The concept of place is more than where people reside. Places are important in shaping the identity and experiences of people. Exploring the idea of relationships with place creates a context that ignites transformative thoughts and actions. "Place' is formed out of the particular set of social relations which interact at a particular…

This article presents a preliminary study of an urban school district, and its use of a scripted middle-school language arts and literacy curriculum. The majority of students served by this district are African American. By interviewing a small sample of four teachers and one literacy coach, gathering preliminary data, and observing students…

This paper defines the notion of "dialogic local space" and highlights its importance to teaching and learning. A dialogic local space values multiple local realities as it invites us to listen to, take up, and have confidence in our own local everyday and personal realities, and to listen to, consider, and respond to other local…

In this article, the authors share what they learned from their study of writing communities, which they refer to as writing groups, during the 2017-18 school year. The authors propose a conceptual framework for writing groups that engages students in the process of designing and participating as writers with their peers. The framework emphasizes…

Creative writing encourages imaginations to take flight, and when adults use the right approach, building literacy skills becomes a form of play that gets kids excited to create their own stories. Packed with ready-to-use lesson plans designed for kindergarten- and early elementary-aged children, this book will help librarians add creative writing…

School administrators have the challenge of providing high-quality education in all subject areas. Along with this task, administrators must wade through countless programs, curriculums, while ensuring that student needs are met along with required state and local test scores. While the focus on reform has been in math and science, writing…

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…

The Daily 5 and CAFE were born out of The Sister's research and observations of instructional mentors, their intense desire to be able to deliver highly intentional, focused instruction to small groups and individuals while the rest of the class was engaged in truly authentic reading and writing, and their understanding that a one size fits all…

Children love to learn about new topics and share what they have discovered with their teachers, families, and friends. The authors designed the "Book Bag Buddies" project to give their third-grade students a chance to channel their enthusiasm and research from science investigations into writing. In this creative project, students integrated…

Standards can aid educators as they work to produce strong student writers who can create meaningful and skillfully crafted authentic pieces of writing. This once-a-month, yearlong professional development program, conducted during the school day, shifted a district's kindergarten writing program to a writing workshop model that enabled the…

Process-oriented approaches are increasingly used in schools to improve writing. One of these approaches, known as the writing workshop model, is challenging for teachers to implement without supports. This quasi-experimental study evaluated the effectiveness of a middle school writing program that incorporates this model along with technological…

The purpose of this case study is to document the ways in which fifth-grade students in a historically, low-performing school learned to write from a teacher who did not emphasize test-taking processes. The study demonstrates how these instructional practices in a writing workshop context positively affected the student performance on a statewide…

This is a qualitative study addressing the question: In what ways does a sixth grade middle school teacher show evidence of behaviors that fit the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework in the classroom? The researcher observed in this class, interviewed the teacher, and looked for evidence of the interplay between…

When asked to discuss their middle school language arts classes, talented eighth graders identified concerns and made suggestions for their teachers. Students voiced desire for choices in selecting reading materials, writing topics and genre. They preferred having extended periods of time to engage in reading and writing activities, rather than…

Teachers frequently read aloud as a part of writing instruction so that children's book authors can serve as mentors for students' writing. Despite extensive anecdotal reporting of the significance of reading aloud children's literature within writing workshop, the intertextual connections students construct between interactive read alouds and…