The California Association of School Psychologists (CASP) responds to a critique of the Association's Position Paper: "Specific Learning Disabilities and Patterns of Strengths and Weaknesses" (2014, March. Available: http://casponline.org/about-casp/publications/) by McGill and Busse. The CASP offers corrections to McGill and Busse's…

This study examines the reader-response journals of an English learner (EL) who read two works of historical fiction in his English Language Development class at a public high school in California. Locating this study within the tradition of research on reader response, it investigates how the EL constructs his own individualized meaning by…

This document presents the proceedings of the 25th Annual Research Forum held June 30, 2021, at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Included are the following eighteen action research papers: (1) Using Modern Events to Teach United States History (Charles Ahern); (2) "We Are All ESL Teachers": Culturally and…

This article combines interview data from a group of boys of color at an urban single-sex school and content analysis of "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" and "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" to demonstrate the complexities of readers' responses to literature. Textual relevance, or the ability to construct personal…

In 2007, the United Animal Nations (UAN) launched the Humane Education Ambassador Readers (HEAR), an innovation that focused on mitigation of animal suffering through education. In the HEAR program, adult volunteers read carefully selected story books to children in grades 3-6 in schools or other educational settings, and hold discussions with the…

This essay is just one story in the ongoing conversation of how to approach teaching indigenous literatures in colonial educational institutions. Through sharing her experiences in teaching Richard Van Camp's "The Lesser Blessed," the author hopes to reveal the power of this particular text and the way its effects on students who…

This article presents the author's comments on ""Lake Woebegone," Twenty Years Later" by J. J. Cannell, MD. J. J. Cannell's article on the so-called "Lake Woebegone" effect for K-12 educational testing systems is mostly an historical account of technical issues and policy considerations that led in part to development…

To discover the educational and social implications of identity formation and reader response when using multicultural literature with children in the primary grades, a study analyzed the responses of 110 primary-aged children in central California to eight books that portrayed male and female children from four ethnic groups in America: Asian…

A study explored the storybook reading experiences between Ms. Garza and her children. A broad conception of the zone of proximal development, involving use, adaptation, and transformation of culturally shaped tools in the process of shared activity, provides the framework for examining this particular Mexican-American family's reading behavior.…

The purpose of this document is to help teachers, schools, and districts see clearly the relationship between California's English Language Arts (ELA) and English Language Development (ELD) standards and to design and implement an articulated and integrated system of instruction and assessment for English learners. ELA standards are written by…

A study outlined the processes through which two beginning elementary teachers in the San Francisco Bay area learned to overcome institutional constraints which tended to standardize ethnically diverse students' responses to literature. The study focused specifically on the changes in one teacher's instruction which freed her third/fourth grade…

A study examined whether dramatization exercises generated more interpretive and evaluative thought among students regarding theme and characterization within a short story than traditional methods of answering questions or writing an essay regarding the story. Subjects, 35 junior English students at a suburban southern California high school,…

The language arts component of the California State "Model Curriculum Guides" series, this document sets guidelines for the elementary and middle school English language arts curriculum. The guide suggests a learning sequence--core, integrated, and across the curriculum--and delineates concepts, skills, and activities appropriate for…

Designed to help implement the goals of the California state educational reform movement, this document presents a philosophical and practical framework for a literature based English language arts curriculum that will encourage students to read widely and in depth, write often in many formats, study important writings from many disciplines, and…