Adolescent students with learning disabilities across the United States are not demonstrating gains on reading assessments from previous years, and many are not even achieving at proficient literacy levels (Boulay et al., 2015). Despite their difficulties with reading proficiency, adolescents with learning disabilities are often enrolled in…

The use of multicultural literature in the English classroom is important because students need to see themselves reflected on the page as well as need windows into their peers' experiences that are unlike their own. Teachers in middle school classrooms have the potential to positively influence students' ability to engage and connect with…

Argumentation is one of the central practices in science learning and helps deepen students' conceptual understanding. Students should learn how to communicate ideas including procedure tests, data interpretations, and investigation outcomes in verbal and written forms through argument structure. This article presents a negotiation model to…

Can the National Board certification process support school improvement where large proportions of students score below grade level on standardized tests? This SCOPE study examines a project that sought to seize and capitalize upon the learning opportunities embedded in the National Board certification process, particularly opportunities to learn…

Life Space Crisis Intervention (LSCI) is a technique that interrupts the conflict cycle and empowers students by helping them recognize their own patterns of difficult behaviors and develop more productive responses to emotional turmoil (Long, Wood, & Fecser, 2001). Focusing on the here and now, an adult using LSCI can help transform a crisis into…

In this article, the authors describe McNair Middle School's Independent Study process. Each year in late January the authors connect to look at the calendar to schedule time for the seventh-grade gifted and talented (GT) students to come to the school library to begin their annual Independent Study. "Independent study is a planned research…

Just as ready-made clothes may not provide a perfect fit for all bodies, math lessons may not be a perfect fit for all students. Published instructional tasks, including problems in mathematics textbooks, often need to be tailored to be meaningful, relevant, or accessible to each student. Ways are possible to take high-level reasoning tasks and…

In 2006, a secondary English and feminist studies teacher created a course and designed a study around a reading exchange for eighth-grade girls from two vastly different communities. Girls from a school in a northeastern state read young adult novels and wrote about their reading and related topics with girls from Washington, DC on a wikispace…

This article describes the use of documentation by teachers and their children with pervasive developmental disorder (PDD) to develop skills of self-determination. Visual feedback, such as photos and video, help teachers plan and children evaluate their performance in social situations, such as finding a friend to play with at recess. This…