This book remaps theories and practices for teaching creative writing at university and college level. This collection critiques well-established approaches for teaching creative writing in all genres and builds a comprehensive and adaptable pedagogy based on issues of authority, power, and identity. A long-needed reflection, this book shapes…

Using data collected in the 1999-2000 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS), this report studies the characteristics of schools serving immigrant children at the time of NCLB's passage. As SASS lacks a measure of immigration status among school children, this analysis uses English language proficiency level (or LEP status) as a proxy for immigrant…

This booklet provides a basic introduction to the people, history, and cultures of Afghanistan. It is designed primarily for service providers and others assisting the Afghan refugees in their new communities in the United States. The 12 sections focus on: (1) "Preface"; (2) "Introduction" (recent Afghan refugees); (3)…

This book represents a conversation among educators and others concerned with language and literacy development. The conversation began by chance at an international conference on literacy when Catherine Snow and Lily Wong Fillmore began talking about the escalating demands that the educational system in the United States places on teachers…

This paper argues against Australia's "One Literacy" (English only) movement, explaining that in recent years, there have been efforts to clear the curriculum of non-literacy subjects and activities, and noting the difficulty of determining what is and is not a curriculum distraction. It also notes that elementary students' English…

When students in a New Jersey public middle school decided to learn about their community's history of desegregation through a unique language arts and social studies project, no one imagined how powerful the experience would be for everyone involved. In addition to researching newspaper articles and historical documents, the students conducted…

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 reauthorized and significantly expanded the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The Act and its accompanying fund increases offer numerous opportunities to improve teaching and achievement of young adolescents, targeting federal money more than ever to high poverty schools and districts and including…

In the school year 2000-2001 students in Grade 10 took the Graduation Exit Examination for the 21st Century (GEE 21) Language Arts and Mathematics tests for the first time. For GEE 21, student scores are reported in terms of five achievement levels: Advanced, Proficient, Basic, Approaching Basic, and Unsatisfactory. This booklet is part of a…

This report describes the activities and performance of the Vermont Rural Autism Project (VT-RAP), a training program designed to prepare 16 interdisciplinary trainees as specialists to serve children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) in rural settings each year for a total of 48 specialists trained over the 3 years of the project. Four of the…

The Commission d'evaluation de l'enseignement collegial in Quebec evaluated the implementation of general education in all of the institutions offering programs leading to a Diploma of College Studies (DEC). Seventy-five institutions were covered by the evaluation: 49 public colleges, 20 subsidized private colleges, and six institutions reporting…

This is the 21st year of statewide student testing under the Arizona Student Achievement Program, which mandates the use of a nationally standardized norm-referenced achievement test in reading, mathematics, and language in the state's schools. In the 2000-2001 school year, students in grades 1 through 9 were tested using the Stanford Achievement…

Though the standards derive from a school district's New English Language Arts (ELA) scope and sequence, at least two content areas or disciplines (English and Social Studies) are addressed in this unit of study on Human Rights, and there is ample room for the arts. In particular, the major theoretical framework supporting the unit is Howard…

This 15-minute VHS videotape introduces an interdisciplinary math, science, and language arts project for eighth grade. Students learn about and apply laws of motion, linear functions, and technical reporting as they design and present an ultimate roller coaster. The project is organized in five phases that generate knowledge about design…

A U.S. frontier theme park is opening in your (the student's) home town. The featured adventure rides will be forms of transportation used in the late 1700s to early 1800s to journey west across the Appalachian mountains. Each ride represents an historically accurate time and place. The students need maps identifying where the mode of…

In this activity, first grade students learn their addresses and their places in space. Each student pretends they are a student in Ms. Frizzle's class and are to help the class figure out how to get home. The students create their own intergalactic address book, so that on their next trip into the universe they will have a map to guide them back…