Students with high-incidence disabilities (SWDs) experience academic challenges in multiple content areas (U.S. Department of Education, 2014). With growing recognition of the importance of science education in preparing students to be well-rounded, global learners in the 21st century, it is crucial that SWDs receive supports for succeeding in a…

This article explores how the research-based practice of using mentor texts can support students' writing within their subject areas. Specifically, this article examines the writing demands of the Common Core Writing Standards and how using mentor texts helps teachers meet these writing standards. We share guiding principles for using mentor…

This study examines factors that shape four student's perceptions of writing tasks in their science classroom. This qualitative retrospective interview study focuses on four students concurrently enrolled in honors English and honors biology. This research employs a phenomenological perspective on writing, examining whether the writing strategies…

Examined the cognitive processes through which writing contributes to science learning among elementary school students. Analyzed four aspects of students' verbal learning strategies: writing operations, transitional sequences among writing operations, text features, and strategies for generating content. Concluded that for elementary students,…

An ethnographic study examined the personal and professional life experiences that contributed to a science teacher's beliefs about science and science teaching, and how these experiences interacted to affect the teacher's decisions about content literacy strategies. The teacher in question was a veteran of 16 years of teaching chemistry and…

Even the youngest readers and writers in today's classrooms can benefit enormously from engagement with a wide range of traditional and nontraditional texts. This teacher-friendly handbook is packed with creative strategies for introducing K-3 students to fiction, poetry, and plays; informational texts; graphic novels; digital storytelling;…

Explanation as a genre may support children's reasoning and understanding particularly effectively. In this study, 20 fourth graders were given the task of explaining the effects of a pollutant on an ecosystem to third graders. Before writing, they completed a commercially developed science unit, instruction in reading and writing an explanation,…