District leaders in a large urban school district in central Florida wanted to test the efficacy of a new curriculum designed to enhance the word knowledge of grade 5 students so as to improve reading achievement. The new curriculum, called Word Knowledge Instruction (WKI), consists of 15-minute lessons taught 4 days a week for 20 weeks. The…

A surprising conversation with her young daughter inspired author Brandie Bohney to incorporate mentor texts to help students make sense of convention rules. Since struggling and reluctant readers tend to also be struggling and reluctant writers, the author designed activities that would concentrate on the conventions students most needed to…

Writing and writing clearly is a highly complex activity that requires the coordination of several processes and subprocesses for it to be effective and purposeful. Across those demands, syntax and the ability to express ideas with clarity can significantly affect a writer's ability to communicate (Berninger, Nagy, & Beers, 2011) and the…

The reemergence of grammar instruction in the Common Core State Standards has likely left teachers confused. On the one hand, they have been told repeatedly that grammar instruction does not improve student outcomes, and can, in fact, be "harmful" to students. However, on the other hand, many Anglophone countries, including the United…

Disciplinary literacy is defined here as the ability to engage in social, semiotic, and cognitive practices consistent with those of content experts. Characterizing literacy development as a process of braiding 3 language strands of everyday language, abstract language, and metaphoric language, this article describes the lexical and grammatical…

This article describes an integrated, 10-day unit that was designed using the sport education model in physical education. English language arts and social responsibility were integrated into a unit of table tennis in fifth-grade physical education. The student roles were adapted to best fit the needs of the unit. Through the integration of three…

This article explores the complexity of learning the literacy practices and conventions in the discipline of English language arts. Literacies are explored in the areas of writing/composition, reading/literature, and language/grammar, with attention to the situated nature of proper expression and understanding with respect to each. The author…

As a teacher of Bowling Green State University's English 3810, Grammar and Writing, the author is charged with teaching future language arts teachers how to teach grammar so that it actually helps their students become better writers and communicators. Because such teaching rejects the ineffective but time-honored drill-it-and-kill-it approach, in…

The authors, former middle and high school English teachers, review the rationale for using humor and fun in the classroom and provide detailed descriptions for teaching practices and activities that confer enjoyment and learning for language arts students. Although fun activities, these methods foster vocabulary development, grammar instruction,…

In "Dialogic Origin," Mikhail Bakhtin -- as teacher-researcher and theorist -- presents readers with a remarkable essay on teaching grammar and style to 7th-year students (roughly equivalent to 10th graders in the U.S. educational system). In doing so, Bakhtin employs some of his most notable concepts (among them dialogism and "hero") as informing…

The article illustrates how basic skills in penmanship, spelling, and grammar can be learned while simultaneouly developing rapport between disabled writers and their instructors. (SW)

Discusses approaches for helping upper elementary-age children learn about words through integrated study of spelling, grammar, and meaning. Describes what word study is, discusses word study in an integrated language arts unit (providing several examples), and offers reasons for including word study in a language arts program. (SR)

This is an extended summary of a pedagogic essay by Mikhail M. Bakhtin on writing style, titled "Dialogic Origin and Dialogic Pedagogy of Grammar: Stylistics as Part of Russian Language Instruction in Secondary School." In this essay, written in spring 1945 while Bakhtin was a secondary school teacher of Russian language arts, he argues that every…

As a new faculty member, the author was invited by colleagues to help protect a resource they believed was essential to their instructional program. The importance of teaching grammar in a didactic fashion as a precursor to student writing constituted an unchallenged belief in the department. Faculty members were committed to the notion that…

Fifteen teaching suggestions are offered for elementary language skills activities. The focus is on developing proficiency in sentence completion, alphabetizing, story telling, writing, describing, listening creatively, spelling, and expanding language comprehension. (JD)