Students from all over the world, from various ethnic and racial communities, make up the student population of the schools in the United States. Each one of them brings to the classroom several unique characteristics. Creative writing and art are both empowering tools that meet the commonality of self-expression. Both are processes "in which…

This multi-method case study explored the actual and perceived mathematical growth, as measured by the counting and measuring, problem writing tasks (CaMPWTs) and focus student interviews respectively, of fifth graders at Catherine Elementary Middle School as they completed tasks designed specifically to scaffold the development of a set of math…

The six-sentence argument (6SA) is an exercise to train critical thinking skills. Faced with a decision situation, students argue for their preferred course of action using a logical structure of exactly six sentences. Through a guided peer review, students engage critically with other students' arguments and receive detailed feedback on their own…

Writing and Rhetoric 3326: Legal Writing is an introduction to legal analysis and writing. It is offered at St. Edward's University in Austin, Texas, a Holy Cross liberal arts university of approximately 4,300 students, mostly undergraduates. This course focuses on applied rhetoric, and is designed to give undergraduate students experience in…

The purpose of this study was to assess the effectiveness of contingency contracting on the percentage of correctly used punctuation marks in free writing tasks. Participants were three 11-year-old boys with learning disabilities (LD). A multiple-baseline across-subjects design was employed to test our prediction that the students would show…

Despite the efforts to confirm the effectiveness of writing in learning mathematics, analysis on common errors in mathematical writings has not received sufficient attention. This study aimed to provide an account of the students' procedural explanations in terms of their commonly committed errors in mathematical writing. Nine errors in…

For over 4 decades, educational researchers have been studying best practices for introducing writing into the curriculum. One successful strategy, a low-stakes writing exercise called "writing to learn" (WTL), has been implemented across several disciplines within higher education. In light of a growing interest in the use of technology…

The purpose of this article is to provide strategies that address three areas (creating a classroom library, incorporating environmental print, establishing writing activities) for beginning teachers for creating literacy-rich environments to support the academic and functional needs of young students with significant developmental disabilities…

This piece introduces methods -- textual interventions -- for teaching close reading through film literacy. Editing is the mechanism that creates meaning out of moving images. To unlock a film's visual "secrets," we must break the sequences of editing; move its hinges; reread and revise the cut.

The argumentative essay has endured as a popular form of university assessment, yet students still struggle to meet key intended learning outcomes, such as those associated with critical thinking. This paper presents the results of a study that examines the instruction provided by Australian essay writing guides to support students' development of…

Responsive professional development is about watching learners closely, interpreting observations to make nuanced decisions, and taking action to support learners at particular moments. What might they be ready to do next? What instructional moves will best provide "just enough" support? In other words, what is the next wise action?…

The field of positive psychology has identified brief interventions that increase individuals' well-being and decrease depressive symptoms. An example is the best possible self (BPS) activity. It is a writing exercise that asks participants to project themselves into the future, and imagine they have met all their goals in every domain of their…

Wikipedia is a widely used resource by university students, but it is not necessarily regarded as being reliable and trustworthy by them, nor is it seen as a context in which to make content contributions. This paper presents a teaching and research project that consisted in having students edit or create Wikipedia articles and testing whether or…

The authors examined the implementation of written reflections in a Grade 4 mathematics classroom over the course of 8 weeks. Students in this case study engaged in a workshop modeled after Calkin's Writers' Workshop and within this workshop the use of writing as a reflective tool in mathematics was introduced. The authors explore how students…

Rubric-referenced calibration and the interaction between writing achievement and calibration, a measure of the relationship between one's performance and the accuracy of one's judgments, were investigated. Undergraduate students (N = 596) were assigned to one of three calibration conditions: (a) global, (b) global and general criteria, or (c)…