Learning science requires students to conceptualize complex scientific concepts, discover scientific facts, and share ideas with others. In this process, scientific vocabulary and language of science help students develop their understanding of science. Given the interlink between language and conceptual development, the current study aimed to…

One aim of this article is to shift mindsets from the traditional identification of written language abilities that are "missing" in students with specific learning disabilities (SLDs) to writing assessment as the discovery of more complex language strengths foundational to success across disciplines. The multiple language-levels (MLL)…

The purpose of the study was to examine the extent to which participants built meaningful culturally and linguistically responsive (CLR) relationships with students and to what extent those same participants engaged in cognitively demanding academic discourse with their students. The participatory action research (PAR) study took place in a rural…

Background: In many classrooms, science textbooks remain a significant tool, functioning in some instances as the de facto curriculum and influencing pedagogical practices. Such conventions are more noticeable in the science classrooms of developing countries, like Jamaica, because of a chronic shortage of specialist science teachers and the…

In this qualitative study, the authors investigated seventh- and eighth-grade students' participation in an elective civics course focused on the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The researcher and classroom teacher collaborated to embed literacy strategies into his curriculum in this design-based research study. The intervention cycle was…

When students present writing tasks that require higher order thinking skills to work, one of the most important problems is scoring these writing tasks objectively. The fact that raters give scores below or above their performance based on several environmental factors affects the consistency of the measurements. Inconsistencies in scoring…

This study examines whether children's decontextualized talk--talk about nonpresent events, explanations, or pretend--at 30 months predicts seventh-grade academic language proficiency (age 12). Academic language (AL) refers to the language of school texts. AL proficiency has been identified as an important predictor of adolescent text…

The Common Core State Standards (Common Core State Standards Initiative, 2010) feature argumentative writing across the curriculum in grades 4 through 12, yet little is known about how young adolescents develop the challenging advanced language and literacy skills needed for these tasks. This study explored productive academic language use in the…

The challenges involved in navigating between home, school and academic languages, especially in a low resource context, have been well documented in the literature. Processes and strategies that allow the use of students' "language as resource" have also been suggested by research. In the context of explorations, where students work…

This study investigates the concurrent and longitudinal relationships between polysemous word knowledge and reading comprehension among bilingual students (n = 107) followed from seventh to eighth grade. Standardized tests were used to measure decoding skills, broad vocabulary knowledge, and reading comprehension. Data about students' polysemous…

Vocabulary is a building block of understanding, especially in science classrooms where language abilities are mixed. To reduce academic inequalities, approaches to vocabulary instruction need to demonstrate benefits for students across learning contexts. We summarize the results from the first unit, "Earth Systems and Catastrophic…

In the present study, we first examined the formality and use of academic language in students' scientific explanations in the form of written claim, written evidence, and written reasoning (CER). Middle school students constructed explanations within an intelligent tutoring system after completing a virtual science inquiry investigation. Results…

To assess text comprehension and concept mastery, standards-aligned measures have moved from using multiple-choice questions to using source-based writing tasks (sometimes referred to as Reading-to-Write tasks). For example, it is now common for students to be asked to read a text and then to produce a written response, often a summary or…

This report examines which instructional components (e.g., visual representations, use of number lines, teaching and using of mathematical language) and study features (e.g., group size, interventionist training) may have contributed to the effectiveness of intervention. In choosing to focus on instructional components and study features, the…

Academic language is a kind of social language for the purpose of schooling. It is central to disciplinary learning, thinking, and communication. This study examined adolescents' use of academic language in informational writing, a genre highly valued in school, workplace, and society. Ninety-three seventh and ninth grade students from a U.S.…