The author invited two teachers affiliated with their graduate program in literacy to explore how children's social identities impacted students' reading process. The teachers, Taylor and Dana, worked in urban elementary charter schools in New York City, at the time. The participants agreed to share samples from their classrooms to illustrate how…

Building on existing research on Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD), the current study investigated the collateral effects of social skills prompts on the writing outcomes and problem behavior of students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD). Generalization measures involved the use of video prompts to explore their impact (if…

This case study reports the results of a genre-based approach, which was used to explicitly teach the touristic landmark description to fourth-grade students of Spanish as a foreign language. The instructional model and unit of instruction were informed by the pedagogies of the Sydney School of Linguistics and an instructional model for…

In this mixed methods study, qualitative, quantitative, and single-case methods were combined to provide a comprehensive investigation of teacher and student outcomes following practice-based professional development (PBPD) for self-regulated strategy development (SRSD) in writing. Qualitative observations were used to determine outcomes among the…

This essay considers whether the neuroscientific concepts of conceptual blending (from cognitive linguistics) embodiment and analogy offer insights into why and how drama-based pedagogies strengthen classroom learning. Pilot writing samples from eight-and nine-year-old students suggest that conceptual blending is enhanced through drama-based…

The authors present the experiences of Wyatt, a nine-year-old whose mother described him as a struggling writer, in a summer digital writing camp. The authors consider how Wyatt was positioned as a writer at camp and how this may have differed from his experiences at school. They found that for Wyatt, being able to compose with digital tools along…

The Young Writers Program (YWP) is the latest writing workshop to be developed for the classroom. It challenges students to choose a topic and write a novel-length piece based on that topic, without worrying about spelling or grammar. While the foundation of this philosophy is solid, the support and structure of the Young Writers Program website…

This paper discusses and examines the effectiveness of course assignments designed to promote reflection processes and critical thinking of pre-service teachers. Specifically, the study explores and identifies the range of students' level of reflectivity and critical examination of their own developing pedagogy, with foci on content knowledge,…

This yearlong ethnographic case study investigated higher and lower track adolescents' experiences with core content-area (social studies, science, and math) writing in one urban working-class district. Teacher, student, and administrator interviews; field notes; and students' written work comprised the data set. The findings from this…

English language learners (ELLs) bring a wealth of knowledge to science classrooms, yet often that knowledge is untapped by traditional instruction and assessment. As classrooms become increasingly diverse, it is critical to recognize the depth of understandings ELLs bring to classrooms to explain the scientific world around them. English language…

Science education reform calls for learners to be engaged in hand-on, minds-on activities related to science. As a part of this reform effort, learners are encouraged to use writing as a means of documenting their work and developing their understandings. This qualitative case study employed the Conceptual Change Perspective and Sociocultural…

Blogs in classrooms represent a new approach to teaching writing that is developing and changing daily. Although some scholarly literature explores the use of blogs in educational settings, the blogs are primarily being used at the secondary and college levels. The purpose of this qualitative case study research was to explore how blogging…

Weblogs or blogging may foreground audience needs for a written work and help novice authors grow in audience awareness and elicit and use audience feedback. A case study of a second-grade classroom compared students' growing audience awareness and the ways they addressed audience needs. Analysis of student written work, students' comments to…

Trickster tales, with their teachings on how to behave in the world, are a powerful means for transmitting social knowledge and cultural mores to children. In this study we compared two approaches to teaching fourth-grade students to write trickster tales. Although both instructional methods incorporated aspects of the writing process approach,…

This paper outlines research which examined the relationship between drama and writing, detailing the method of enquiry, theoretical foundations and emergent findings. The study sought to understand the nature of the support that drama offers children as writers and to identify features of writing which regularly surfaced in drama-related writing.…