This study examined the effectiveness of Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) to improve students' ability to write expository essays after reading social studies text. Third-grade general education teachers (N = 14) were randomly assigned by clusters to SRSD or a business as usual control condition. One hundred and eighty consented students…

The benefits of content writing are widely recognized, yet there are still few studies that evaluate the benefits and challenges of mathematical writing (MW) for students. The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics and the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics have an emphasis on written communication of mathematical reasoning as an…

This article argues for a conceptualization of school writing that emphasizes how cognitive and sociocultural factors interact. In academic, professional, and affinity-based communities, an emphasis on standards of quality drives the adoption of such practices as revision and peer and expert review. In school, everyday writing practices center…

Source-based essays are evaluated both on the quality of the writing and the content appropriate interpretation and use of source material. Hence, composing a high-quality source-based essay (an essay written based on source material) relies on skills related to both reading (the sources) and writing (the essay) skills. As such, source-based…

In this article we argue that interactive writing (IW), an approach to writing instruction, is uniquely supportive of secondary content-area teachers working to integrate meaningful writing instruction without sacrificing time or attention to content. Drawing on research and our experiences with IW in middle school settings, we explain the roots…

When teaching writing, this author states that there is nothing harder than trying to get a quality product, one worth reading, from a high school student. The author, however, has high hopes for the new Common Core standards, which call for students to "write routinely over extended time frames and shorter time frames for a range of tasks,…

This essay argues that what might otherwise be considered "plagiarism" in student writing is a symptom of the difficulties students encounter in their reading and writing, moments in which students' inabilities to critically assess, read, and respond to sources through the act of writing come to the surface. Expanding the context within…

Source-based essays are evaluated both on the quality of the writing and the content appropriate interpretation and use of source material. Hence, composing a high-quality source-based essay (an essay written based on source material) relies on skills related to both reading (the sources) and writing (the essay) skills. As such, source-based…

This study explored the extent to which an 18-day history and writing curriculum intervention, taught over the course of one year, helped culturally and academically diverse adolescents achieve important disciplinary literacy learning in history. Teachers used a cognitive apprenticeship form of instruction for the integration of historical reading…

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…

Students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) often struggle to be effective writers. Self-regulated strategy development (SRSD) is one approach to writing instruction that has demonstrated success for students with EBD. However, there is little research exploring its utility to teach writing to students with EBD in social studies. The…

For the past few years the author has been studying the writing lives of teachers, first analyzing the contributions of teachers to National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) journals for the ten-year period between 1998 and 2008 and then surveying and interviewing teacher-authors whose works appeared during that period to learn more about…

This article explores the issue of students' writing skills in the discipline of Engineering and beyond. It is the result of a discussion between three academics from different discipline backgrounds: Teaching and Learning, the Humanities and Engineering. We start with a review of the strategies commonly used to address problems in students'…

Recent initiatives in WAC/WID and CxC/CAC programs have emphasized the need to support multimodal composing in writing studies and in other academic disciplines. This ethnographic case study examines the academic multimodal composing practices of undergraduate students in the visually-based discipline of architecture. The results of this study…

Eight eighth-grade students identified as having emotional and/or behavioral disabilities participated in a multiple-baseline design study to assess the effects of teaching persuasive writing and applying writing in the civics content area. After baseline data were collected, two intervention phases were implemented. An instructional phase on…