Students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) experience difficulty in the educational environment at two levels: behaviorally and academically. Behavioral and academic problems in students with EBD are reciprocal in nature. Behavioral problems may cause a disruption in academic engagement, including a student's attending to instruction,…

This study describes one kindergarten classroom in which informational books and other nonfiction resources were used in the context of a long-term scientific study. Children became proficient in locating information and interpreting content-specific textual features in the process of making sense of their scientific observations and sharing them…

Writing activities are an essential part of quality literacy practices in early care and education settings. As children communicate through writing, they learn important concepts about books and other forms of print in the world around them, including writing and alphabet systems. Young children best understand and appreciate writing when it is…

For the past eight years, Midwest Educational Research Consortium (MERC), located at Western Michigan University, received two multi-million dollar grants through a U.S. Department of Education program entitled Gaining Early Awareness and Undergraduate Programs (GEAR UP). GEAR UP is a school/university partnership using a cohort model with the…

The Internet is a significant information resource for students due to the ease of access it allows to a vast amount of information. As the quality of the information on the Internet varies, it is important that students are able to evaluate such information critically. The aim of the study was to investigate how students evaluate Internet sources…

For fifteen years, the presenter has engaged college students in discussions and writing assignments that pertain to the outstanding characteristics of their most effective teachers--"effective" meaning that these teachers made the most significant impact on their lives. Based on those recurring themes, the conclusion is that effective teachers…

Television commercials and print ads have proven to be an effective means of introducing composition students to strategies for analysis and writing. They rely heavily on the eye to interpret images quickly according to fairly reliable habits. They are naturally occurring forms of argument and students have substantial intuitive competence with…

The academic setting for many students is frightening, but it is especially so for students with a strong religious background. For such students, the academic atmosphere is, at best, not neutral but empty of teachers and classes that would encourage them to deepen their religious resources. In a "Point of View" essay in the "Chronicle of Higher…

An instructor of an undergraduate literacy methods course included a portfolio as a component of assessment. Based on a review of the literature and the elements of the portfolio assessment program used in the General College Program at the State University of New York College at Fredonia, the instructor adapted the portfolio process for her…

Composition teachers and researchers recognize the difficulty young writers, especially females, face as they enter postsecondary education and attempt to learn the language of the academy. Addressing academic audiences "takes confidence and authority, qualities that are often challenged in women because of their historical exclusion from and…

Recent discussions of teaching composition in the context of cultural studies have begun to consider the condition of the writing subject in society, yet these discussions construct student-writer S(s)ubject(ivitie)s at the poles of modernist-identity and postmodern-difference binary opposition that is politically problematic. The identity of the…

This digest discusses expressive writing and the expressive mode, which is seen as a recurring stage in a writer's process of writing. The digest suggests that by structuring expressive writing activities and correlating them with particular stages of the writing process, a teacher can draw the natural linguistic activity out of a student. The…

This paper asks what role "play" plays in writing and how it can help a writer, whatever dread, boredom, skill, or ethnicity he/she brings to writing. Some of the ideas in the paper come from Africa, courtesy of Robert Farris Thompson. In his "philosophy of discourse" discussed in the paper, Thompson speaks of the "big…

A continuing concern of theorists in composition and rhetoric has been the problem of how to design effective writing assignments. With the recent movement in writing assessment from objective tests to writing samples, this problem has become even more important for those who produce "tests" designed to elicit writing samples. A study…

Deliberately writing badly can be an effective way to learn to write better because knowing when writing is bad is an essential element in knowing when it's good. There are distinct advantages to encouraging students to learn the rules by breaking them. Deliberately doing it wrong removes the threat of failure. Students are playing; they are…