Much has been written about the value of teacher research for inservice teachers. Despite the existence of several studies affirming these words, studies that richly describe how student teachers learn to do teacher research and then investigate the impact of inquiry on student teachers and teacher educators, particularly in culturally and…

This study describes the influences that one professional learning community had on teacher resilience, teacher retention, and school reform initiatives. Teachers at a low performing, urban middle school in the Southeastern United States implemented professional learning communities as a reform initiative to assist with staff development. This…

This article discusses an approach to teaching used at Calexico Unified School District, a California-Mexican border high school, by a group of teachers working to make teaching and learning more relevant to Chicano and Mexican students' lives and to improve their academic achievement in writing. An off-shoot of a training program for English…

This article examines community practices, in particular oral discourse practices, in a junior high school classroom in an urban area of Western Canada. The purpose of the research was to determine what contribution a "community of practice" (COP) framework could make to the study of social interaction in a classroom setting. Qualitative…

The purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore how five middle school students examined humor and characterization used in adolescent literature according to Louise Rosenblatt's (1995) reader response transactional theory. The study was conducted with a focus group of five 6th-grade students, three girls and two boys, from a public…

The issue of whether to separate English language development (ELD) into a separate instructional block or whether to integrate it with reading/language arts instruction is an unanswered question with theoretical and practical implications. We addressed this question by observing instruction across the year in 85 kindergarten classrooms that…

This book, which focuses on the language arts teacher/researcher, is offered as a testament to teachers' expanding participation in collecting data and building theories about teaching, learning, curriculum, and assessment. The book's 24 chapters are grouped into four parts. The first part addresses general issues about teacher research: its…

By describing what has been learned in disseminating Success for All, a reform program for high-poverty elementary schools, this paper explores how a national approach to professional development might enable professional development networks to implement proven school change models. Success for All restructures the elementary school by…

Intended for teachers of grades 4-8, this book provides tools and resources to help students fall in love with literature. The book contains reproducible glossaries containing over 200 literary, genre, book content, and book construction terms, along with removable flashcards, to make reviewing language arts essentials easy, enjoyable, and fun.…

The Montgomery County (Maryland) public school system has started using assessments other than multiple-choice tests because it is felt that this will provide school staff with better information about the success of the instructional program. One of the ways assessments can provide better information is by having teachers score student papers.…

A 59-item annotated bibliography on language arts instruction for the gifted organizes research into three main categories: (1) instruction of gifted students in tracked classrooms; (2) instruction of gifted students in mainstreamed or heterogeneous classrooms; and (3) instruction of gifted and nongifted toward the goal of developing higher level…

A study examined whether Kentucky primary teachers were adopting the changes in literacy instruction recommended in the Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA/1990) which, in part, encouraged the use of whole language and integrated reading/language arts approaches and the teaching of writing as a process. The study employed direct classroom…

These lessons on Mexico have been taught in an integrated fashion within a sixth grade language arts and social studies classroom. Lessons are intended to be easy to pick up and use by any teacher. The material includes: (1) Rationale; (2) "Lesson 1 - I'll Bet You Can Map the Western Hemisphere in a Minute!"; (3) "Lesson 2 -…

An 18-month qualitative study examined the process of designing, developing and evaluating a video-case laserdisc-based instructional support program for the professional development of English/language arts teachers and focusing on the application and practice of the reading/writing workshop approach. The first step was the creation of a…

Offering detailed, culturally diverse examples of practical applications in real classroom settings, this book provides preservice and inservice elementary school teachers with everything needed to set up workshop environments and procedures that develop children's talk, reading, writing skills, and critical thinking. The book features highly…