bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Guest Editors’ Introduction: Toward Writing Assessment as Social Justice: An Idea Whose Time Has Come
Authors: Poe Mya , Inoue Asao B.
Published: February 2024

This special issue takes up a singular question: What would it mean to incorporate social justice into our writing assessments? This issue aims to foreground the perspectives of contributors whose voices are not typically heard in writing assessment scholarship: non-tenure-track faculty, HBCU WPAs, researchers interested in global rhetorics, queer faculty, and faculty of color. These voices have too often not been heard in writing assessment scholarship. There is no doubt that the first step toward projects of social justice writing assessment is to listen to those who have not been heard, to make more social the project of socially just writing assessment. The guest editors argue that there is much to be learned by making the writing assessment “scene,” as Chris Gallagher would say, more inclusive.
Assessment, Social Justice, and Latinxs in the US Community College
Authors: Naynaha Siskanna
Published: February 2024

The Pew Hispanic Research Center reports that between 1996 and 2012, enrollment in US higher education among Latinxs between the ages of 18 and 24 increased by 240 percent. In 2012 college enrollment among Latinx high school graduates aged 18 to 24 surpassed that of Whites for the first time in history, and NCES calculations show that more than half of those Latinx students enroll in two-year schools. Hence, in 2015 Latinxs found themselves the explicit targets of community college recruitment efforts aimed to capitalize on the increased presence of students from Latinx backgrounds. Once they pass through the doors, however, Latinx students too often find institutions ill-prepared to support their retention and success. Policies intended to guarantee equity might be effective in an environment where everyone is, in effect, the same, or when people are different in institutionally sanctioned ways, as when a student is diagnosed with a disability. However, in the case of multilingual students, such policies can mean they are consigned to a kind of institutional purgatory. They are neither in nor out; they gain access to college but remain blocked from advancement by required courses or chosen programs of study.
Who We Are(n’t) Assessing: Racializing Language and Writing Assessment in Writing Program Administration
Authors: Perryman-Clark Staci M.
Published: February 2024

Decisions about writing assessment are rooted in racial and linguistic identity; the consequences for many writing assessment decisions are often reflective of the judgments made about who does and does not deserve opportunities for success, opportunities historically denied to students of color and linguistically diverse writers. Put simply, assessment creates or denies opportunity structures. Because writing assessment is also racially and linguistically affected by the identities of those performing assessment, the role of writing program administrator (WPA) becomes a social justice role that challenges racial and linguistic biases and interrogates institutional structures, so that all students have the same opportunities for success.
Emerging Voices: The Exorcism of Language: Reclaimed Derogatory Terms and Their Limits
Authors: Coles Gregory
Published: February 2024

What dynamics govern the "reclamation" of contested terms? Applying Burke's notion of terministic screens illuminates the reclamation efforts surrounding contested—terms "Black" and "queer," both historically derogatory (and therefore discouraged) and now broadly reclaimed (and acceptable). In such reclamations, redemptive in—nature, the derogatory term is portrayed not as false but as misunderstood. But the reclamation movements surrounding "nigger" and "faggot" have been restricted,—i.e., acceptable only for in-group use (and mockingly directing attention to their derogatory history). Various reclamation narratives challenge the semantic binary—of derogation and reclamation: they indicate not "successes" or "failures" but different styles of reclamation.
The Stormy Times of James Moffett
Authors: Durst Russel K.
Published: February 2024

This article discusses the published work and career of James Moffett (1929–96), focusing in particular on Kanawha County, West Virginia, in the 1970s, when his innovative textbook series,—Interaction, after adoption by the county, was opposed by local and national conservative activists. The series was ultimately dropped by the district following a highly publicized, protracted, and at-times violent conflict, after which other districts around the country followed suit, shutting down the series. The article examines Moffett’s response to the censorship battle, explores his later interestin spirituality and literacy, and considers the implications of his work and his career trajectory for the teaching of English today.
“I Love to Flip the Pages”: Preservice Teachers and New Literacies within a Field Experience
Authors: Kist William , Pytash Kristine E.
Published: February 2024

It is sometimes assumed that “digital natives” will more easily integrate new literacies into their classrooms once they begin their careers. This study followed preservice teachers at the junior level—who were taking part in a year-long field experience set in an urban high school. This field experience was set in the context of an English education methods course focusing on integrating new—literacies into the English classroom. Interviews, blog posts, and survey responses suggest that many of the preservice teachers (born around 1990) expressed some of the same traditional views about—using technology as teachers of an older generation. With some exceptions, most of the preservice teachers saw new literacies as best used to motivate students to learn traditional content.
Opening the Conversation: Value-Added Models and Why We Should All Be Worried
Authors: Rush Leslie S. , Scherff Lisa
Published: February 2024

The editors discuss the problems associated with using value-added models for assessing teacher effectiveness.
The Territory of Literature
Authors: Hillocks George
Published: February 2024

George Hillocks’s final work of scholarship (edited by Peter Smagorinsky) represents Hillocks’s approach to developing a literature curriculum.
Centering Black Girls’ Literacies: A Review of Literature on the Multiple Ways of Knowing of Black Girls
Authors: Muhammad Gholnecsar E. , Haddix Marcelle
Published: February 2024

In light of the current assaults on Black girls and misaligned instructional practices in and outside of schools across the nation, English educators need to understand a more complete vision of the identities girls create for themselves, and the literacies and practices needed to best teach them. This article provides a review of literature of Black girl literacies by examining historical, theoretical, and empirical research conducted across the past several decades. These literatures are organized into themes and threads that help to illustrate the pedagogies for English educators of Black girls. The authors provide implications for literacy practice, policy, and research that center Black girls’ ways of knowing and suggest a Black girls’ literacies framework as an impetus for English teaching and teacher education.
Developing Curriculum to Support Black Girls’ Literacies in Digital Spaces
Authors: Price-Dennis Detra
Published: February 2024

Teacher educators, literacy scholars, and classroom teachers are beginning to develop curricula that leverage digital literacy practices and make visible what elementary students are learning across modalities. Although this body of work provides valuable examples (e.g., digital storytelling, innovative uses of digital apps and platforms, creating podcasts, and integration of tablets) of twentyfirst-century literacies in action, little is known about how these curricular choices support Black girls as they navigate digital spaces. In this article, I employ a Black girls’ literacies framework to better understand how classroom teachers can design curriculum with layered opportunities for Black girls to develop critical literacy practices in digital spaces. This framework makes visible how digital tools can (1) highlight technological capabilities, (2) promote exploration of social issues, (3) promote agency and confidence with digital literacies, and (4) showcase learning across modalities as Black girls navigate their multiple, political/critical, historical, intellectual, collaborative, and identity-laden literacies.
Reading Pop Culture and Young Adult Literature through the Youth Lens
Authors: Borsheim-Black Carlin
Published: February 2024

This article describes activities and assignments for using a youth lens to critique dominant images of adolescents/ce in young adult literature and pop culture—texts.
Using a Youth Lens to Facilitate Literary Interpretation for “Struggling” Readers
Authors: Heron-Hruby Alison , Trent Brandie , Haas Samantha , Cole Allen Zachary
Published: February 2024

This article details the authors’ success in using youth as a construct to facilitate literary analysis skills among high school students who claimed not to like reading—and who demonstrated difficulty with reading comprehension. The authors provide descriptions of the analysis activities in which the students participated.
Re-constructing and Re-presenting Teenagers: Using Media Literacy to Examine Cultural Constructions of Adolescents
Authors: Bruce David L.
Published: February 2024

This article describes a class in which media literacy was used as a means for student inquiry into cultural constructedness of adolescents. Students read and—critiqued media portrayals of teenagers, then used digital video to re-construct their own complex re-presentations of their adolescent selves.
Peer Response, Remixed: Authentic Peer Response through Audio Technology
Authors: Hoffman Michael
Published: February 2024

Students are encouraged to generate interpretations of peer work using digital audio technology to record and then reconfigure that work.
Close to Home: Creating Meaningful Contexts for Student Writing through Community-Based Problems
Authors: Smith David Alan
Published: February 2024

How does context affect student writing? The author suggests that problem-based learning can provide a meaningful context for students to develop, understand, and rehearse writing skills.
Questioning Questioning: Essential Questions in English Classrooms
Authors: Lillydahl Doug
Published: February 2024

Essential Questions provide frameworks for collaborative team curriculum creation; yet, controversy around such questions arises because of several factors. This author suggests five paths to responsible, English-friendly use of Essential Questions.
Nurturing Caring Relationships through Five Simple Rules
Authors: Stewart Mary Amanda
Published: February 2024

This article details how one teacher-researcher developed a relationship with a refugee student through literacy activities.
Reimagining the Role of the Reader in the Common Core State Standards
Authors: Carillo Ellen C.
Published: February 2024

Examining largely unknown revisions of the New Criticisms reading pedagogy, the author argues that these revisions should serve as a model of how the Common Core ELA Standards might be revised to reconnect readers to the process of reading.
Speaking Truth to Power: The Issue of Equity in the English Language Arts Classroom
Authors: McIntyre-McCullough Keisha
Published: February 2024

Speaking Truth to Power seeks to explore the experiences and possibilities that arise when educators speak Truth to power.
Slay the Monster! Replacing Form-First Pedagogy with Effective Writing Instruction
Authors: Rowlands Kathleen Dudden
Published: February 2024

Following a discussion of form-first instruction and CCSS assessments, this article provides concrete suggestions for teaching authentic writing processes.
Soft(a)ware in the English Classroom--Woodless and Wired: How Digital Learning Scars the Earth and What to Do
Authors: Lynch Tom Liam
Published: February 2024

“Soft(a)ware in the English Classroom” seeks to identify the ways in which our teaching and learning lives are influenced by software.
We Dare Not Teach What We Know We Must: The Importance of Difficult Conversations
Authors: Chadwick Jocelyn A.
Published: February 2024

The author encourages educators and researchers to foreground the voices and experiences of youth and youth culture in discussions about power and privilege in canonical and contemporary texts.
What Are the Rest of the Students Doing? Literacy Work Stations in Two First-Grade Classrooms
Authors: Worthy Jo , Maloch Beth , Pursley Becky , Hungerford-Kresser Holly , Hampton Angela , Jordan Michelle , Peggy Semingson
Published: February 2024

Across the United States, teachers use literacy centers as a way to engage their students and build independent literacy skills while they teach guided reading groups. Maximizing student productivity and learning while the teacher is busy working with a reading group is an issue that has challenged teachers for years, leading educators to propose a variety of solutions. However, the effectiveness of literacy centers remains virtually unexamined in literacy research. Through classroom observations, videotaped reading instruction, and teacher and student interviews over the course of a school year, we examined literacy centers (more specifically, "literacy workstations," Diller, 2003) in two first grade classrooms. Findings suggest challenges with workstations were similar to those found in previous studies of seatwork (limited explanation and modeling of activities, limited monitoring of students' activities, confusion about assignments, and limited engagement and productivity). Productivity and engagement in stations varied, with different effects on students instructed in lower and higher guided-reading levels. In light of the findings, we recommend that teachers closely and critically examine instructional practices, use them flexibly and in ways that are appropriate for their particular contexts and students, and continuously evaluate their effectiveness.
Research and Policy: The Search for Inclusion: Deficit Discourse and the Erasure of Childhoods
Authors: Dyson Anne Haas
Published: February 2024

In this column, Anne Haas Dyson probes the persistence of deficit discourse in language arts education. Her major conceptual tool for this probing is language ideology, that is, the intersection of attitudes and opinions about language with attitudes and opinions about groups of people. In our field, assumed deficits of whole groups of children have become taken for granted, and thus children’s resources and strengths are discounted and disappeared. Moreover, the academic transformation of early schooling into a ladder of literacy benchmarks has narrowed the ways in which children can find, and be seen as finding, success in school. The “erasure”(Gal, 2012) of child strengths leads to the violation of an old pedagogical truth: Teaching every child depends on building on what that child knows and can do, to which I add, and what that child feels, fears, and socially longs for in the company of other children. To help clarify her ideas, Dyson draws on a case study of kindergartener Ta’Von whose social agency supported what his teacher deemed “amazing” success as a writer but, alas, did not allow him to merit the educational label “bright.”—
A Content Analysis of Orbis Pictus Award–Winning Nonfiction, 1990–2014
Authors: Crisp Thomas
Published: February 2024

Facilitated by an increased interest in children's literature in language arts classrooms and an expanding selection of quality nonfiction books written for children, the October 1991 issue of Language Arts centered on the theme, "Nonfiction, Language Learning, and Language Teaching." Today, it is difficult to overstate the important role children's literature and, in particular, children's nonfiction literature, occupies in pedagogical contexts. However, despite increased interest in nonfiction children's books, the findings of literacy research, new standards, and recent legislative mandates, critical research on children's nonfiction remains scarce and studies center primarily on topics like accuracy of information, design, organization, and style. Few studies examine critically the content of children's nonfiction in the ways in which children's fiction has been analyzed for decades: moving beyond text type, convention, and form to examine the depiction of cultural identities like race, gender, social class, ethnicity, age, religion, dis/ability, region, and sexual identity. This article shares the results of a content analysis of recipients of the Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children that spans 25 years, from the inaugural award year in 1990 through 2014, the current award year. In addition to providing an overall snapshot of the focal subjects depicted in these award-winning books, the author identifies avenues for future research on the content of children's nonfiction.
Knowledge, Literacy, and the Common Core
Authors: Cervetti Gina , Hiebert Elfrieda H.
Published: February 2024

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) represent a fundamental shift toward the inclusion of more informational texts and related instruction, beginning in kindergarten. It would be possible to respond to the call for more attention to informational texts in the CCSS by simply changing the balance of different text types used for instructional purposes. In this article, we discuss why we should instead focus on using the opportunity of reading more informational texts to build students' disciplinary and world knowledge. We suggest that the critical message of the CCSS is the need to support students in developing knowledge for and through reading. We describe themes from the existing research about the relationship between knowledge and reading comprehension and describe critical dimensions of knowledge-enhancing English Language Arts Instruction.
Everyone Has a Neil: Possibilities of Literacy Desiring in Writers’ Studio
Authors: R.Kuby L.Gutshall Rucker Candace Tara
Published: February 2024

The aim of this article is to demonstrate the sophisticated and collaborative literacy desirings of children when they are given time, space, materials, and permission to create multimodally in Writers’ Studio. We share artifacts created by one second-grade student, Neil, for an in-depth look at the possibilities of writing as a creative construction. We use pedagogical documentation to visualize and better understand the processes of his writing. Thinking with poststructural ideas of becoming, fissures, and desire and the posthumanist idea of intra-activit-with-materials, we analyzed artifacts, videos of writing, conversations with students, photographs, and notes. Analyses helped us understand the processes of Neil’s literacy desiring, not simply the products. Even within a climate of mandates and standards being pushed on teachers, this type of multimodal teaching and learning can happen. As educators, we have to imagine the possibilities, trust students, and also give them permission to create other possibilities of writing.
Homer to Hip-Hop: Teaching Writing through Painting, Performance, and Poetry
Authors: Gilrain Jane
Published: February 2024

A fourth-grade classroom at Freemansburg Elementary School receives a Teacher-Artist Partnership grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts in cooperation with the Allentown Art Museum and the Bethlehem Area School District to teach reading and writing through arts integration. Two artists’ Mark McKenna, theater artist, and William Christine, visual artist’ join the ELA classroom three days a week. “Tales from the Odyssey,” a fourth-grade version of Homer’s classic by Mary Pope Osborne provides the inspiration. Students become engaged with the material physically, mentally, and emotionally through the acts of performing and painting. Students empathize with the characters in “The Odyssey” and compose their own poems based on similar themes. Many students write about their experiences of loss through the heroic voices of Odysseus, Telemechus, and Penelope. Various genres “story, dialogue, photographs, description, poetry, and interview” are combined to create a patchwork image of the arts-integrated classroom.
Reading Lessons from Martin: A Case Study of One African American Student
Authors: Compton-Lilly Catherine
Published: February 2024

While American schools become increasingly diverse, the achievement gap remains. However, reading educators have been surprisingly silent on what diversity means in terms of helping children learn to read. Compton-Lilly hopes that this case study helps teachers to identify and address times when they and their students are out of sync. This article is not about identifying a set of characteristics of African American learners. It is not about finding the best way to teach African American children to read. It is about getting beyond our assumptions and beliefs as White educators and closely watching children to become sensitive to what they can teach us.
Drama as Serious (and Not So Serious) Business: Critical Play, Generative Conflicts, and Moving Bodies in a 1:1 Classroom
Authors: Bucholz Beth A.
Published: February 2024

This study, part of a longitudinal classroom ethnography, explored the use of drama as a social art or tool that invited children to produce knowledge and critical insight into their relationships with technology. Through a series of process drama engagements, fourth, fifth, and sixth graders constructed meaning with their bodies, improvising multilayered, dramatic scenes related to the introduction of one-to-one (1:1) iPads in their classroom. One dramatic engagement is explored here in detail: children’s production of digital commercials that argued for or against 1:1 devices in schools. Using a framework for analyzing performative experiences in education, analyses focused on the moment-by-moment emergence of children’s bodies and affect within a single focal commercial. Findings suggest that by positioning classroom practices, rituals, and discourses as productive sites for collective cultural and dramatic interpretation, children became active theory makers, producing knowledge that went far beyond rational classroom discussions about technology. This work suggests that the intersection of drama and technology offers possibilities for expanding the interpretive space of the classroom—a way for teachers and children to collectively and critically consider how technology may disrupt ways of being and learning in classrooms, inviting new forms of relations between bodies and materials.—
Research & Policy: “Education without Boundaries”: Literacy Pedagogies and Human Rights
Authors: Campano Gerald , Paulo Ghiso Mario , Rusoja Alicia , D.player Grace , Rose Schwab Emily
Published: February 2024

This column examines the possibilities and critiques of human rights thinking and its implications for literacy and participatory research.
Counter-Storytelling through Graphic Life Writing
Authors: Marshall Elizabeth
Published: February 2024

Using the lens of critical race theory, this study examines the schooling experiences of racialized and indigenous girls in autobiographical and biographical picturebooks. The concept of “counter-storytelling” guides the analysis of three examples of graphic life writing, including Duncan Tonatiuh’s biography of Sylvia Mendez and her family in Separate Is Never Equal: Sylvia Mendez & Her Family’s Fight for Desegregation, Ruby Bridges’s memoir Through My Eyes, and Christy Jordan-Fenton and Margaret Pokiak-Fenton’s coauthored auto/biography When I Was Eight. This article proposes graphic life writing as one way to incorporate diverse books into the curriculum and highlights how authors and illustrators counter histories of racialized misrepresentation in text and image through the creation of culturally specific stories of resistance.
Language Arts Lessons: A Ride with Nana and CJ: Engagement, Appreciation, and Social Action
Authors: Bishop Rudine Sims
Published: February 2024

This column describes a three-pronged approach to incorporating into a classroom a book that represents some aspect(s) of diversity.
Research & Policy: Post-Humanism and Literacy Studies
Authors: Nichols T. Philip , Campano Gerald
Published: February 2024

This column examines the concept of post-humanism and outlines some possibilities and cautions for how it might be integrated in literacy teaching, research, and policy.
Using Translation to Drive Conceptual Development for Students Becoming Literate in English as an Additional Language
Authors: Jiménez Robert T. , David Sam , Fagan Keenan , Risko Victoria J. , Pacheco Mark , Pray Lisa , Gonzales Mark
Published: February 2024

Literacy research has not yet revealed how bilingual learners develop coherent and robust theories of language. Translation, however, provides emergent bilinguals (EL students) with opportunities to develop metalinguistic awareness, which can lead to a more complete conceptual framework for thinking about language and literacy. This preliminary research study sought to formulate an instructional approach (TRANSLATE: Teaching Reading and New Strategic Language Approaches to English learners) focused on using translation to ultimately improve ELL students’ reading comprehension. Using design research methods and qualitative analytical techniques, researchers asked middle school students described as struggling readers to work collaboratively and use various strategies to translate key excerpts from their required English literature curriculum into Spanish. Analysis of students’ statements, decision making, and interaction indicated that students’ conceptual understandings about language played an important role in their learning. Students reflected on the nature of vocabulary, syntax, and the ways that different languages communicate ideas. These findings extend conversations in literacy studies concerning the unique affordances of bilingualism to increase metacognitive and metalinguistic awareness, known contributors to higher levels of reading comprehension.
Beyond the Language Barrier: Opening Spaces for ELL/Non-ELL Interaction
Authors: Case Anny Fritzen
Published: February 2024

Cultivating interaction among English Language Learners (ELLs) and their non-ELL peers remains a desirable, yet often elusive, goal. While existing literature documents the challenges of ELL/non-ELL interaction and proposes strategies for overcoming them, there is little research examining concrete episodes of interaction from both the ELL and non-ELL perspectives. In response, I explore how a group of refugee and immigrant high school students (ELLs and non-ELLs) negotiated their interaction while collaboratively creating a digital video. In particular, I consider the role of the “language barrier” and how the participants interacted through and despite language. In the tradition of humanities-oriented educational research, I draw on Levinasian philosophy to reflect on the relational and ethical aspects of ELL/non-ELL interaction. Findings suggest that while language played a key role, communication obstacles tended to defy simple and strategic anticipation and resolution. Negotiation of meaning was often a creative, situated, and multidirectional process. Most importantly, interaction seemed to be ultimately about people in relationshipâ€”uncertain and at times uncomfortable, but also full of promise and opportunities for ethical response. I propose opening spaces as a new approach to ELL/non-ELL interaction that foregrounds human and ethical dimensions. Such reframing dislodges the issue from common assumptions which may unwittingly reduce ELLs to a “language problem,” and it honors the potential of participants creatively working out the interaction for themselves. By pursuing insights from both ELLs and non-ELLs, this study offers an important perspective rarely explored in the literature.
Forum: Moving, Feeling, Desiring, Teaching
Authors: Boldt Gail , Lewis Cynthia , Leander Kevin M.
Published: February 2024

In this set of essays, the authors argue for the importance of affect and emotion in literacy education, teacher education, and classroom life. In the introduction, Boldt describes the authors’ shared belief in learning as happening within a landscape of relationships and emergent life in classrooms and beyond. The introduction makes clear that while the authors are writing from different intellectual traditions, they share a sense of anger about the fetishization of standardization, testing, and methods at the expense of ambiguity, improvisation, and unexpected, disruptive, and enlivening classroom relationships. In the first essay, Lewis demonstrates how emotion is regulated in a secondary English classroom and yet can never be fully regulated, giving rise to discomfort and to unexpected transformations of signs. In the second essay, Leander argues for a more emergent vision of lesson planning that begins with the body and its expression of energies and potentials in the present. In the final essay, Boldt urges that teachers be provided with opportunities to openly examine their negative emotional responses—including anxiety and, at times, aggression—to mismatches between children and what is required in a high-stakes environment. Throughout the essays, the authors enact rather than describe a Deleuzo-Guattarian perspective, laying their differences and their shared commitments side-by-side in the hope of creating for themselves and their readers new sets of relations and possibilities and, with those, the condition of potential for imagination and desire.
The Sociohistorical Mandate for Literacy and Education in the Rural South: A Narrative Perspective
Authors: Lachuk Amy Johnson
Published: February 2024

This article explores how the sociohistorical context mandates literacy and education for AfricanAmerican persons living in a small community (“Pinesville”) in the rural U.S. South. Applying a sociocultural lens to literacy, the narrative perspective proposed is used to assert that literacy experiences are historically continuous, and rooted in shared cultural beliefs that have existed for African Americans since slavery. Such a perspective also apprehends an individual’s life history narratives as culturally saturated and situated within collective “frames of memory” (Brockmeier,2002, p. 24). Through the presentation of data poems for Miss Sally Harris, I argue that Miss Sally’s literacy experiences reflect a collective, cultural commitment to using literacy for self-determination, creating new opportunities for oneself and others, and preparing persons to use literacy for societal participation. I then link these beliefs to three mandates for literacy and education within Pinesville: (1) using literacy and education to determine one’s life course; (2)forging intellectual and social pathways through literacy and education; and (3) facilitating others’education and preparing persons to use literacy for “the dominating culture’s institutions” (Harris ,1992, p. 276). I conclude by asserting the significance of life history and data poems for conducting person-centered literacy research. I contend that within communities like Pinesville, literacy and education exist synergistically and can be useful for addressing issues of equity and access.
“I Don’t Really Have Anything Good to Say”: Examining How One Teacher Worked to Shape Middle School Students’ Talk about Texts
Authors: Hall Leigh A.
Published: February 2024

A growing body of research suggests that adolescents’ reading identities play a significant role in how they make decisions about their involvement with classroom literacy practices. In this yearlong study in an eighth-grade English classroom, I used a formative design to consider how an instructional model intended to support students’ reading identities and development influenced their talk about classroom reading practices. I closely followed five students with varying reading identities and abilities, documenting how they talked about texts within the context of the instruction they received. I found that both the quality and quantity of students’ talk shifted over the course of the study. All students, but particularly those with reading difficulties and negative reading identities, increased how often they talked about texts. They also changed the ways they spoke about texts, shifting from asking questions primarily about assignments to asking more questions about the content they were reading about. However, as students began to change their talk, others responded by attempting to silence them or limit what they said. This study shows that while teachers can create a context that helps students reconstruct their reading identities, they will need to foster a climate where students support each other’s growth as readers and development of reading identities. Therefore, changing the habitus as it relates to reading and being a reader becomes the responsibility of everyone in the class.
An Evaluation of Extensive and Intensive Teaching of Literature: One Teacher’s Experiment in the 11th Grade
Authors: McConn Matthew
Published: February 2024

More than four generations ago, Nancy Coryell’s (1927) study revealed that an extensive approach to reading instruction is more effective than an intensive approach, yet the reading establishment then continued to promote intensive, close reading methods. Recently, the writers of the Common Core State Standards renewed this debate by advocating that teachers implement more intensive, close reading strategies. I replicated a portion of Coryell’s (1927) study to determine the effectiveness of intensive and extensive reading instruction; to do so, I examined the impact each method had on students’ comprehension and analysis of literature. The study used a quasi-experimental, nonrandomized, pretest-post test comparison group research design. I used test procedures to measure the difference in pretest-to-post test scores within and between both groups for both comprehension and analysis. No statistically significant differences existed in the gains on the subtest measuring reading comprehension; however, statistically significant differences in gains on the subtest measuring analysis of literature were found within both instructional methods. At a time when policy seems to drive English instruction toward an intensive approach, this study suggests that we need more research before the field of English education can properly debate the issue.
Feature: Doctor Test Cracker; or, How I Stopped Worrying and Taught Students How to Beat the Compass Test
Authors: Brooks Stuart
Published: February 2024

The story of how I taught early college high school students how to pass the ACT Compass Writing Test and why it was so important.
Feature: Heterosexual Readers in Search of Queer Authenticity through Self-Selected LGBT Novels
Authors: Puritt John
Published: February 2024

By understanding how students read novels about the Other before class discussion, instructors can adapt lectures and lessons that will lead students toward becoming more astute readers.
Feature: Toward Local Teacher-Scholar Communities of Practice: Findings from a National TYCA Survey
Authors: Toth Christie , Sullivan Patrick
Published: February 2024

Drawing on findings from a national survey of TYCA members about how and why they access published scholarship, this article makes recommendations for fostering local teacher-scholar communities of practice within two-year college English departments.
Feature: The Risky Business of Engaging Racial Equity in Writing Instruction: A Tragedy in Five Acts
Authors: Coleman Taiyon J. , DeLong Renee , Sheerin DeVore Kathleen , Gibney Shannon , Kuhne Michael C.
Published: February 2024

This article and its five authors investigate how writing programs, writing instructors, and the profession itself engage in the erasure of race—of blackness and brownness specifically—and perhaps most importantly in a hesitancy to address white privilege.
Disciplinary Literacy Comes to Middle School
Authors: Shanahan Timothy , R. Shanahan Cynthia
Published: February 2024

Recently, many states adopted educational standards that emphasize the teaching of “disciplinary literacy” in Grades 6â€“12. This article explains the concept of disciplinary literacy and distinguishes it from the more widely known idea of “content area reading.” Teaching students effectively to understand how literacy is used to create, communicate, and evaluate knowledge in science, math, history, and literature requires an instructional commitment from the teachers in those fields. Useful resources for helping teachers to deliver such instruction are provided.
Teaching the Common Core: Using the Common Core to Support Disciplinary Literacies
Authors: Jo Draper Roni
Published: February 2024

Disciplinary literacy instruction holds potential for preparing young people to understand and take on pressing human problems. However, the emphasis on literacy and numeracy, as expressed in the Common Core State Standards, has the potential to undermine the disciplines by deemphasizing some disciplines or by not placing value on the texts central to participation in the disciplines. In this essay, the author argues for instruction that supports the acquisition and learning of disciplinary literacies, suggests how the Common Core State Standards may provide support for such instruction, and includes examples from the arts to demonstrate that these literacies are those needed to prepare children and youth to participate in a complex and changing world.
Learning Cycles That Deepen Students’ Interactions with Text
Authors: Fisher Douglas , Frey Nancy , Lapp Diane
Published: February 2024

It is important for students to develop as readers over the course of their educations in order for them to become adults who can successfully interact with various texts and interpret them throughout daily life. In order for teachers to help facilitate this development, they must initiate and return to a cycle of asking compelling questions to engage students initially with a text, teaching students techniques to read closely, fostering collaborative conversations about the text, and finally, showing how such reading inspires further thought.
Collaborative Read-Alouds: Engaging Middle School Students in Thoughtful Reading
Authors: E. Elliott-Johns Susan , A. Puig Enrique
Published: February 2024

Renewed conversations about close reading in relation to implementation of the Common Core Standards offer numerous opportunities to hone both traditional and innovative instructional practices. Two experienced teacher educators explore the features and benefits of collaborative read-alouds, using crossover picture books, the importance of attending to student voice in contemporary learning environments, and deepening student interactions with texts. The article also emphasizes the role of teachers’ reflective practices, critical thinking, and the need to look beyond the Common Core Standards when planning for instruction. A resource list of twenty recommended picture books for collaborative read-aloud is included.
Beyond the Book Response: Digital Writing and Reflection for Deeper Engagement
Authors: Hicks Troy
Published: February 2024

Even though book responses have, in recent years, begun to take on new forms such as blogs, podcasts, or short digital films, students can still suffer from shallow thinking about what they have read. To counteract this problem, this article proposes ways to teach “beyond the book response,” requiring students to push toward deeper analysis of characters, plot, and setting while documenting the process behind the digital products they create with the technology of screencasting. Using the MAPS heuristic “mode, media, audience, purpose, and situation” teachers can encourage metacognition and reflection, using digital writing tools for deeper engagement.
Students’ Understandings of What Is Important in the Teaching of Reading
Authors: Barone Diane , Barone Rebecca
Published: February 2024

Fifty students wrote replies to two questions: What is important to know to teach reading? What did my teacher do to teach reading? Overall, they knew that teachers had to know the content of reading such as phonics. When focusing on their own teacher, they described having opportunities to read and, in particular, the practice of literature circles.
Passion, I See, Is Catching: Motivating Middle Level Students through Learner-Centered Shakespeare Projects
Authors: Arastu Michelle , Gebhardt L. D.
Published: February 2024

A seventh grade language arts teacher in Texas creates a student-centered learning environment in which her gifted and talented and pre–Advanced Placement students are motivated to interact with a Shakespeare play and each other in creative and divergent ways. Students strategically select their group mates, create an assessment rubric for their project, and collaborate to produce a filmed interpretation of The Merchant of Venice in a context different from the original. Students meet with their teacher on an ongoing basis to assess their progress and make adjustments so that they are successful in this project which requires deep levels of comprehension of this rigorous text.
Creating Middle School Harlem Historians: Motivating Urban Students through Community-Based History
Authors: Goldenberg Barry M. , Wintner Andrew , Berg Carolyn
Published: February 2024

The Middle School Harlem Historians (MSHH) was a six-session after-school program in which middle school students learned to become historical researchers of their community, with the goal of motivating low-performing urban students to write in powerful and inspiring ways. Specifically, MSHH occurred in three cycles, with students picking a historical topic related to their lives in Harlem and writing an essay about their research. By fostering a culturally affirming and "scholarly" atmosphere in coordination with careful pedagogy that encouraged independent work, students became much more motivated to write and improved their writing abilities in result.
Teaching the Common Core: To Motivate, or To Understand Motivations?
Authors: Ivey Gay
Published: February 2024

Middle level students literate lives are intertwined with social and personal concerns. This realization is key to how teachers view and address standards associated with reading, writing, speaking, and listening.—
CODA: Finding Flow: The Power of Motivation and Pleasure
Authors: Wilhelm Jeffery
Published: February 2024

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s theory of flow posits that when people are most engaged, they have achieved a state of mind where they are totally immersed in the activity to an extent where nothing else can interfere or interrupt it. The conditions necessary to create a “flow” experience are quite similar to the conditions for pleasure discovered by the author in his own research. The key to motivation, then, is to attempt to cultivate the conditions of flow and the listed conditions for pleasure in classroom work.
Anthem or Nah? Culturally Relevant Writing Instruction and Community
Authors: P. Johnson Latrise , Eubanks Elizabeth
Published: February 2024

This article examines the utilization, implementation, and impact of an original writing lessonâ€”the anthem essay. The anthem essay lesson was designed to prepare preservice teachers to teach a structured writing lesson for middle level writers. This culturally relevant lesson prompted emerging writers to focus on and interrogate social issues at play in their personal lives and within their communities. Through dialogue, discussion, and collaboration, students were prepared to write communityâ€”that is, when writing is not only for the individual, but linked to how we belong with each other in the world. In other words, students write within and for community. The anthem essay invited and centered student ideas while interrupting traditional ways of teaching essay writing for young adolescent writers.
Their Own Voices: Empowering Students with Choice in Writing Tasks
Authors: Norris Jaime
Published: February 2024

Choice in writing assignments empowers students to take ownership of their work. Now that the new Common Core Standards require more writing to be done in classes, student engagement is more important than ever. If students are to spend extended amounts of time revising and editing a single piece of writing, it is critical that they care about the topic or assignment. The standards also call for specific types of writing assignments to be completed, and there are many ways to incorporate choice in these assignments. Choice alone will not help students become better writers, so teachers must guide students in careful study of mentor texts and models of exemplary writing.
Classroom Talk as (In)Formative Assessment
Authors: Ford-Connors Evelyn , Robertson Dana A. , Paratore Jeanne R.
Published: February 2024

Of the varied assessment tools available to teachers in the middle school classroom, one that is frequently overlooked in this era of new assessments and curriculum is classroom talk. The dialogic exchanges that occur during routine classroom instruction provide teachers with valuable insight into what students know and can do and can guide teachers’ instructional decisions. This article explores the use of talk as an assessment tool and offers examples of how talk reveals important information about students’ developing understandings and progress toward new learning.
Making Complex Texts a Reality for All Students: Dynamic Scaffolding that Bridges the Gaps Between Student and Text
Authors: Reynolds Dan , Goodwin Amanda P.
Published: February 2024

The Common Core requires students to read complex texts and their teachers to scaffold such reading. To investigate dynamic scaffolding in practice, we developed—a four-lesson guided-reading curriculum and paired it with a list of scaffolds at different levels (vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension) for tutors to use—during instruction with diverse middle level readers. Tutors scaffolded across levels and differentiated their comprehension (but not vocabulary or fluency)—scaffolding by student ability. Scaffolding was both flexible and consistent according to the demands of the text and the needs of the readers. Examples of—scaffolding and a guide for teachers are provided.
Collaborative Voices: Whose Shiny Is It?: Collaborating with Kid Advocates
Authors: Ochoa Jennifer
Published: February 2024

How might teachers help revise the dismissive public narrative about education? Educators who have participated in advocacy workshops share specific strategies for making their voices heard and creating change in their own school communities. As they learn how to create change in smart, savvy, and safe ways, these teachers now view advocacy as part of a new professional stance.
LEADING THE CALL: How to Thrive in the Middle
Authors: Atwell Nancie
Published: February 2024

Award-winning teacher-educator Nancie Atwell discusses classroom strategies that help students in this transitional age group become more engaged in their reading and writing. The most important factor: allowing them agency in choosing their topics.
Leading the Call: Read Talk Write: Developing 21st-Century Skills
Authors: Robb Laura
Published: February 2024

The author, an award-winning teacher and scholar, discusses the literary conversations students can have with a small group, the entire class, partners, and even themselves in the form of in-the-head conversations. She includes specific tips for guiding student-led literary discussions.
YA Voices: Hellen Keller, Annie Sullivan, Mr. Thomsen, and Me, Nora Raleigh
Authors: Baskin Nora Raleigh
Published: February 2024

On a return visit to her former school, the author reflects on the importance of her school library and a supportive teacher in setting her on the path to being a writer.
Read Aloud Often and Well
Authors: Laminack Lester L.
Published: February 2024

Reading aloud to students is often relegated to the elementary classroom—the early grades in particular. Here, the author gives guidelines for reading aloud to all ages.