The 2017 TEKS revision, the 2023 STAAR redesign, and the 2024 TCTELA conference theme call on literacy professionals to "forge the future of literacy" in Texas. Specifically, the future demands that we more fully integrate reading and writing instruction and that we help students develop a deeper understanding of author's purpose and…

Exploring the realm of literacy involves understanding how graphic novels shape students' reading and writing journeys. Through scholarly research, the authors delve into the significant impact of graphic novels on education while highlighting their appeal to students through visual features and engaging storytelling. Included is a discussion of…

This study provides an in depth look at how middle school English language learners (ELLs) negotiate their identity as readers and writers as they engage in an identity-oriented unit of instruction. Drawing on theories of identity, identity negotiation, and transformative pedagogy, this study contributes to the field by exploring how a teacher can…

The goal of this article is to share how the authors implemented a summer learning experience designed for the benefit of teachers and students simultaneously at Clear Creek Independent School District in Texas. They facilitated what John Hattie's research recommends: "a community of teachers [that] work together to ask the questions,…

This article proposes ways to authentically amplify writer's workshop for emergent bilinguals. Through the study of one bilingual teacher's mediation in teaching, we examined the affordances that translanguaging and transmodal practices have for emergent bilingual students' writing processes. In this case study, we focused on a writing sequence…

This research embedded in the National Study of Writing Instruction examines higher- and lower-achieving adolescents' stances toward content-area writing through a qualitative discourse analysis of interviews with 40 students in California, Kentucky, New York, and Texas secondary schools. The study asked: (1) How do students' stances toward…

This piece describes how a 5th grade language arts teacher employed technology to create and sustain a metaphorical, virtual, and physical figured world in her class by means of a web site called "The Hive Society." This world positioned students as intellectuals and scholars, and explored how Ms. Smith integrated 21st Century…

Presents a class project in which students were divided into groups, each of which produced a letter as though written by a resident of prerevolutionary Texas. Provides suggested characters, review exercises, suggestions, and evaluation advice. Discusses the project's benefits as a Texas state history review and language arts lesson. (DK)