While the Common Core State Standards initiated the instructional shift that promoted technology to achieve a student-centered, process-oriented blended reading and writing classroom, the COVID-19 pandemic demanded innovative technology applications in K-12 public schools. This qualitative, phenomenological action research study explored the…

Writing is an essential skill for participating in modern American society. Although it is crucial to careers and civic engagement, student writing falls far short of national expectations (College Board, 2004; NCES, 2012; Persky, Daane, & Jin, 2003). The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) seek to increase the rigor of writing instruction…

There are many controversies related to the increasingly widespread theme of "social justice" in teacher education, including debates about whether and/or how promoting pupils' learning is part of this theme. This article briefly discusses the concept of teacher education for social justice in terms of pupils' learning and then considers…

In the Berkeley Unified School District, funds from the Emergency School Aid Act (ESAA) were used to establish programs in communication skills, particularly writing and motivation for writing, in schools with enrollments which were more than 50 percent minority. Perhaps the most impressive achievement of the program was an unintended side-effect:…

The Language Arts Supervisor of the Des Moines, Iowa Independent Community School District is responsible for supervising and coordinating all aspects of the middle and high school language arts program. Aspects of the program include curriculum development, instructional material selection and implementation, staff development, evaluation, and…

To determine whether a comprehensive, cooperative learning approach can be used effectively in elementary reading and writing instruction, a study evaluated the Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition (CIRC) program. Experimental subjects, 11 third- and fourth-grade CIRC classes, worked in heterogeneous learning teams for all reading,…

A study investigated the effectiveness of the Writing Express program (similar to the "Writing to Read" program, but with the distinction that students write in their second-grade classrooms and follow thematic maps integrated into the regular classroom curriculum). All 895 second-grade students in six Writing Express schools and 6…

A study examined three recent language arts textbook programs for grades one through six to determine the frequency of writing activities, the nature of the writing tasks, and the frequency of process-approach activities such as selecting topics, prewriting, sharing, revising, and publishing. The programs analyzed were Scott, Foresman's "Language:…

An Oregon school implemented a program of journal writing in grades 5 to 8 and evaluated its effects upon the language arts curriculum and students' writing ability. Each of the 11 teachers in the project decided the amount of time to allocate to journal writing and the routines to establish, although all followed certain guidelines on…

The Instructional Assistant Program, funded by the Ohio Disadvantaged Pupil Program Fund, provides educational support for underachieving pupils by training instructional assistants to provide direct instructional service to selected pupils in the classroom setting. Emphasis was placed on activities which would increase oral and written language…

The responsibility of the reading/language arts program is to provide quality instruction, materials, and assessment practices to a diverse community of students. The responsibility of the Supervisor of Reading/Language Arts is to provide leadership toward integrating all communication skills with focus on increased student learning. There is no…

A study examined the effectiveness of a staff development program in the Yale (Michigan) public schools, intended to provide professional development to all elementary and secondary language arts teachers about the instruction of writing process and the evaluation of student work. Evaluation of the professional development model included teacher…

This packet is the second of five developed as a set of self-appraisal instruments with which teachers (and others) can systematically examine their instruction methods in communication skills. The packet contains forms for teachers, students, administrators, and parents addressing two levels of specificity: responses to the overall communication…

Using both qualitative and quantitative data, the Office of Educational Assessment/Instructional Support Unit evaluated the 1985-1986 New York City Board of Education's Comprehensive Instructional Management Systems-Communication Arts (CIMS-CA) Project. The 1985-1986 CIMS-CA aimed to (1) implement an integrated communication arts program for…

To evaluate the effectiveness of a new writing curriculum in the Oak Ridge Schools (Tennessee), modeled after the process-oriented National Writing Project, a three-year study of student writing was conducted. The study consisted of evaluating writing samples collected from 90 students in grades 3 through 12 over 3 consecutive years, and surveying…