Recent English Language Arts standards emphasize teaching students to use text evidence to support their claims and opinions; yet, students often struggle to do so effectively in their writing. To help students develop this skill, clearer understanding of what effective evidence use entails and targeted feedback to guide students' writing…

As the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for English language arts (ELA)/literacy and the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) highlight connections across subject areas, convergences and discrepancies come into view. As a prominent example, this article focuses on how the CCSS and the NGSS treat "argument," especially in Grades…

A growing number of educators concur that, in order to improve student academic performance, schools need to focus not only on students' academic needs but also on their social, emotional, and material needs (Piscatelli & Lee, 2011). As a result, school climate--the social, emotional, and physical characteristics of a school community (Cohen,…

The purpose of this report was to determine which Mississippi public schools perform better than could be predicted, considering demographic and socioeconomic characteristics. Additionally, this study identified profiles of schools within Mississippi, or groups of schools with similar socioeconomic and demographic characteristics. This study…

The Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts were a part of a reformation of the nation's reading standards. The demands for higher standards were due to the general public and Federal legislators request for higher student achievement. The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to explore the teachers' life experiences, thoughts,…

Since 2006, Boston Public Schools (BPS) has been implementing expanded learning time (ELT) in schools to improve student outcomes, close opportunity and achievement gaps, and enhance preparation and planning opportunities for staff to support these efforts. In 2015, the district and the Boston Teachers Union agreed to add 40 minutes to the school…

Although vocabulary acquisition remains a critical to literacy development, teachers infrequently devote classroom time to vocabulary exercises. In this article, the author demonstrates the use of "vocabutoons" as an instructional activity which draws upon students' multiple literacies, in particular, visual literacy, in order to foster…

In this article, the author uses lesson reflection as a way to consider ethical issues that accompany teaching with texts that include death. More specifically, the article examines the relationship between moral education and analytic or skills-based education.

Overland Park, Kansas, may seem like an unlikely setting for using the "New Yorker." While it is not the "Wizard of Oz" Kansas -- more suburban sprawl than expansive wheat fields -- the ethos is far from the cosmopolitan aesthetic of New York City. The "New Yorker" covers can raise questions that may lead to relevant…

Student self-regulated learning (SRL) is theorized to draw upon cognitive resources such as executive functions (EF) in support of planning, monitoring, and control processes in the service of academic goals. Prior work has demonstrated connections between direct measures of EF and reports of regulation behaviors, but this has not been frequently…

This study examines teachers' instructional practices during seatwork in primary Norwegian Language arts classrooms. Although seatwork is a common activity in classrooms, our knowledge about what teachers actually do during this activity is limited. In this qualitative study, six teachers in third grade primary school were videotaped while pupils…

The present study examined the impact of teacher team composition on characteristics and attributes regarded as necessary for effective cooperative teaching. The study focused on potential differences between self-selected teacher teams and teams composed by the school administration. The central assumptions were that teachers working in…

Despite the effectiveness of dialogic instruction and whole-class discussion, it does not happen with regularity in the English Language Arts classroom. To examine this discrepancy, this study focused on the beliefs of teachers as they thought about discussion. To this end, the question addressed in this study was: How do high school English…

This article considers the power of approaching young adult literature from a critical literacy perspective in teacher education and how that affects emerging teachers' ability to consider its role in their future teaching. Specifically, the authors explore how critical literacy--the exposure to a variety of texts, ways of approaching texts, and…

A popular trend fusing regular and special education, co-teaching aims to combine the content expertise of a general education teacher with a special education teacher's understanding of meeting the needs of a range of learners for the good of all students. Co-teaching also serves as a vehicle for actualizing characteristics of successful schools…