This review essay begins with the premise that we are all writers. However, for a number of reasons, many teachers struggle to identify as writers and teachers of writing. In the current environment, the need for schools to adopt pedagogical practices facilitating the development of disciplinary literacies means that teachers cannot avoid the task…

This paper reports on a participatory action research project which used videogames as the central texts for play and study in a middle-years English classroom in Australia. Ongoing questions about the nature of subject English have often focused on the discipline's ability to accommodate twenty-first century literacies. Videogames, as…

The education community has conducted studies on failure rates and withdrawal rates between learning modalities in the past, but few studies have evaluated grade distribution between learning modes or focused specifically on English Composition. Using 2,919 student grades from the 2015-2016 academic year for an English Composition course,…

This article examines the author's interactions with the teaching strategy known as Reciprocal Teaching, sometimes also called Reciprocal Reading, which involves students learning to read collaboratively in small groups. Reciprocal Teaching typically involves students teaching each other by following a rubric of activities that are aimed at…

This essay describes an adaptable, multimodal assignment in which students create a comic in lieu of a traditional essay or exam. I outline the theoretical and practical value of this assignment and provide a detailed description of its implementation in two different literature courses: an introduction to the major course and a course on…

This study presents how beginning teachers create and teach an English Language Arts (ELA) curriculum in urban schools in the context of an educational reform movement driven by mandates such as Common Core State Standards (CCSS), high stakes tests, and prescribed curricula. They serve in schools with each using unique and individual curricula due…

This Research Brief investigated differences among schools in the initial student achievement and annual rates of ELA growth in middle grades using a variety of student and school demographic characteristics. It found a statistically significant difference in the initial ELA achievement but not in the annual rates of ELA growth between students in…

Abstract The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of Pictionary and traditional vocabulary strategies on student performance in a 9th grade English Language Arts classroom. The sample consisted of 30 ninth grade honor students who were randomly assigned to an experimental and control group. Data were collected using teacher made tests.…

Automatic assessment of the quality of classroom discourse can have a transformative effect on research and practice on improving teaching effectiveness. We improve on a previous automated method to measure teacher authentic questions -- open-ended questions without pre-scripted responses that predict student achievement growth -- using classroom…

Annmarie Guzy opens this article by saying that, as a professor of composition and technical communication, she has found "dipping into other fields" an integral part of her job. In a traditional English department, what she does is considered service teaching, providing a service to other departments and colleges rather than teaching…

This article presents a "telling case" of an interdisciplinary, team-teaching experience that explores how participants eschewed "ethnocentricism" of their fields of study in order to learn from each other, while providing instruction to students and analysing data collected from the class (a graduate course on literature and…

This paper is an analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the grammatical description and advice contained in the new National Curriculum documentation from 2013, focusing on key stages 1 and 2. It builds on previous analyses of deficiencies in the systems of grammar and the materials in earlier incarnations of the National Curriculum. It…

Essential Questions (EQs) are familiar landmarks in the national teaching landscape, applied across varied disciplines and diverse classrooms. They provide frameworks for collaborative team curriculum creation; yet, controversy around such questions arises because of several factors. In this article, the author proposes five recommendations for…

In a time of environmental crisis we need a language to speak for nature. In our TLRI project Tuhia ki Te Ao--Write to the Natural World, we have been working with teachers to develop "3D literacy" practices responsive to both culture and environment and located in a rich language and ecology of place. This article will discuss vignettes…

It was week three of the first semester of the author's Master of Teaching degree at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, and already lecturers were talking about first assignments. In the English method unit, students were required to write a reflective autobiographical narrative inquiring into particular critical incidents from past…