This paper addresses my experience with a group of 11th grade students and their reading of The Grapes of Wrath (1939, 2002) by John Steinbeck. I questioned how the application of visual arts integration strategies, specifically the use of spontaneously created paintings, might influence the reader responses of my high school junior-level…

This book highlights the work of talented writing center teachers who share practices and lessons learned from today's most important high school writing centers. The authors offer innovative methods for secondary educators who deal with adolescent literacy, English language learners, new literacies, embedded professional development, and…

As a topic of concern to educational researchers, writing is enjoying something of a renaissance, particularly with respect to the transition between secondary and post-secondary levels of schooling. In the context of this renewed interest, this article presents a framework for understanding composition that integrates cognitive, textual and…

Recent policy developments in England have, to some extent, relaxed the hold of external, high-stakes assessment on teachers of students in the early years of secondary education. In such a context, there is the opportunity for teachers to reassert the importance of teacher assessment as the most reliable means of judging a student's abilities. A…

Recitations and discussions are two types of interactions which have long been of interest to researchers who study classroom discourse in secondary English and Social Studies. According to research, teachers control the discourse during recitations through "inauthentic" questions requiring pre-specified answers. In contrast, discussions involve…

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) create new common ground for high school-college collaborations through emphasis on expository writing in English language arts (ELA) and writing in content areas across the curriculum. This article, written collaboratively by a composition-rhetoric scholar and a secondary education leadership scholar who…

This document presents the proceedings of the 19th Annual Research Forum held June 26, 2014, at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Included are the following 17 action research papers: (1) Using Voices to Change Minds: Oral Performance and Poetry in the English Classroom (Erika Bunpermkoon), (2) Imagining Audiences: The Use…

This keynote address will discuss the findings and implications stemming from a study of what literacy means for a group of 12 teachers and teacher educators. It will also discuss the factors that have caused the ongoing evolution of these ideas about literacy. Relying on the idea of a "permeable literacy continuum," which uses five…

Effective writing is to some degree characterised by the ability to use complex grammatical structures. However, grammatical complexity is poorly defined in linguistics and related disciplines such as literacy. This empirical study examined the notion of grammatical complexity and its relevance to literacy. Complexity is multifaceted, so for…

The authors have discovered that working in a writing center setting within the classroom provides pre-service teachers with an opportunity not only to work with student writers one-on-one but also to experience a model of best practice in teaching writing. In this article, the authors describe a program, focusing on the partnership they have…

In this study, we describe a framework for monitoring rater performance over time. We present several statistical indices to identify raters whose standards drift and explain how to use those indices operationally. To illustrate the use of the framework, we analyzed rating data from the 2002 Advanced Placement English Literature and Composition…

In this investigation mixed methods were used to examine flow within the context of a writing task. Forty-four secondary students aged between 15 and 18 years completed a computer-based writing task requiring them to examine information and then write on one of two topical issues. We examined the level of agreement between end-of-task ratings…

Teachers can help students discover what they have to say by encouraging revision as an integral part of the writing process. (DD)

Demonstates how students might be asked to write in class instead of doing drills. (DD)