Previous research has indicated professional training and support, personal literacy preferences, and professional literacy attitudes have an influence on classroom literacy practices. Limited literacy related research has been conducted in agricultural education. This study sought to examine the influence of professional training and support,…

Based on research conducted in a fourth-grade classroom, the author describes one teacher's process for integrating social studies and English language arts using a writers' workshop approach. Furthermore, the fourth-grade teacher was able to provide students with an opportunity to engage in multimodal composition. After conducting research…

Sixth grade language arts teacher Julie Ramsay was disheartened at her students' lack of interest in writing, so she began looking at what they were doing online to see if she could bring some of those experiences to the classroom. She saw that students enjoyed having opportunities to share their experiences with an audience and receive…

This white paper describes instructional approaches that apply to successful teaching with the Smithsonian "Learning Lab." After defining its use of terms such as "deeper learning" and "authentic resources" the authors review the research basis of three broad approaches that support integrating digital resources into…

Educators often say that technology is more than a gimmick or add-on, and that it should engage, enhance, or extend learning in ways that traditional tools do not. Yet they seldom stop to define these terms, and they can be confusing, especially for teachers and preservice teachers. Recently, while collaborating on an English language arts and…

The purpose of this research was to investigate how the use of blogging in the language arts classroom influences student communication about independent reading novels. I was motivated to do this study by witnessing the enthusiasm with which my students discussed technology as well as their eagerness to use those resources to create…

With the steady increase of ubiquitous computing initiatives across the country in the last decade, there is a pressing need for specific research looking at content area instruction in 1:1 settings. This qualitative multiple case study examines writing instruction at two middle schools as it is delivered by experienced teachers in five English…

This paper outlines a four-year study of a preservice education course based on a socio-constructivist research framework. The preservice English Language Arts course focuses on critical literacy and teaching for social justice while employing digital technologies. The research study examines two concepts across all aspects of the course: 1) new…

The Common Core State Standards produce a need to understand how digital tools can support literacy instruction. The purpose of this case study was to explore how a language arts teacher's integration of computers and iPads empowered and constrained her and the resulting classroom instruction. Constraining factors included (a) inadequate…

This in-depth case study explores a modern approach to education: the benefits of using film, technology and other creative, non-conventional pedagogical methods in the classroom to enhance students' understanding of literature. The study explores the positive effects of introducing a variety of visual-based (and auditory-based) teaching methods…

Middle grades teachers should create meaningful learning activities involving stimulating literature and interesting composition prompts. This article describes a unit in which eighth graders read short stories by Edgar Allan Poe. Using multiple learning and teaching approaches, they expanded their vocabularies, responded artistically to "The…

For some teachers, the increasing attention to digital and multimodal composing in English and Language Arts classrooms has brought into sharp relief the profession's investment in print as the primary means of expression. Although new forms of communication that combine words, still and moving images, and animation have begun to dominate digital…

Discusses the advantages of making the writing center part of the instructional media center in schools and provides some questions to consider in setting up a writing center. Offers three examples of popular writing assignments. (MG)