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…

With a sample of 7,752 fourth- to seventh-grade students in 25 schools which were randomized at the school level to condition, this article reports experimental impacts of an enhanced version of Word Generation on student outcomes at the end of Year 1 and of Year 2. Word Generation employs analysis, synthesis, critique, and problem-solving…

Word Generation (WG) is a research-based vocabulary program for middle school students designed to teach words through language arts, math, science, and social studies classes. The program consists of weekly units that introduce 5 high-utility target words through brief passages designed to spark active examination and discussion of contemporary…

Despite a longstanding awareness of academic language as a pedagogically-relevant research area, the construct of academic language proficiency--understood as a more comprehensive set of skills than just academic vocabulary--has remained only vaguely specified. This study examines the potential--for both research and practice--of a more inclusive…

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…