic essays. Another approach is to compile multigenre papers. Seventh-grade students each created a booklet containing 10 items in different genres, based on "A Single Shard" by Linda Sue Park. Students also wrote reflections explaining how…

The transitions that occur throughout elementary, middle school/junior high and the world of high school require significant growth and change for learners. Throughout students' educations, literature and writing processes introduce them to an increased demand for mature thinking skills. Involvement with literature builds upon previous reading…

A previous study (Wallace, Yang, Hand, & Hohenshell, 2001) indicated that seventh-grade life science students using a learning tool known as the Science Writing Heuristic (SWH) performed significantly better on conceptual test questions than did a control group. In the present study, the researcher studied more deeply how students utilized a…

This paper reports on a study conducted with children belonging to a rarely studied minority group, the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in Israel, an extremely religious group that endorses patterns of voluntary segregation. The research population also demonstrates linguistic segregation, as they use only Yiddish for daily communication with…

Science laboratory activities within secondary science have traditionally followed prescriptive outlines both in the structure and reporting of the activity. Building on current understandings of writing to learn science strategies, a Science Writing Heuristic has been developed that encourages students to examine laboratory activities much more…

This article describes an investigation with a class of seventh graders to determine what impact the study of traditional literature would have on their narrative writing. The classroom teacher emphasized the narrative structure of the traditional literature genre by prompting his students to respond both orally and in writing with their thoughts…