Many students do not meet expected standards of writing performance, despite the need for writing competence in and out of school. As policy instruments, writing content standards have an impact on what is taught and how students perform. This study reports findings from an evaluation of the content of a sample of seven diverse states' current…

Austin Independent School District's English language learner students' (ELLs) results for the state's academic tests (STAAR) 2015 in reading and writing, grades 3 through 5, and the state's English language proficiency test (TELPAS) 2015, grades kindergarten through 5, are summarized.

In the context of our work as literacy specialists, we taught teachers to use sentence frames to support ELL students' writing. We then studied the impact of their instruction on students. Our analysis of student writing samples revealed no group wide developmental trends so we posed deeper questions about their work using the data analysis…

A large number of students struggle with composition writing. This is alarming since problems in this area reduce the chances of succeeding in school and life in general. Children and youth with learning disabilities (LD) are especially at risk of not acquiring the skills necessary to produce texts of an acceptable length and quality.…

Based on Robinson's Triadic Componential Framework and the definition of task planning by Ellis (2005), this study was carried out to find out the effects of task planning and rhetorical mode on lexical and syntactic complexity, and overall writing quality of writing production of EFL learners. Following a repeated-measures design, the present…

Although compositionists recognize that student talk plays an important role in learning to write, there is limited understanding of how students use conversational moves to collaboratively build knowledge about writing across contexts. This article reports on a study of focus group conversations involving first-year students in a cohort program.…

This study examined the influence of peer feedback and review on individual writing achievement and self-efficacy. Undergraduate first-year composition students engaged in normal instructional activities used the Eli Review program in order to conduct peer feedback and review sessions. Using the data collected from surveys and through the…

Curriculum Associates' i-Ready is an adaptive diagnostic and individualized instructional tool that has been used in M-DCPS in the last few years. In addition, in 2016-2017, Curriculum Associates provided the District with results of their predictive model, which used the outcomes of the Fall and Winter i-Ready diagnostic testing to estimate the…

Recent multilingual perspectives view second language writing as part of a language user's dynamic multilingual repertoire, always occurring in the (cognitive and social) context of some first language(s), and often of first language literacy and/or use of other languages. This paper focuses on one element of written language (lexical…

The primary focus of this study was to determine the feasibility of teacher implementation of peer-assisted writing strategies (PAWS) in improving the writing outcomes of kindergarten children. Six classrooms were recruited, and 3 were randomly assigned to the experimental condition. Results indicated that the content, length, and formatting of…

Writing is regarded as the most challenging task and the most difficult language skill among EFL students. Students need to employ different cognitive strategies in order to convey the meaning to the reader. Due to the complexity of the process, students display negative attitudes towards writing and the level of success is low. This study…

This article explores the spatial practices through which a group of Mexican immigrant women, participants in a school-based writing workshop I facilitated for four years, molded and gave meaning to our weekly writing routine to foster inclusivity as the basis for collective teaching and learning--creating what I refer to as a space of praxis and…

This study aims to develop a creative writing instruction program based on speaking activities and to investigate its effect on fourth-grade primary school students' creative writing achievements and writing attitudes. The experimental method based on the pre-test/post-test model was used in this research. The research was conducted with 42…

This report is one of several that examines student academic performance data to investigate equity in AISD. It describes the performance gaps between and among student groups district-wide for reading, math, writing, disciplinary removals/placements, and graduation rates.

The study examines the effect of teaching strategies to improved writing of students in the tertiary level. Specifically, three teaching approaches--the use of modelling, grammar-based, and information element-focused--were tested on their effect on the writing of annotated bibliography in three research classes at a university in Manila.…