Language and Literacy Education Commons^™

Reviving Independent Reading: A Review Of Just Read It, Cinde Wollenberg

Virginia English Journal

This is a book review of Just Read It: Unlocking the Magic of Independent Reading in Middle and High School Classrooms by Jarred Amato in 2024. Reviewed by a high school Reading Specialist, this thorough review of Amato's book for educators includes many strategies and tools for having an effective independent reading program in the classroom.

Letting Students Amaze Us: Teaching For Success In A 4th Grade Classroom, William D. Smyth

Virginia English Journal

A look back at a year in a 4th grade classroom with highly motivated students that came about when a former student, now 48 years old, returned home to visit his 4th grade teacher. According to this student, this was the seminal year that launched his engineering career that he now enjoys in Portland, Oregon. And, speaking for others, this was the turning point in his classmates' educational journeys too.

Fixing Our Failures With Data: Data Literacy And Global Issues In A Middle School Novel Study, Mary Grace Scartz

Virginia English Journal

This paper explains the rationale behind and need for teaching data literacy approaches in an English classroom. It outlines a unit of study based on the book by Victoria Jamieson and Omar Mohammad, When Stars are Scattered, which follows the true story of Omar as he navigates education and family responsibilities in a refugee camp in Kenya. Because of the relevant and important global challenges that arise in the story, students need a wealth of background knowledge to approach the text. This paper argues that this background knowledge is best delivered through the use of real-world data about refugees …

Language As Power In Angeline Boulley's Firekeeper's Daughter, Liz Shanks

Virginia English Journal

Angeline Boulley's Firekeeper's Daughter offers a fresh counternarrative for students in the ELA classroom, opening new doors for students to see themselves and others more accurately reflected in a thrilling, page-turning novel. This article dives into the way power manifests in educational systems, and how students can advocate for themselves in such educational settings through Boulley's novel.

The Furious Flower Poetry Center: Teaching The Worlds Of Black Poetry To High School Students, Mary Beth Cancienne Phd, Hermione Dewitt, Zoe Mcdowell, Kaleigh D. Phelps, Liz Shanks James Madison University

Virginia English Journal

This article titled The Furious Flower Poetry Center: Teaching the Worlds of Black Poetry to High School Students features lesson plans that high school English graduate candidates wrote in a high school English methods course after participating in the decennial Furious Flower Poetry Conference in September of 2024 at James Madison University. High School poetry lessons featured are based on the poetry of Gwendolyn Brooks, Jericho Brown, Nikki Giovanni, Sophia Elhillo, DaMaris B. Hill, Darrel Alejandro Holnes, and Yalie Kamara. Poetic themes and craft taught and discussed in the lesson plans include identity, language, culture, hope, symbolism, tone, diction, and …

A Model Research Synthesis Essay: Gender Justice In Contemporary Texts In Conversation With Arthur Miller's The Crucible, Jennifer Golobic

Virginia English Journal

No abstract provided.

Reflections From A Summer Literacy Intervention: Unlocking A Love Of Literacy In Struggling Readers, Rory K. Cantwell, Jenny M. Martin

Virginia English Journal

Summer literacy interventions offer a solution to the devastating impacts that summer literacy loss can have on struggling readers and writers. However, these interventions should consider the impact of student attitudes towards literacy on their learning and strive to develop positive associations between literacy and enjoyment. Camp Curious, a summer literacy intervention developed as a collaboration between the Virginia Association of Teachers of English and Shrine Mont, a retreat and conference center, embodies this idea. The intervention, in the form of a week-long camp experience, strives to provide third through sixth graders with positive and varied experiences related to literacy. …

Windows Into Refugee Lives: Using Graphic Novels To Cultivate Empathy And Understanding Across K-12 Classrooms, Donna Fortune, Anna Kambach

Virginia English Journal

Graphic novels, like When Stars Are Scattered by Victoria Jamieson and Omar

Mohamed, provides a powerful gateway for teachers to foster empathy and understanding with K12 students. This article explores how graphic novels combine visual storytelling with text to engage learners of all ages in discussions about refugee experiences. By integrating reflective activities and critical literacy strategies adaptable across grade levels, educators can use graphic novels to build cultural awareness, deepen comprehension, and inspire students to connect with global issues meaningfully. The article offers grade-specific implementation strategies that can be scaled appropriately for elementary, middle, and high school contexts.

Vej Volume 73 Issue 2 - Letter From The Editor's Desk

Virginia English Journal

No abstract provided.

From Homeland To Hostland: Language Ownership Of Heritage Dialect And Narratives Of Third Culture Kids Of The Gulf, Maryam Aref

Theses and Dissertations

The main purpose of this study is to examine Arab Adult Third Culture Kids’ sense of heritage language ownership and their identity constructions in relation to their transnational Arab Gulf context. The present study has three main aims: to ascertain their sense of ownership towards their heritage dialects, to understand the basis for their claimed or denied ownership, and to investigate the positions they ascribed to themselves and others in relation to their belonging and transnational and linguistic experiences. The study aims to fill the gap where there is a scarcity of sociolinguistic research around Arab Third Culture Kids in …

“Earth Care, Babes 💚”: Environmental Sustainability In Instagram Travel Narratives, Wawan Eko Yulianto, F.X. Dono Sunardi, Alodia Clea Amanda, Irene Theofine, Pricillia Tamara Damaris

Bahasa dan Seni: Jurnal Bahasa, Sastra, Seni, dan Pengajarannya

Throughout history, travel narratives have taken up various forms and served various purposes. The changes of forms and functions were influenced by the spirit of the age. Today, in the contemporary digital era, social media platforms like Instagram have transformed travel narratives into stories combining images and texts that significantly impact public attitude on travel and tourism. On certain occasions, Instagram travel narratives contribute to the dangerous trend of mass tourism, although there are moments when the same travel writing form advocates sustainability. This study investigates the extent to which travel narratives by prominent Indonesian travel influencers on Instagram advocate …

Management Concepts In Shishupalavadha, Sathyanarayanan V

Theses and Dissertations

Management of organizations, people, and entities has been a subject matter of great interest today. Schools of business and management were established in the West about 125 years ago, and countries in other parts of the world, including India, simply followed these practices. Consequently, there is a widespread feeling today that management concepts originated in the West. All Indian business schools teach management concepts propounded by Western scholars in the last 100 years or so.

Going by the first principles, whenever multiple people, resources, entities, and institutions are involved, there is a requirement for Management. This implies that management as …

Extracting From The Extracurriculum: Using Extracurricular Composition Practices To Bring Purpose, Voice, And Engagement Back To The English Classroom, Grace N. Ellis

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis explores how principles and practices from extracurricular literacy spaces and the extracurriculum as a whole can inform and revitalize the secondary English classroom. In response to growing student disengagement, apathy, and disconnection, particularly within highly standardized and product-focused classrooms, this argument investigates how programs such as the Nebraska Writers Collective’s All Writes Reserved program and the University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s Young Writer Camp model authentic engagement, identity exploration and development, and rhetorical agency through creative, student-centered writing practices. Drawing from composition theory, educational research, and experiential data from Nebraska-based writing initiatives, the thesis argues that incorporating choice, safe-risk taking, …

Interdisciplinary Comparison Of Verb Complementation Patterns In Selected Nigerian University Course Textbooks: Insights From Humanities And Natural Sciences, Scholastica Chinyere Amadi

Journal of English and Applied Linguistics

This paper describes the variation in the distributions and use of verb complementation types and patterns in selected academic textbooks. The theoretical framework is Chomsky’s phrase structure grammar. The data, obtained from the first chapters, titled, ‘General introduction’ and ‘Atom and its structure’ of purposively selected English Studies and Physics textbooks, comprising 473 transitive verb phrases are manually analyzed. The findings reveal that three verb complementation types, mono-transitive, intensive, and complex-transitive, vary in patterns across the two textbooks with the mono-transitive V+NP and intensive V+NP patterns being dominant in English while the complex-transitive V+PP pattern dominates in Physics. The findings …

Teaching Engaging Grammar Instruction In The High School English Classroom, Emily A. Erlbacher

Journal of Curriculum, Teaching, Learning and Leadership in Education

Grammar is a fundamental component in the content area of English Language Arts. Having a strong foundation in grammar is a critical stepping stone to writing clearly and communicating with success. Despite its importance, grammar is historically not the most engaging topic for high school students. My study, consisting of a seven week action plan involving the ninth graders in an English Language Arts classroom, sought to recognize this disengagement and work to combat it in order to improve students’ writing capabilities. More specifically, the purpose of my action research was to evaluate different grammar instructional strategies recommended in existing …

Back Matter, Harry Denny

The Writing Center Journal

Back Matter for Writing Center Journal 43.1.

James Baldwin's Classroom And What He Can Teach Educators About Queer Representation, Matthew Callahan

Honors College Theses

This is an extended analysis of James Baldwin's "A Talk to Teachers" about how to bring representation into the classroom. I use Baldwin's other essays and fiction along with educational research to look into the way Baldwin understands education and the importance of bringing healthy queer representation into the classroom. I provide both theoretical observations along with practical implications of what this means for educators in the classroom and what they can do to help all their students feel seen, represented, and welcome in the classroom.

Literary Postcritique And American Transcendentalism: Helping Students Practice Community-Building By Rewilding Literature In The Classroom, Tate Aldrich

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Literary postcritique is an emergent theoretical approach to literature that has elicited skepticism among many in academia because of its central claim that their unchecked overreliance on suspicious and symptomatic reading styles is diminishing the pedagogical potential of our reading together. To restore this potential, Rita Felski, a champion of literary postcritique, suggests adopting an aesthetic reading style, a mid-level interpretation that neither indulges in the formalists’ habits of close scrutiny nor in the cultural critics’ wider lens of political and social contexts. In The Limits of Critique and Hooked, Felski argues that an aesthetic reading style can develop …

Front Matter, Harry Denny

The Writing Center Journal

Front matter and editors' introduction to The Writing Center Journal 43:1 (2025).

Writing Confidence: Tutoring, Identity, And Race—A Mixed-Methods Approach, Daniel Messier, Hadi Riad Banat

The Writing Center Journal

This mixed-methods study sought to better understand how confidence in writing and race interact as factors within writing centers. Students utilizing our writing center were asked to provide data about racial identity and writing confidence both when registering with the writing center and when completing postsession surveys. From this data, we interviewed a racially representative pool of respondents to better understand their definitions of confidence and the identity factors that have shaped their confidence in writing. Our survey data showed that students’ confidence increased significantly as a result of a writing center session, replicating previous writing center research. Furthermore, we …

English Writing Centers In China: Opportunities, Challenges, And Paths Forward, Bradley Hughes, Jingtian Zhang

The Writing Center Journal

English writing centers at Chinese universities present a fascinating paradox. On one hand, the number of universities with writing centers and the professional interest in writing centers in China have grown steadily over the past two decades. But on the other, the number of centers is still modest and only a few centers have had a significant influence on the culture of writing on their campuses, which is surprising given the vast number of universities in China and the documented need for strengthening and expanding writing instruction in English. This international research study explores the current state of English writing …

We Should Promote Genai Writing Tools For Linguistic Equity, Nathan Lindberg

The Writing Center Journal

In this essay, I suggest that we should embrace generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) writing tools, particularly chatbots (e.g., ChatGPT, Copilot, Claude), because they can enable linguistic equity by leveling the academic playing field for English as an additional language students. As writing experts, we can find ways to use this technology to enhance learning, and, since we know both student and faculty positions, we can help develop policies so such tools can be used effectively and ethically. Alternatively, we can ignore them and risk becoming irrelevant.

Somewhere In The Middle: Assistant Directors’ Leadership, Labor, And Power In Writing Centers, Keri L. Carter, John L. Carter

The Writing Center Journal

The position of writing center assistant director resides in the middle of the often blurry lines of hierarchy. While many writing centers advocate for team leadership, the fact remains that universities are steeped in bureaucratic tradition familiar to university leaders, students, and tutors. Assistant directors accomplish tasks that keep the day-to- day center functioning, yet these tasks equate to sometimes invisible work in the center and often invisible work in the university as a whole. Furthermore, research on assistant directors’ roles, labor, and identities is exceedingly limited. Thus, the purpose of this qualitative, phenomenological study is to understand how hierarchies …

Beyond Convenience: A Mixed-Methods Study Of Asynchronous Multimodal Tutoring And Its Impact On Understanding And Connection, Sohui Lee, Abigail Michelini

The Writing Center Journal

Although traditional asynchronous tutoring is associated with text-based communication, writing centers are beginning to experiment with asynchronous multimodal tutoring with the assistance of accessible and interactive multimedia technologies and instructional platforms like VoiceThread. Using a mixed-methods approach of surveys and interviews of undergraduate students at a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI), this study explores the potential benefits of asynchronous multimodal tutoring beyond access and convenience: We examine why students choose to submit their papers for asynchronous multimodal feedback, and whether they perceive that the multimodal aspect of the feedback improves their understanding and enhances their connection with tutors.

Central Habits Of Highly Effective Tutors: Hospitable Practice, Rhetorical Listening, And Emotional Validation In The Writing Center, Edward A. English

The Writing Center Journal

This article explores hospitality as a theoretical framework for valuing emotional engagement and rhetorical listening in writing center consultations, challenging traditional views that prioritize rationality and detachment. Anchored in a university writing center, the study investigates how writing tutors engage with writers, adopting hospitality as a core principle. Semi-structured postconsultation interviews and a focus group allowed tutors to reflect collaboratively on their application of the hospitality framework. Thematic analysis with in vivo coding ensured participants’ voices remained central to the findings. By examining the lived experiences of tutors, the study highlights the dynamic relationship between emotional and rational responses in …

Avoiding The Dreaded Packet: The Impact Of Guided Notes On Student Confidence And Quality Of Poetic Annotations In An 11th Grade Ap Language And Composition Classroom., Kaleigh D. Phelps

Virginia English Journal

This article presents findings from an action research study conducted in a 11th Grade AP Language and Composition classroom on the impact of guided notes on confidence and quality of student work. The data indicates a substantial need for transfer skills in the English classroom.

Volume 73: Issue 1 - Letter From The Editor's Desk, Cinde Wollenberg

Virginia English Journal

No abstract provided.

Literacy Warriors: Engaging Our Community In The Fight For Literacy, Monica Rene Manns, Diane Saunders

Virginia English Journal

The Literacy Warriors initiative is designed to address the pervasive issue of illiteracy in underserved communities through innovative, community-driven strategies. Rooted in the evidence-based methodologies of Marva Collins and Orton-Gillingham, the program equips community members—referred to as Literacy Warriors—with the skills to teach foundational literacy, including phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. Recognizing literacy as a tool for equity, empowerment, and social justice, this initiative emphasizes culturally affirming practices that resonate with the lived experiences of Black and marginalized students. The program also addresses a critical gap: many Literacy Warriors themselves were not taught phonics due to past whole-language initiatives, which …

Unlocking Ela For All Students With Drama Activities, Natalie Tasillo

Virginia English Journal

Introducing drama activities into ELA classes can spark creativity, critical thinking, and collaboration for all students. They offer inclusive alternatives to traditional ELA activities and support successful learning experiences for all students. Several drama activities that are accessible to many students experiencing challenges are provided with suggestions for how they can benefit ELA classrooms.

Reading The Players: Developing Critical Consumers Of Sports Media, Katie Dredger, Katherin Garland, Crystal L. Beach

Virginia English Journal

Sports media is ubiquitous, and English Language Arts (ELA) teachers can use topics around current sporting activities and events in the classroom to engage readers and to teach skills of critical media literacy. Serving as a primer on critical media literacy, this article, grounded in educational theory, gives practical and easily accessible texts and creative lesson ideas to spark engagement, build community, encourage collaboration and foster achievement in secondary ELA classrooms.