Schools nationwide are transitioning to the Common Core--our advice to you: Don't go it alone! Our new book, "Common Core Literacy Lesson Plans: Ready-to-Use Resources, 6-8," shows you that teaching the Common Core State Standards in the middle grades doesn't have to be intimidating! This easy-to-use guide meets the particular needs of middle…

The rural elementary principal has the ultimate responsibility for bringing all stakeholders together to focus and improve student achievement. In doing so, they must be able to provide knowledge of national, state, and local policies that influence achievement. Response to Intervention is a tiered framework for school's to provide…

Every educator's quest is to help students learn in the environment that will allow them to obtain and retain the information presented to them. In the new age of technology, more students are able to choose the environment in which they learn. This study is a quantitative comparative study of the academic performance between online and…

With a particular focus on the preparation of teaching assistants, this profile details the recent transition to a standardized English 101 curriculum at Southern Illinois University Carbondale (SIUC). More specifically, the profile details theoretical and practical incentives for the move, as well as political and logistical challenges…

James Moffett's structuralist impulse to carve the "universe of discourse" into four related levels--drama, narrative, exposition, argumentation--was quickly reframed as a rough approximation, as he recognised the ways myth and fictions compressed several layers, and even everyday narratives potentially encapsulated some of the rest.…

Pulling together the most up-to-date research on the effects of restrictive language policies, this timely volume focuses on what we know about the actual outcomes for students and teachers in California, Arizona, and Massachusetts--states where these policies have been adopted. Prominent legal experts in bilingual education analyze these policies…

This study investigated the impact of an Internet based program designed to improve basic writing skills on grammar and punctuation scores on an English Competency Test. Three groups in a small Midwestern university's freshmen composition class were tested: a control group (Test Group 1), which did not use the program; and two treatment groups:…

Movies are a part of social discourse, and they may show "life the way people would like to make it." As educators look at society's changing views of knowledge, learning, teaching, and success, they can engage in that discourse and consider ways it does--or does not--reflect and affect pedagogies and daily lives. As Hollywood directs society's…

In this article, we describe aspects of mathematical language that could be problematic to English-language learners, provide recommendations for teaching English-language learners, and suggest activities intended to foster language development in mathematics. (Contains 1 figure.)

The current version of the draft National Curriculum (1.0.1) remains a document which dis-integrates the subject through its three strands and fails to conceptualise a relationship between these strands. Drawing on curriculum history, I argue that this stands in strong contrast to a curriculum such as the 1971 NSW Syllabus for Years 7-10, which…

In this article, the author shares how efficient and effective Google Documents is for faculty seeking to engage students in inquiry-based, emergent, and primary research in first-year composition courses. The specific appeal of Google Documents is that it occupies a space between "open source"--defined by the Open Source Initiative as "free,…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a supplemental Spanish language instruction program for children who spoke Spanish as their native language and were attending English-only preschool programs. Specifically, the study evaluated the program's effects on the children's Spanish sentence length in words, subordination…

In a remix of the infamous Hitler meme--taking a scene from the movie, "Downfall" (2005), and adding subtitles appropriate (in this case) for "Kairos" readers--theamishaugur makes a pointed, humorous (to some) commentary on the status of multimodal composition scholars in English departments during job market season.

How can teachers merge research and daily practice? Where can they find the time, information, and resources? In exploring this issue, it is important to clarify the definition of "research". "Research" might mean (1) using best practices that are already research-based or (2) doing research on one's own students. For purposes of discussion in…

The effects of ability grouping in schools on students' self-concept were examined in a sample of 23 secondary schools with a range of structured ability groupings. Measures of general self-concept, academic self-concept, and achievement were collected from over 1600 students aged 14-15 years and again two years later. Students' academic…