This study is situated within a male-dominated Palestinian-Israeli reality rife with issues of gender privilege. With a purpose to disrupt the status quo in my language classroom and positively affect students' beliefs towards gender injustices, I, as a teacher researcher, designed a unit on gender issues including a book set that would challenge…

As a component of dialogic writing response, question posing is an essential strategy for crafting meaningful writing experiences. The author used qualitative content analysis to explore the question-posing feedback provided by eight secondary English teacher candidates in response to literary essays by ninth graders. Findings indicate that…

This article argues that exploration of media coverage of a story like the Boston Marathon bombings, including online comments posted by readers, can support youth in reflecting on and thinking critically about a tragedy while offering opportunities for literacy pedagogy consistent with the goals of the Common Core State Standards for English…

Meaningful discussion helps students develop new knowledge about the world around them. "Progressive discourse" is talk that encourages people to develop a new understanding together. In this article, the author discusses how she used student collaboration to foster progressive discourse and describes assignments that engage her students in group…

A study explored the developing literacy response of adolescents through writing by investigating three characteristics: patterns, individual variations, and the effects of genre on response. Subjects, 7 grade nine students from a small private secondary school on the west coast of Canada, were selected for their wide reading experiences. Subjects…

Describes a reader response study indicating (1) a high degree of agreement on reader beliefs and text events and (2) that students who empathized with a particular character identified the story conflict as pertaining to that character. Suggests specific reader-based and text-based factors that produce convergence and divergence in reader…

Explores how students constructed their own texts and meanings when they were required to read, interpret, and critique unfamiliar text written about underrepresented people. Presents the concepts "conditions,""concessions," and many "tender mercies" of learning through multicultural literature when presented as new literature to a heterogeneous…

Presents several class activities for eighth and ninth graders that explore how different readings of a text are constructed, what values each reading supports, and whose interests it serves. Discusses multiple meanings, constructed readings, dominant and resistant readings, and reading character. (SR)

This booklet of academic standards spells out what students should be able to do in Grade 9 English/Language Arts. The booklet gives examples to help students understand what is required to meet the standards and comes accompanied with a list of 10 things parents can do to help their child get a good education. It outlines the following seven…

Tests a new model of the child's meaning-making process in response to literary text. Finds that the model is not disproved and serves as a valid means for adults to share information and ideas about young peoples' transactions with literary texts. (MG)

Uses reading responses of a ninth grade class and a teachers' study group to examine the social memberships and constituencies that reading and discussion disclose through the response process. Maintains that teachers should base reading lists on an understanding of their own and students' memberships rather than on some abstract notion of…

Discouraged and dissatisfied with their students' responses to a compilation of Arthurian legends, two ninth-grade teachers developed an approach to teaching the legends that exposes students to numerous versions (including those written and illustrated for children) of the legends and allows them to pick their own Arthurian legend for reading and…

Researchers examined cognitive processes used to construct meaning from narrative text in successful and less successful ninth grade readers. A coding system analyzed think-aloud protocols students recorded while reading two stories. Students were primarily story-driven readers. Differences between stories rarely affected their responses.…

Using multiple baseline designs, we studied the effects of having seven 9th graders edit their papers until a naive reader accomplished a drawing assignment during writer immersion (communication in writing only). During Experiment I, students received no feedback in the first phase, teacher editing feedback in phase 2, and writer immersion plus…

Discusses ways in which a teacher new to teaching ninth-grade English and new to the school district lured her "reluctant" readers into a true community of readers. Describes a trip to a local bookstore, building the reading community, writing in response to reading, graphic responses to reading, and oral responses to reading. (RS)