Language and Literacy Education Commons^™

Dimensions Volume 60 - Full Issue, Editors, Dimensions

Dimensions

SCOLT Dimensions Volume 60

Good Practice For All Sentence Frames To Support Multingual Students In The Ela Classroom, Genevieve Palestino

The Utah English Journal

The struggle to meet student needs is an ever- present concern for all teachers. Besides English 9, I teach English Language Development (ELD), and I frequently find myself in conversations with other teachers about how to support our school’s multilingual (ML) population. One thing I try to emphasize in my conversations with teachers is that most “extra steps” for MLs are best-practice strategies that will benefit all students. A strategy that can be especially beneficial for students is leveled sentence frames.

Thinking And Writing With Ai As A Dialogue Partner, Jon Ostenson, Johnny Allred

The Utah English Journal

When generative AI burst onto the public stage in late 2022, it took many of us by surprise. After we had time to see what chatbots like ChatGPT were capable of, they filled many writing teachers with a sense of dread. Some of us realized that assignments we had relied on for years would no longer work because they could easily be completed by a chatbot. All of us worried about how this new technology would influence our students’ writing and the way we taught writing.

Me Between The Lines: An Intertextual Search For Self, Jamie Jo Porter

The Utah English Journal

In the winter of 2023, I noticed a general struggle among my AP Literature students to connect and identify with characters and events we were reading about in class. Upon further investigation, I realized that this wasn’t because my students weren’t reading relatable texts, but more because they were still developing a sense of self; in their search for identity, they were not seeing pieces of themselves reflected in the world around them. As a teacher, it pained me to realize that my students weren’t even anticipating that there were things out there in the world that they could relate …

“Charles? We Don’T Have Any Charles In The Kindergarten”: Our Professional Responsibility To Compassionate Self-Reflection, Ben Inouye

The Utah English Journal

Shirley Jackson’s immortal “Charles” recounts the mischievous deeds of Charles, a character created by the equally naughty Laurie. His mother, the narrator, blames her son’s poor behavior on Charles’ influence. She is blissfully unaware that her son is the reason for the kindergarten chaos; she is all too quick to begin searching for the most “haggard” face in the PTA crowd–unable to fathom that she might be the mother responsible for Charles. Such delusion!

As I was pondering the narrator’s lack of self-awareness, I found myself thinking: Oh crap, is that me? Am I the teacher who can’t be honest …

Chatgpt Didn’T Write This: Evaluating The Impact Of Llms With A Case Study In Grading Cuny Language Immersion Program Student Essays, Benjamin Inbar

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study evaluates the capabilities and limitations of large language models (LLMs), specifically OpenAI’s ChatGPT-4o, in grading essays from students in the City University of New York’s Language Immersion Program. The program serves English language learners with diverse linguistic and demographic backgrounds, offering intensive language instruction to prepare students for academic success in college. Using a dataset of 30 pre- and post-program essays scored by program instructors and ChatGPT-4o under three paradigms, this research explores the alignment between human and AI-generated scores across five rubric-based competency areas. Findings reveal that ChatGPT-4o aligns moderately with human grading, with the strongest agreement …

Embracing Language Diversity: An Exploration Of Elementary Teachers' Perception Of African American English, Manijeh Hart

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Students of African descent often speak in a dialect that differs from the Dominant American English (DAE) dialect, known as African American English (AAE). Since this dialect is not considered mainstream, students who speak and write in this dialect may be at a disadvantage when being assessed on literacy skills and responding to literacy instruction. However, it is possible to address this issue by preparing and supporting teachers in recognizing AAE use in literacy activities and providing them with instructional strategies to support students who use AAE. The goal of this research was to investigate the perceptions that elementary school …

Freedom Dreams Of Young Black Boys: A Qualitative Study Among Black Male Elementary School Learners, Lamar Ok

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The work conducted in this research builds on the work of many who have also worked to provide a platform to illuminate the voices of Black folks, especially Black boys. This research is not the first to make the case that Black boys are as fully human as anyone else, and yet they have internalized the white gaze, even as they are proud of their blackness, their color, their race, their culture. However, there exists limited research with Black boys in elementary school, particularly before the 5th grade (before 10 years of age).

This project was about freedom dreaming—a collective …

Empowering Multilingual Learners Through Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy And Arts-Based Learning In Burkina Faso, Inoussa Malgoubri

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

This dissertation explores how culturally sustaining pedagogy and arts-based learning can engage multilingual learners of English as an Additional Language (EAL) in Burkina Faso. The research emphasizes the incorporation of local cultural elements and learners' linguistic backgrounds into the EAL curriculum to address challenges such as limited classroom interactions (Somé-Guiebré, 2020) and monolingual instructional strategies with inadequate cultural representation (Ndlangamandla, 2024). This qualitative study integrates culturally relevant materials, including Forum Theater, slam poetry, and griot-style storytelling, to create an engaging and inclusive learning environment. Data consisted of observation, images from arts-based workshops and pre- and post-workshop interviews with selected teachers …

What Happened When I Took Calculus For The First Time At Age 47, Britt Kaufmann

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

These five poems are inspired by being in high school math classes and could be used in the classroom for cross-curricular enrichment.

Responding To Technology-Induced Transformations In Writing Education: Conceptualizing And Teaching The Literacies Of Privacy, Originality, And Agency, Shyam Sharma

International Journal of Transformative Teaching and Learning in Higher Education

This article explores the transformative impact of technological advancements—especially computers, the internet, and artificial intelligence (AI)—on writing and literacy education. Building on relevant scholarships, it argues that there is an urgent need to update traditional literacy education by adding/extending three additional literacies: the literacies of privacy, originality, and agency. Reconceptualizing privacy, originality, and agency in relation to the reshaping of literacy by emerging technologies in the past few decades, as the article shows, would help advance pedagogies to address the disruption to fundamentals that are worth preserving and building upon. The article addresses the challenges posed by the increasingly public …

Exploring Pragmatic Functions And Linguistic Features Analysis For Some Terms Of Endearment In Egyptian Colloquial Arabic As Discourse Markers, Samar Abdeltawab

Theses and Dissertations

In Arabic and many languages, terms of endearment are used as discourse markers to express affection. However, their meanings differ depending on the pragmatic context in which they are said.

Despite the abundance of research on terms of endearment in various languages, there is a noticeable lack of studies examining the pragmatic functions and linguistic features of these terms in Arabic. This research aims to fill this gap by providing a comprehensive exploration of the pragmatic functions and investigating the syntactic and morphological characteristics of selected terms of endearment in Egyptian colloquial Arabic. It offers a detailed analysis of their …

Exploring Teachers' Initial Perceptions Of Corpus Linguistics And Their Readiness To Incorporate Corpora In Classroom Instruction: A Qualitative Analysis, Misnawati Misnawati, Yusriadi Yusriadi, Zul Astri, Aswin Abbas, Asbar Asbar

The Qualitative Report

The integration of corpora into language teaching appears to be lacking, raising the question of whether this omission is due to teachers intentionally choosing not to use corpora in their classes or a lack of awareness and knowledge about these tools. This study of teachers in Indonesia aimed to explore two research questions: (a) what are the teachers' initial perceptions regarding corpus linguistics, and (b) do the teachers intend to integrate corpora into classroom instruction? Fifteen secondary and tertiary-level teachers participated in this qualitative study. Researchers gave the teachers a brief presentation on corpora to develop their Corpus Literacy (CL) …

Mentoring And Supporting All Writers: Strengthening Writing Instruction In Pk To 5th Grade With Halpern’S “Interactive Writing” And Anderson’S “Mentor Texts”, Chad H. Waldron, Meghan K. Block, Alicia D. Fluker, Mariah C. Schepak, Michelle R. Snyder

Michigan Reading Journal

Shared, co-authored book review by educators and researchers of Matt Halpern’s (2023) A Teacher’s Guide to Interactive Writing, Grades PreK-2 and Carl Anderson’s (2022) A Teacher’s Guide to Mentor Texts, Grades K-5 (Heinemann)

Reclaiming And Celebrating Our Names: Storytelling-As-Connection Through An Elementary-Middle School Partnership, Christina M. Ponzio, Janine Kopera, Jennifer Krueger, Katharine Kwiatkowski, Heather Shiveley

Michigan Reading Journal

Affirming each student’s identity is fundamental to fostering the connection needed for our students to grow as a community of readers and writers across the year–and this begins when teachers learn their students’ names. This article highlights how students, teachers and literacy coaches through a partnership between an elementary school and middle school in southeast Michigan connected together through storytelling as an avenue to reclaim and celebrate their names. The second author shares her collaboration as the literacy coach with elementary teachers, which began with a read aloud of read Alma and How She Got Her Name (Martinez-Neal, 2018) and …

Developing Adolescent Word-Level Knowledge: Challenges And Opportunities In Professional Learning With Secondary Educators, Jenelle Williams

Michigan Reading Journal

This article aims to highlight the research base for disciplinary literacy approaches, emphasize foundational literacy components that apply to the majority of adolescent learners, and propose tangible approaches to attend to morphological development in multiple academic disciplines. The article will conclude with a call for additional research into the role of morphological awareness in strengthening adolescent reading comprehension, as well as further study of the implications for systemic approaches across all disciplines in secondary educational settings.

Back To The Future: Looking At Nostalgic Practices To Conceptualize A More Inclusive Literacy Future (Part 2), Darreth R. Rice, Rebecca L. Witte

Michigan Reading Journal

No abstract provided.

It’S “A Good Day” To Make Inferences: Helping Emergent And Reluctant Readers, Amy Davis

Michigan Reading Journal

A skilled reader can understand and connect to relationships that are not explicitly stated in text. The process of making inferences can be divided into two categories: text and prior-knowledge-based. This paper offers examples of inference questions using the picture book, “It’s a Good Day” by Kevin Henkes, that teachers can use during shared book readings with emergent and reluctant readers.

Communication: Skill Development Framework, Claire Scoular, Jonathan Heard, Adam Wardell

Assessment and Reporting

This communication skill development framework was developed to address the challenges associated with teaching and assessing communication. It provides a general definition of communication and describes this construct as it applies in classroom-based learning. This framework synthesises and harmonises existing theory and research on communication. It outlines communication processes along prescribed strands and aspects that are informed by evidence. The strands contained within the framework are 1. Strategising an approach; 2. Conveying information; and 3. Receiving communication. The strands are further broken down into aspects to inform teaching and assessment.

Theorizing “Reflection” And “Refraction” For Teaching Argumentative Writing About Literature In The Secondary English Language-Arts Classroom, Matt Seymour

Journal of Educational Research and Innovation

This study theorizes two new constructs—“reflection” and “refraction”—for teaching argumentative writing about literature in secondary classrooms. Derived from a year-long ethnographic study and through contextualized analysis of a student's essay, it examines a Latinx student's argument about the novel Sing, Unburied, Sing. The analysis that follows demonstrates how her writing was influenced by both conventional argumentative practices in schools and the specific racial narratives present in the classroom environment. Drawing from the perspectives of New Literacy Studies, the study advocates for writing instruction to consider elements reflection and refraction in English language arts classroom. By doing so, it suggests moving …