Developed by classroom teachers during the development phase of Minnesota's Graduation Standards, this performance package is made up of locally designed assignments that, taken together, show whether a student has learned and can apply the knowledge and skills related to writing and speaking for a variety of academic and technical purposes. It…

Describes recent studies dealing with writing and the writing process, language acquisition, English teacher education, multimedia instruction, literature, language skills, and reading. (HOD)

Presents results from a study of eight college freshman to determine differences between revising essays on-screen and on-paper. Eighty-one percent of on-screen changes were above the mechanical or word level, often related to meaning and content. Students working on-screen tended to add more information and recreate paragraphs, but sometimes…

Discusses writing assignments and instructional support needed when the primary purpose of writing is to help students reformulate their subject-matter knowledge. Research on grades one-three illustrates ways in which two writing assignments offer different opportunities to learn about American history. (BB)

Describes strategies which teachers can model to help their students become cognitively aware of language. Suggests that teachers model writing and reading strategies at the same time they demonstrate word processing functions. (MG)

Analyzes above and below average readers' informational reports, which synthesize both source texts and writer-generated materials. Concludes that general reading ability and success at synthesizing overlap, and that success at synthesis may be related to cognitive factors associated with comprehension, such as sensitivity to text structure. (RS)

Describes the use of a modified version of the I-Search writing process for a high school freshman English research paper. Topics include collaboration between the classroom teacher and the teacher librarian, student journals, research strategies, problem solving, recognizing bias and opinions in sources, student assessments, and teacher…

Suggests that defining critical thinking as assessing authenticity, accuracy, and worth of knowledge claims and arguments also describes the historian's role. Recommends teaching students history in such a way as to necessitate higher level thinking skills. Argues that the writing process helps because it requires evaluation of existing data and…

Four fifth grade students with learning disabilities were taught a strategy to facilitate setting product and process goals, generating and organizing notes, continued planning during writing, and evaluating goal attainment. Strategy instruction had a positive effect on students' essay writing and knowledge of the writing process, and effects were…

Defines the notion of literacy scaffold and explains why literacy scaffolding applies to both first- and second-language learners. Offers criteria for teachers to apply in developing scaffolds. Illustrates the model with scaffolding activities used with elementary children, emphasizing the kinds of social contexts that optimize learning. (MG)

Reports on a small-scale ethnographic study carried out with lower secondary students of Urdu and Bengali at a mainstream school in East London. Focused on the use of the Internet and multi-lingual word processing within a Web publishing project and examined the role played by information and communications technologies at different stages.…

This article considers the development in understanding of aspects of formative assessment of students' writing at Key Stage 3 (11-14 years) by a group of trainee English teachers. An "analysis and application" approach to writing development, which requires students to master categories and processes then apply them, is outlined and…

This study aimed to investigate the importance of self-efficacy and attitudes to wards writing in writing training. It was also necessary to establish whether these constructs could be more enhanced through a specific intervention as part of the motivational factors, than through training which coaches other writing components such as cognitive…

In this column, the author relates her experience as a teacher in a K-12 school in Point Hope, Alaska, where most of the students spoke "village English," a form of nonstandard English mixed with the village's native language of Inupiaq. She relates how the students' reading test scores, which had been below the 25th percentile, were…

This Yearbook begins with a foreword by Janice F. Almasi that outlines some of the steps that the state of Maryland is taking as a leader in literacy education and literacy assessment, and the eight articles in this edition reflect many of these steps. The articles are: "Three Dialogues about Reading Engagement" (John T. Guthrie);…