This pilot study evaluated a novel professional development (PD) model designed to prepare K-12 educators in high-need, rural school districts to teach evidence-based argument writing. The PD showed teachers how to engage students in discussions about visual art using Visual Thinking Strategies to enhance students' argumentation writing. Twenty…

This pilot study evaluated a novel professional development (PD) model designed to prepare K-12 educators in high-need rural school districts to teach evidence-based argument writing. The PD model showed teachers how to engage students in discussions about visual art using Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) to enhance students' argumentation…

Multimodality is recognized as a useful pedagogical tool, but it is often difficult to apply in real-life curricula. Further, expectations on educators and various campus units are increasingly complex and require nimble and innovative partnerships. In this article, Christina, a first-year composition instructor, and Lucie, the university's…

A Complete Your Manuscript Workshop has been provided to tenure track faculty members in the college over the past two and one-half years. The workshop is a low-cost/high payoff opportunity for the college and participating faculty members, as the workshop requires few resources and the time commitment for participants is easily managed.…

Critical thinking (CT) is usually taught as a list of practical skills for students to master. In this article, the authors argue that CT instruction should go beyond skills to engage students with issues of identifying their own biases and understanding multiple perspectives on issues. This explicit attention to one's own bias is essential for…

Close reading of poetry scaffolds readers and writers as they come to understand the form and function of poetry and transfer those skills to writing. In this teaching tip, the authors explain a way in which primary teachers can introduce close reading and move young students toward composing and presenting poetry.

This article calls on composition instructors to reflect consciously on how we can use our bodies kinesthetically to perform multimodal writing processes through gestural, visual, and spatial modes. Teaching writing through kinesthetic performance can show students that our bodies are being constructed via interaction with audiences, akin to the…

Many teachers make reading and writing poetry an important part of the school day. They use different instructional strategies that invite students to write poetry in meaningful, engaging, and creative ways. This article describes an instructional strategy that invites students to write etheree poetry across the curriculum. It discusses benefits…

Each year, the author shares her passion for the history of writing with her third grade students and teaches them about how writing has developed over time. The unit of study described herein excites and engages young writers to appreciate the antiquity of writing, while sowing seeds in their minds that will take root and grow as each student…

This study aimed to investigate the dynamic assessment of writing proficiency in Iranian English learners´ writing ability in transcendence tasks based on Vygotskian perspective. The questions which this research intended to answer were: (1) Does dynamic assessment affect Iranian English learners' writing ability? (2) Do the results of dynamic…

Writing is considered as the hardest skill to be learned. Some students said that the difficult part to write is to generate ideas. They admitted that their ideas were out of focus. They could not generate and develop the ideas. To solve it, teachers surely require various teaching techniques that help students to generate ideas in writing. One of…

This dissertation examines the epistemological moves made by Washington State University undergraduates in their general education course writing and during two impromptu writing assessment exams administered by the WSU writing program. It builds from previous interview-based research on epistemological change (Perry, 1998; diSessa, 1993;…

Reading and writing are complex areas to assess. No single assessment can include all aspects of these complex processes. What's more, there are multiple purposes for literacy assessment, and no single assessment can serve all purposes. Together, these facts make it clear that literacy assessment is much more complicated than many realize. In…

A review of the literature suggests that grammar instruction delivered within the context of writing instruction may impact students' writing development (Fearn & Farnan, 2007; Myhill, Jones, Lines, & Watson, 2012), but there have been few studies that suggest how this occurs. This study followed a group of 17 teachers throughout 3 classes…

This qualitative embedded case study documents the policy implementation of literacy assessment in a Texas urban high school, using Foucault's theory of the panopticon to understand how teaching and learning were shaped by the state high-stakes exit exam. In addition to the strong influence of the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness…