Foundational skills are often viewed as necessary components for automaticity in reading and writing. In this study, we draw on teacher interviews to explore what secondary English/language arts teachers identify as necessary language for successful school writing. Findings suggest that teachers believe White mainstream English is a necessary…

Grammar instruction and its role in writing proficiency have been the subject of long-standing controversy in literacy instruction. While traditional grammar instruction has been proven ineffective, many teachers still implement this approach due to a familiarity with the method or an insecurity in their grammar knowledge. Research instead points…

Why aren't English teachers creative writers? Why is there little to no emphasis on creative writing in ELA classes? What are the implications of popular media portrayals of the writer on students' perception of writing? In my classroom practice, I encouraged a variety of writing styles that allowed students to grow as readers, but, more…

With some innovations brought by the age of technology and science, storytelling has also gained different dimensions. Digital storytelling has emerged with the addition of elements such as sound, video, image, effect and music to traditional storytelling and sharing these stories on digital media. In this study, it was aimed to determine the…

When English Language Arts (ELA) students are not engaged in ELA coursework, they miss out on opportunities to practice reading, writing, speaking, listening, and--most importantly--critical thinking. The purpose of these two cycles of Action Research was to investigate the authentic pedagogies of ELA teachers at Ryken private preparatory school…

A widespread instructional practice in the teaching of argumentative writing is the use of writing samples or models during instructional conversations about what counts as "good argumentative writing." In this article, we focus on a set of lessons in a high school English language arts classroom in order to gain insight into how a…

"College readiness" has become a national buzzword in light of efforts to improve high school students' ability to successfully transition into postsecondary settings. One component of this transition that has long been an area of concern is students' readiness for college writing. Numerous stakeholders have weighed in on the question of…

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation invested in the Literacy Design Collaborative (LDC) as one strategy to support teachers' and students' transition to the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in English language arts. This report provides an early look at the implementation of LDC in eighth-grade history/social studies and science classes in two…

This dissertation describes and analyzes the academic language socialization of culturally and linguistically diverse adolescents through a multi-case ethnographic study of high school writing instruction in California. I argue that there is a significant gap between the norms for writing in English language development classes and those in the…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the challenges faced by first-year students as they negotiated the transition from the writing environment of high school to the writing environment of university. The research for the dissertation was undertaken using a mixed-method explanatory design. This yielded a description of students'…

A random sample of language arts, social studies, and science high school teachers (N = 361; 53% women) from the United States were surveyed about what their students wrote, their use of evidence-based writing practices, the adaptations they made for weaker writers, how they assessed writing, their preparation to teach writing, beliefs about the…

This paper reports on Year 1 of a two-year study of implementing new literacies strategies into social studies and English/language arts content areas in two low-performing middle schools (grades 6-8). Situated within a New Literacies Studies framework, the study addressed three overarching questions: (1) What are teachers' and students'…

Of 493 English teachers surveyed, 114 responded to questions concerning their attitudes about teaching writing skills, problems they faced in teaching writing, methods used to teach writing skills, amount of time spent in teaching writing skills, and the students' writing abilities. (NQ)

To ascertain what type of environment exists in elementary classrooms in the United States to stimulate oral language, questionnaires were mailed to 500 classroom teachers. Data from the 412 respondents indicated that 83% believed their college courses in language arts had not prepared them to encourage the development of children's language, and…

Discusses activities of emergent preschool writers and editors involved in the Writing Table Project at the Child and Family Center of the University of Nevada at Reno. (BB)