Historians often present their interpretation of the past in written accounts. In order to gain deeper knowledge of the discipline of history, students must learn how to read and write historical accounts. In this experimental pretest--posttest study, we investigated the impact of a domain-specific reading instruction followed by domain-specific…

This snapshot describes and reflects upon two case studies of community writing projects between Emerson College and Boston Public Schools. Emerson College students were asked to tutor 10th grade BPS students for the English Language Arts portion of the state standardized assessment. Through both quantitative results and qualitative reflection,…

Disappointed that the use of the "PEEL" writing scaffold had led her Year 11 students to write some rather dreary essays, Claire Simmonds reflected that a lack of specific training on historical writing might be to blame. Drawing on genre theory and the work of the history teaching community, Simmonds attempted to theorise the…

This yearlong ethnographic case study investigated higher and lower track adolescents' experiences with core content-area (social studies, science, and math) writing in one urban working-class district. Teacher, student, and administrator interviews; field notes; and students' written work comprised the data set. The findings from this…