Narrative language skills are important for academic and social success. The ability to produce well-formed and coherent spoken narratives has been shown to be highly correlated with proficient reading and writing (Kirby, Spencer, & Chen, 2021; Spencer & Petersen, 2018; Petersen et al., 2020). The importance of narrative abilities for…

Using case study and cross-case qualitative analyses, the researcher explored the utilization of wordless picture books as mentor texts with young multilingual learners in second grade. Eight students participated in the study and four focus students were highlighted through case studies. The researcher implemented three, 45-minutes lessons per…

My dissertation is structured as follows: introduction, background, methods, findings in the form of a PowerPoint presentation designed for teachers at my school and "Reading Teacher" article, and implications. Introduction: In response to my students underperforming in language arts I developed my research question; How can I use…

Postmodern picturebooks do not follow the established norms of traditional picturebooks and instead invite readers to navigate nonlinear structures and attend to metafictive devices, including counterpoint and multiple narratives, experimental typography, nonlinearity, intertextuality, and ambiguities in meaning. These qualities challenge readers…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between personality traits and effective written expression. The study participants (N = 76) were developing third and fourth-grade students. They produced three short narrative writing samples and responded to questions on a personality inventory. Written expression was measured using…

According to the Common Core Standards Initiative (2024), the English Language Arts writing standards (ELA-WS) are challenging standards designed to ensure mastery of literacy and writing skills. These standards require students to produce written work and images, skills that are reliant on motor development of fine motor and visual motor skills.…

This dissertation study explores the emergence of off-task engagement, in which three Chinese first-graders write mathematically. It seeks the solution to the conflict between the intended mathematics writing and the realized mathematics writing, which ties to the Cartesian rationality dominating mathematics classrooms--that tends to ignore…

Narrative is an important part of how humans make sense of the world and express their thoughts and feelings. For children, stories are the predominant way in which they organize and express ideas and imagination. Hence, stories have a significant role in children's various play activities, especially pretend-play. At around the third to fifth…

This study explores the ways that acts of writing occur and become recognized as "writing" in a kindergarten classroom. Symbolic representations often aligning with the dominance of conventions come to be seen and named as writing as soon as children enter school, therefore influencing how one is seen and named in the classroom space as…

This qualitative collective case study explored the written language development of four grade two students who made accelerated progress in Reading Recovery. The focus was children writing in classrooms--the ways in which their literacy behaviours continued to develop, and the ways in which the classroom context influenced development. The study…

This qualitative narrative inquiry study examined the challenges and opportunities in a writing workshop framework and teachers' perceptions of their role in addressing the inequities of writing instruction in the early grades. The narrative inquiry study examined the contextualized phenomena within writing instruction in early childhood…

This study investigated the understudied area of virtual reality (VR) creation among elementary-aged youth, exploring their engagement in VR creation and the ways in which educators can facilitate this creative process. Using an embedded case study, the researcher examined how the youth visualize writing using the VR creation tool, CoSpaces. To…

We examined spelling errors patterns, cohesive ties, and syntax features in English and Spanish essays written by Spanish-English emergent bilinguals in Grades 1, 2, and 3 (N = 278; 51% female) enrolled in either English immersion or English-Spanish dual immersion programs. In Study 1, we addressed whether students made consistent spelling errors…

Motivational variables, such as writing self-efficacy and writing attitudes, are not emphasized in writing frameworks for developing writers. The purpose of this research study was to extend the research literature on elementary-aged students' writing development by examining the potential mediational role of writing self-efficacy and writing…

This practitioner inquiry dissertation is situated within the context of U.S. education policy that persists in defining literacy as print-based and privileges standardized literacy assessments as the singular measure of what students "know". Decades of literacy research have shown that such orientations to education policy and resulting…