Graphic organizers are widely used in teaching vocabulary and reading in both L1 and L2 classrooms in addition to glossing. It has been indicated by several studies (e.g., Lie, 2016) that students using a mobile-assisted concept-mapping vocabulary learning strategy do better and retain what they have learned longer than students who limit…

"Toward a More Visually Literate Writing Classroom: An Analysis of Visual Communication Pedagogy and Practices" examines the teaching of visual communication in undergraduate professional and technical communication courses. Through an analysis of scholarship, textbooks, I argue that a situated visual communication pedagogy that…

There is a need for higher quality professional development for writing teachers (Cutler & Graham, 2008; Gilbert & Graham, 2010; Kiuhara, Graham, & Hawken, 2009). Even though writing is an essential skill, quality writing instruction for students and the professional development for writing teachers is lacking (National Commission on…

The concept of data-driven learning (DDL) -- direct student use of corpora -- has been gaining attention among researchers and teachers. DDL gives learners the chance to take an inductive approach to learning by recognizing patterns in corpus data rather than following abstract rules. However, very few studies focus on presenting clear practices…

A surprising conversation with her young daughter inspired author Brandie Bohney to incorporate mentor texts to help students make sense of convention rules. Since struggling and reluctant readers tend to also be struggling and reluctant writers, the author designed activities that would concentrate on the conventions students most needed to…

Media literacy education provides a toolbox for helping direct students' attention to the way we shape information for audience and purpose. The National Association for Media Literacy Education defines the core skills of media literacy as the ability to access, analyze, and evaluate information, as well as the ability to create and act on…

Writing is a complex and difficult skill for many middle-level students. Therefore, teachers must invest considerable time and apply evidence-based instructional approaches when teaching writing. This article describes the self-regulated strategy development (SRSD) approach to teaching writing and provides examples of each step of the approach…

The purpose of this article is to share how the authors supported kindergartners' and first graders' developing creativity through stories they composed in writing and art. Over eight years, the authors explored ways to use picturebooks as mentor texts to help students explore how the authors and artists create meaning multimodally. This article…

Conferences provide teachers a valuable context for giving both positive and constructive feedback that is tailored to individual students. Students who struggle with writing, however, are less apt to receive positive feedback on the craft of their writing, which is an important part of literacy development in the elementary and middle grades.…

How do native Chinese-speaking (CS) and non-Chinese-speaking (NCS) children learn to read and write in Chinese? In the present study, 29 CS and 34 NCS second and third graders aged 76 to 122 months (M = 93.65) participated in an experiment where they were taught 16 new Chinese characters in one of four conditions--copy, radical, phonological and…

Observational studies suggest that early writing instruction rarely occurs in early childhood classrooms, despite the importance of supporting young children's writing development. Morning Meeting Time (MMT) routine is a typically occurring large group activity in early childhood classrooms that is interactive and familiar to teachers and…

This article considers our experiences teaching a hybrid literature/creative writing subject called "Life Writing." We consider the value of literature students engaging in creative writing practice--in this instance, the nonfiction subgenre of life writing--as part of their critical literary studies. We argue that in practicing life…

This article applies the perspective of "boundary work," an approach originating in science studies, to relations between the disciplines of Second Language Writing (SLW) and rhetoric and composition (R&C), especially to controversies surrounding the concept of translingualism. Boundaries both separate and connect, a dual potential…

One area of writing that may be particularly problematic, causing both academic and behavioral challenges for writers with learning disabilities, is constructing sentences. Sentences are the building blocks of coherent and effective writing and constructing syntactically correct and complex sentences is a critical skill characterizing expert…

English language arts teacher Zachary Wright describes how he uses "Mad-Lib"-like templates to help his unconfident writers (which is most of his students) see precisely how to do things like write a thesis statement, extract examples from the text, and structure a coherent essay.