This article presents the results of a 2016 classroom research study assessing the impact of open pedagogy on student skills mastery in English 101, a first-year undergraduate composition course at a two-year community college in North America. Ninety-two students in five sections used the same free OER course materials, but two sections were…

The author, who teaches the English Methods class in the credential program, knew from entries in students' Writer's Reader's Notebooks (Rief) that they were struggling with the articles assigned about a five-paragraph essay. Following a discussion of form-first instruction and CCSS assessments, this article provides concrete suggestions for…

This case study, conducted at a large suburban high school with two sections of a contemporary literature class for struggling 12th grade students, sought to understand how repurposing a non-educational technology such as Goodreads might impact adolescents' academic literacy practices and events. Incorporating Goodreads in a high school classroom…

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has created tools and supports intended to help teachers adapt to the Common Core State Standards in English language arts and mathematics. The tools seek to find the right balance between encouraging teachers' creativity and giving them enough guidance to ensure quality. They are the product of two years of…

Teachers of standards based, College Prep English classes regularly face resistant and struggling readers who fail to engage, persevere, and comprehend curricular texts. As a result, these readers do not share in class discussions. Therefore, a class discourse was formulated upon Gee's (1996) Social Discourse theory and Leu, Kinzer, Coiro, and…

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…

Shows how the mini-casebook approach, with a few modifications, works well with upper-division writing assignments. Notes that a mini-casebook approach is nothing more than a self-published document including a primary work of literature, selected secondary sources on that work, and a selection of several specified topics on the primary source.…

Presents 13 short descriptions from 13 different English teachers describing the most effective writing assignment they have ever given. (SR)

In this study, a hierarchical linear model (HLM) was used within a cluster random assignment design to test the impact of "Criterion"? on students' writing skill when "Criterion" was used as a supplementary instructional tool in ninth grade English classrooms over a 4 week period. The study was conducted in three states:…

Offers a review of a book by John Gaughan, "Cultural Reflections: Critical Teaching and Learning in the English Classroom," a book filled with teaching ideas and insights that challenge English language-arts teachers to immerse students in text and topics that are important in their lives and to genuinely consider students and communities in…

The 26 teaching strategies in this collection originally appeared in IDEAS PLUS, a special publication of the National Council of Teachers of English. The teaching strategies are entitled: (1) "A Dream House" (Thomas M. Cobb); (2) "A Journal-Writing Pot of Gold" (Irina Markova); (3) "Adopt-a-Word" (Annette Matherne); (4) "Contrasting Moods" (Don…

A study examined the effects of coauthoring, also referred to as collaborative writing, on student learning. Subjects were 24 students in a ninth-grade English class. Data were collected over the first 9-week quarter of the year. Eight collaborative writing triads were formed with a primary criteria in establishing heterogeneous groups in gender,…

Offers an interview with Robert Wylie, a distinguished two-year college English teacher for almost 50 years. Discusses how important it is for an English teacher to write, important issues in the profession, his views on the best ways to help students improve as writers, his observations about writing assignments, liking students, teaching…

Describes a qualitative action research study that investigated the effectiveness of an assignment for tenth graders that required primary research methods and an essay. Topics include authentic research; constructivist theory of learning; performance-based assessment; student journals; peer editing; teacher-librarian collaboration; and student…