Education Commons^™

Comprehension Instruction For Elementary Learners: A Content Analysis Of Professional Literacy Texts, Margie Garcia, Mary Beth Sampson, Wayne M. Linek

Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy and Language Arts

This study examined how reading comprehension was addressed in literacy texts used with preservice teachers at five universities in the southwestern United States. Universities were selected based on the highest number of graduates receiving their initial Early Childhood through 4th grade (EC-4) teaching certificates. An introductory Reading course was selected from each university. A total of 11 required textbooks were examined for definitions of reading comprehension, the presence of reading instructional incidents (RIIs), and reading comprehension instructional incidents (RCIIs). Overall, more RIIs (reading instruction) than RCIIs (reading instruction related to comprehension) were found.

Reading Is A Blast! Inside An Innovative Literacy Collaboration Between Public Schools And The Public Library, Maria T. Genest

Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy and Language Arts

Public libraries have long supported the literacy goals of public schools in their communities by providing access to printed and electronic resources that enhance learning and teaching. This article describes an ongoing collaboration between the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh’s BLAST outreach program and the Pittsburgh Public Schools that has positively impacted thousands of students by increasing access to library resources while also emphasizing vocabulary, text-based discussion, and writing using both fiction and informational texts. This program can serve as a model for similar community partnerships that have the potential to enrich the literacy lives of students.

Making Their Voices Count: Using Students’ Perspectives To Inform Literacy Instruction For Striving Middle Grade Readers With Academic Difficulties, Carolyn Groff

Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy and Language Arts

The consequences of lack of reading and poor reading skills are problematic for all students, regardless of background; however, for middle grade striving readers with academic difficulties these problems can lead to lower self-efficacy and motivation to engage in literacy tasks. Using the perspectives of urban, middle grade special education students, this article seeks to demonstrate how teachers can use student interview feedback to differentiate instruction by aligning their voices with appropriate practices. Consistent with previous research, (Roe, 2009; Smith &Wilhelm, 2002), the data show that supportive contexts increase self-efficacy and interest in reading. These perspectives have the potential to …

How Three Schools View The Success Of Literacy Coaching: Teachers’, Principals’ And Literacy Coaches’ Perceived Indicators Of Success, Kristen Ferguson

Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy and Language Arts

This paper investigates how the participants in literacy coaching (teachers, literacy coaches, and principals) perceive the success of their literacy coaching programs. This qualitative study uses data from interviews and observations of literacy coaching from three schools in Ontario, Canada. Four perceived indicators of success were found: growth in student achievement, improved teaching, an increase in professional dialogue in a safe environment, and a commitment to the literacy coach. While the study did not collect student data, the beliefs of teachers, literacy coaches, and principals are significant as perceptions of self and group efficacy can predict outcomes. This research suggests …

Editors' Note, Lauren Freedman, Susan V. Piazza, Maria Selena Protacio

Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy and Language Arts

Short introduction to issue.

Reading Horizons, Vol. 53, No. 1

Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy and Language Arts

Complete issue of Reading Horizons, volume 53, issue 1.

Call For Submissions

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

No abstract provided.

Of Thresholds And Springboards: Teaching Them, Teaching Each Other, Erin Williams, Frank Farmer

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

In the fall of 2010, the authors were given the task of co-teaching the practicum for new graduate teaching assistants at the University of Kansas. One of the authors was, at the time, a doctoral student in rhetoric and composition. The other author was a senior faculty member in the same field. While such pairings are not uncommon, they are rarely addressed in the vast literature on the writing practicum.

In this article—written as a dialogue focusing on the themes of locations and tensions—the authors conclude that such teaching arrangements as theirs offered valuable insights into student resistance, and encouraged …

Writers Who Care: Advocacy Blogging As Teachers - Professors - Parents, Leah A. Zuidema, Sarah Hochstetler, Mark Letcher, Kristen Hawley Turner

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

Because we believe strongly that writers develop through authentic writing instruction - and because we see policies that drive practices away from these goals - we have decided to speak up and to speak out through advocacy blogging. Teachers, Profs, Parents: Writers Who Care (writerswhocare.wordpress.com) was born from our frustration with current mandates that limit teachers and students to reductive writing. We know what good writing instruction looks like, and we want to share that knowledge with an audience beyond academia. In doing so, we hope to redefine what it means to be an academic writer and to encourage others …

Writing And Learning Online: Graduate Students’ Perceptions Of Their Development As Writers And Teachers Of Writing, Kelly N. Tracy, Roya Q. Scales, Nancy Luke

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

This study examined the effect of an online graduate course in elementary and middle grades writing pedagogy on pre- and in-service teachers’ perceptions of themselves as writers and as teachers of writing. Eight graduate students enrolled in a summer online writing pedagogy course at a mid-sized regional university in the rural mountains of the southeastern United States participated in the study. Researchers collected qualitative data including reflections and blogs at the beginning and end of the 4.5-week course. Findings fell into four major themes in the data: (1)Past experience shapes perceptions of writing; (2)Perceptions shape writing instruction; (3)Perceptions are malleable; …

Where Writing Happens: Elevating Student Writing And Developing Voice Through Digital Storytelling, Jane M. Saunders

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

No abstract provided.

A Late Adopter's Chance To Take An Esl Program Multimodal, Erin K. Laverick

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

This article outlines an ESL program's journey in revising its curriculum to include multimodal compositions as a means to help non-native speakers of English improve their language proficiency by offering them greater means to communicate with wide audiences. The article also discusses means to provide faculty with the proper rhetorical and technology training, so they could use multimodalities in their own teaching.

Writing For The Audience That Fires The Imagination: Implications For Teaching Writing, Denise K. Ives, Cara Crandall

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

Great authors embody their audiences through the language of their texts. Good readers learn to recognize and respond to the cues such writers embed in their texts about the kind of audience they are expected to be. They also learn from other authors how to fictionalize in their minds audiences like those they have experience being. In this article through an analysis of two texts, we showcase how two middle school writers through their texts, embody their audiences and cue readers to the roles they are expected to play. We then trace the rhetorical moves made by the writers to …

“This Erstwhile Unreadable Text”: Deep Time, Multidisciplinarity And First-Year Writing Faculty Mentoring And Support, Denise K. Comer

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

Despite the otherwise rich multidisciplinary terrain of writing studies, the strategies most often used with first-year writing teacher teaching mentoring and support tend to remain discordantly anchored to a comparatively narrow version of writing pedagogy. I argue in this article that the geologic concept of deep time offers a way of infusing a multidisciplinary dimension into first-year writing faculty teaching mentoring and support that will enrich the ways faculty and students think, write, and talk about first-year writing. This article discusses deep-time pedagogy, providing specific strategies for infusing multidisciplinary dimensions into first-year writing faculty teaching mentoring and support. Such a …

Re-Thinking Personal Narrative In The Pedagogy Of Writing Teacher Preparation, Mary M. Juzwik, Anne Whitney, April Baker Bell, Amanda Smith

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

How can teacher educators mobilize contemporary understandings of personal narrative -- as socially and dialogically shaped in the context of culture and as instrumental to sociocultural processes of self-authoring -- in the teaching of narrative writing and, more specifically, in the work of teaching teachers to teach narrative writing? Rarely do teachers teach strategies that might result in good narratives. Rarely do narrative texts written in school (or any other kinds of texts written in school, for that matter) actually go anywhere beyond the teacher, thus failing to offer students experience in negotiating meanings with readers, working out the versions …

First-Year Composition And The Common Core: Educating Teachers Of Writing Across The High School-College Continuum, Justin A. Young

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

This article will discuss the implications of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) on the education of writing instructors at the college level. The article suggests that, with the adoption of the CCSS, the most effective models of the training of writing teachers in higher education will now include collaboration with educators at the K-12 level. A model for this kind of collaborative work is described, based on an effort the author is currently leading as the Director of English Composition at my institution. A brief overview of the CCSS, and the shifts in the teaching and learning of English …

Reframing Responses To Student Writing: Promising Young Writers And The Writing Pedagogies Course, Michael B. Sherry, Ted Roggenbuck

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

This article describes an attempt to provide future teachers with an opportunity to practice evaluating and responding to student writing through a collaboration among members of an NCTE committee, a blended writing pedagogies course composed of education, creative writing, and professional writing students, and middle school teachers and their students in two states. Students’ texts were drawn from the NCTE’s “Promising Young Writers” contest, for which college students acted as judges and provided feedback to the middle school writers. We argue that the experience of responding to actual student writers about the texts they had submitted provided potentially important opportunities …

Teaching/Writing, Winter/Spring 2014 - Full Issue

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

No abstract provided.

Beyond The Pencil: Expanding The Occupational Therapists’ Role In Helping Young Children To Develop Writing Skills, Hope K. Gerde, Tricia D. Foster, Lori E. Skibbe

The Open Journal of Occupational Therapy

Occupational therapists (OTs) play an important role in early childhood classrooms as vital members of the educational team, particularly for young children’s writing development. Children’s emergent writing is a foundational literacy skill, which begins to develop well before they enter elementary school. However, early childhood classrooms are lacking in supports for early writing development. OTs are experts in guiding the development of early writing skills in young children and, therefore, should be considered as critical members of the early literacy curriculum team. This paper identifies the critical role emergent writing plays in early childhood literacy development and how to effectively …