In this article, the researchers employ a linguistically informed approach to close reading that teaches a moral dilemma through an autobiographical short story. The approach, based on systemic functional linguistics, uses genre analysis that can draw students' attention to the structure, vocabulary, and grammar within literary texts, helping them…

The recent unveiling of chatbots such as ChatGPT has catalyzed vigorous debates about generative AI's impact on how learners read, write, and communicate. Largely missing from these debates is careful consideration of how young people are experiencing AI in their everyday lives and how they are making sense of the questions that these rapidly…

Although reading comprehension research and instruction commonly focus on individuals' ability to extract meaning from text, eighth-grade students whose teachers chose to focus on engaged volitional reading, rather than comprehension, demonstrated expansive forms of meaning-making and purpose. Interviews and observations across two school years…

Purpose: This paper aims to propose a critical multimodal framework to understanding pedagogical materials that focuses on not only the verbal or the visual components but also the interaction between the two semiotic resources that constructs power relations as a result of intermodal interaction, and it further provides an example of an in-depth…

The present study examined how 20 sixth-grade students made meaning while reading graphic novels. Participants completed multiple tasks during a 6-week period. Data sources comprised 1 reading survey, 2 teacher-student conferences, 5 small-group discussions, 1 visual stopping points assignment, and multiple journal entries. Grounded theory methods…

Two school leaders and ELA teachers share the process through which they convinced their department to abandon the vocabulary workbooks they had been using for more than 30 years, the collaborative process through which they fostered a new approach, and the initial results of its implementation.

Secondary students with learning disabilities (LD) can benefit from using assistive and instructional technologies to support content and skill acquisition. Digital pens have features that can be beneficial for students who struggle with comprehension, note taking, and organization. Livescribe pens, in particular, provide a variety features that…

This study presents a descriptive analysis of 71 videotaped lessons taught by 34 highly regarded secondary English language arts, history, and science teachers, collected to inform an intervention focused on evidence-based argumentation from multiple text sources. Studying the practices of highly regarded teachers is valuable for identifying…

Although secondary school teachers have long been aware of the pedagogical possibilities of Louise Rosenblatt's Reader Response (articulated first in "Literature as Exploration," 1938) and I. A. Richards' Close Reading (first broached in "The Meaning of Meaning: A Study of the Influence of Language upon Thought and of the Science of…

This qualitative study explores how adolescent high school students in an AP English class used multiple forms of media (the internet, digital video, slide show software, video editing tools, literary texts, and writing) to respond to and analyze a contemporary novel, "The Kite Runner". Using a multimodal analysis framework, the author explores…

This 5-month qualitative study investigates how one high school English teacher situated students as readers and writers within daily, spontaneous classroom interactions. Specifically, the author draws on positioning theory (van Langenhove & Harre, 1999) as a lens to analyze how the teacher navigated improvised responses during three separate…

The Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth (LSAY) program studies the progress of several groups of young Australians as they move from school into post-secondary education and work. Since 2003, the LSAY program has been integrated with the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) conducted by the Organisation for Economic…

This paper reports a small-scale study of wider reading at Key Stage 3 in current English classrooms in secondary schools in the south of England. Six English teachers, three of whom were relatively new to teaching, were interviewed on what they thought about wider reading. The findings indicate that because of a lack of time and absence of demand…