This qualitative, longitudinal study examines the perspectives on professional development of a group of exemplary, new secondary teachers of English Language Arts and Spanish (n = 4). This study explores the teachers' development through the lens of the "embodied understanding of practice" (EUP), a novel theoretical framework of…

In October 2010, WestEd's Strategic Literacy Initiative (SLI) won an i3 "Validation" grant to scale up and validate the Reading Apprenticeship (RA) model in three core secondary content area classes: U.S. history, biology, and English language arts. SLI's proposal stated two goals. Goal 1: To transform academic literacy teaching and…

This guidance is written to assist State educational agencies (SEAs) and local educational agencies (LEAs) in understanding and implementing the report card requirements under Title I, Part A of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, as amended (ESEA). Although each SEA and LEA may consider this guidance in developing and…

The purpose of the study was to collect data to determine if assistant principal experience predicts student achievement as measured by the outcome measures of (1) school overall accountability rating, (2) Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) reading/English language arts score, (3) TAKS mathematics score, and (4) campus attendance rate…

The academic progress of South Carolina student subgroups are tracked by leaders in the South Carolina Department of Education (SDE) and by South Carolina Education Oversight Committee (EOC) leaders to assure the public that South Carolina public schools are making academic progress as outlined in the Education Accountability Act of 1998 (EAA) as…

Of the 53 million K-12 students in the United States, 93%, or 51 million, of them play video games (Etuk, 2008). ALTEC Learning Games utilize the excitement of video games to engage students and provide teachers authentic online resources that reinforce skills in math and language arts. Our recent work was partially supported by a partnership with…

The Common Core State Standards Initiative is a collaborative effort between the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and the National Governors Association (NGA) that is developing core K12 standards in English-language arts and math. The current patchwork of state standards makes it difficult, if not impossible, to evaluate student…

Framed within interactional sociolinguistics, microethnographic discourse analysis, and cognitive science, we examine how intercontextuality, collective memories, and classroom chronotopes were used in generating learning opportunities in a ninth-grade language arts classroom. Five consecutive videorecorded lessons were analyzed focusing on how…

In this article, the authors outline an interdisciplinary unit of study using quality children's literatures, and they describe several instructional strategies and activities for reading and responding to historical fiction and informational texts. This "piratical study" integrates social studies and the language arts. Several social…

This descriptive study investigates what happens when an English Language Arts teacher implements multimodal instruction in his senior-level World Literature course. The study is grounded in theories of transmediation and New Literacy Studies and examines the following research questions: (1) What does multimodal instruction enable students to do…

The Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21) has forged alliances with key national organizations representing the core academic subjects, including Social Studies, English, Math, Science, Geography, World Languages and the Arts. These collaborations have resulted in the development of 21st Century Skills Maps that illustrate the essential…

This case study investigates the implementation of the Louisiana Comprehensive Curriculum English Language Arts in selected first grade classes. The teaching of the specific language arts skills, listening, speaking, reading, and writing, as directed the the Comprehensive Curriculum is examined. Four first grade teachers from a large urban school…

Rhetoric is a discipline with a long and storied past with its roots in the seminal moments of democracy. In the incipient democratic societies of ancient Greece, rhetoric grew out of the new need to persuade large groups of people to come to a consensus. Public speaking, though featured prominently in many states' standards, is rarely a required…

With standardized English Language Arts exams on the horizon, the author thought a game of Antonyms would provide not only a quick language arts activity for her sixth graders, but also a nice segue to an art lesson in contrast. In this article, she describes a project, a simple saucer on a pedestal base, which required students to demonstrate…

ACT has been a leader in measuring college and career readiness trends since 1959. Each August, they release "The Condition of College & Career Readiness" (www.act.org/newsroom/data/2014), their annual report on the progress of the ACT-tested graduating class relative to college readiness. Nationally, 57% of the 2014 graduating class…