Teachers in any discipline where reading matters should practice a robust scaffolding pedagogy to teach critical reading, in contrast to the more common but less direct approaches that often leave students to learn or not learn these skills themselves. In this essay, I describe how to adapt established methods for teaching writing (including…

The elementary grades provide a rich context for literacy and science learning. Reading, writing, and talk support students' conceptual understanding of and engagement with science. The authors provide theoretical and research evidence to support the teaching of five instructional strategies that can facilitate literacy and science learning in…

This study explores literature reading and reception of narrative texts among Swedish middle school students. Through a written assignment and a think-aloud protocol, students' comprehension and interpretation of narrative texts are investigated. The study shows that Swedish middle school students tend to focus mainly on the plot. The main…

Despite strong support for integrating reading and writing instruction, writing practice is often crowded out of the schedule in elementary classrooms. To promote increased emphasis on writing, a working group of literacy researchers highlights three writing goals and six research-based reading-to-writing practices to enliven instruction with more…

This study explores the pedagogical effectiveness of assignments developed for a first-year composition course to encourage reflexive reading habits that can aid students in the writing process. Students in this course were asked to articulate the connections they found between multimodal texts of their own choosing and texts assigned by their…

Abstract Educators are encouraged to engage military veterans enrolling in college in the use of "expressive writing" and related assignments as curriculum interventions to assist these student veterans in their transition from military to civilian life. This article describes semester-long studies conducted in 2015, 2016, and 2017 in…

Reading is seen by many as an essential ingredient for learning to write. Is the relationship between reading and writing reciprocal? Does the path to better reading involve becoming a good writer? The answer to these questions presents a paradox. One does not have to learn to write in order to learn to read, as learning how to write or type words…

Proficient writers spend substantial time planning for writing, and that planning begins with analyzing the writing task. They spend time considering the topic, the audience and its needs, and the genre and form of the writing. This rhetorical analysis helps them set goals, orient their attention, and get organized. Task analysis can also help…

This study was conducted in the province of Québec, Canada, among French-speaking Grade 6 students (n = 175) in the context of a school curriculum that does not clearly address text structure and main idea instruction. It aims to understand whether these students can identify informative text structures and main ideas in isolated paragraphs,…

This course design describes a 3-credit, two-week intensive Stretch and Studio Practicum course at the University of New Mexico (UNM). Because the Stretch and Studio composition curriculum is designed to help students who may be at greater risk of not succeeding, instructors are required to complete the practicum before teaching in the program.…

The present empirical study scrutinizes the use of short stories via computer technologies in teaching and learning English language. The objective of the study is two-fold: to examine how short stories could be used through computer programs in teaching and learning English and to collect data about students' perceptions of this technique via…

In the course overview, the authors state that this course prepares those who enroll to teach Stretch and Studio Composition at the University of New Mexico by introducing relevant theory and pedagogy in the areas of basic writing, multilingual writing, metacognition, and reading instruction. While the English 537: Teaching Composition Practicum…

This piece focuses on increasing writing instruction for secondary English teacher candidates in the form of integrating reading and writing. Often, teacher candidates are not sufficiently prepared in university coursework to teach writing and are left to rely on formulaic writing that merely prepares their students for the end-of-year tests.…

Research shows that cognitively demanding text-based writing assignments increase students' reading comprehension skills and analytic writing competencies. In this article, we describe the steps that upper-elementary grade teachers can take to develop cognitively demanding assignments that build these higher-level literacy skills and put students…

This descriptive case study examines preservice teachers' beliefs about themselves as teachers of reading as they develop identities for teaching through experiences in a Foundations of Literacy course and their tutoring relationships with elementary students during an accompanying practicum. As the preservice teachers learned about foundational…