Purpose: The primary purpose of this paper is to illustrate strategies college students learn to practice in their analysis of multicultural documents located through use of the internet. Design/methodology/approach: Students explored a variety of meanings for diversity within and across texts readily available in public databases. Using…

Members of a site of the California Writing Project conducted the study in this article in partnership with a large, urban, low-SES school district where 93% of the students speak English as a second language and 69% are designated Limited English Proficient. Over an eight-year period, a relatively stable group of 55 secondary teachers engaged in…

This small scale action research study investigated the experiences of learners over two iterations as they completed a patchwork text assignment within the digital medium of a personal learning system (PLS). The aim was to investigate the extent to which using a PLS can facilitate formative and collaborative feedback to assist student learning. A…

Describes how one instructor incorporates daily poetry "breaks" in middle school. Explains that students begin by listening to Eve Merriam's "How to Eat a Poem," then imitate poems first in pantomime, then with sound and action. Notes that students later write and trade poems, and end the term with a poetry festival. (SG)

A Dutch teacher presents reading, film viewing, and writing activities for "Empire of the Sun," J. G. Ballard's autobiographical account of life as a boy in Shanghai and in a Japanese internment camp during World War II (the subject of Steven Spielberg's film of the same name). Includes objectives, procedures, and several literature,…

This paper presents the results of a small scale action research project in which a group of seven Year 2 undergraduate initial teacher education (ITE) students experienced three interventions which were concerned with feedback on essay assignments--provision of traditional written tutor feedback; completion of a tutor feedback analysis worksheet;…

This case study-based class assignment (see Appendix A) is designed as a culminating course activity through which students demonstrate not only their understanding of school finance basics but also show how to apply their knowledge to solving a problem impacting many public school administrators today. Because the case study is general in design,…

Students in higher education, most frequently, use the frontal approach while being asked to collaborate on a writing assignment. However, the difficulty in collaborative writing using conventional technologies such as pen and paper, board or computer is the limited ability to view the work of your peers during the process (Baeker, Glass,…

A basic premise of social approaches to studying communication is that theories of interpersonal communication and personal relationships are reflexively defined, socially constructed, and historically situated. In contrast to the tradition of psychological models of relational processes and message transmission, social approaches encourage…

Teachers are hungry for strategies that will motivate their students to engage in reading and writing. One promising method is the Authoring With Video (AWV) approach, which encourages teachers to use captioning software and digital video in writing assignments. AWV builds on students' fascination with television and video but removes the audio…

The Poetry Generating Loop is a new kind of generative writing circle that offers concrete, creative ways to get students involved in and excited about poetry. By writing poems in groups, students are able to learn poetic terms and experiment with techniques through their writing--a process that can shed new light on the world of poetry. (Contains…

This paper examines the processes whereby two researchers developed their knowledge in teaching a course for preservice teachers. We sought to explore the ways in which class assignments encouraged preservice teachers to develop their abilities to see classrooms from the point of view of nascent teachers rather than that of successful students.…

The study of emotion as discourse not only eliminates objections about the individual psychology of students, it also connects researchers to methods that go beyond reflection and self-reporting. In this article, the author pursues these ideas within the context of a college composition course where students experienced a particularly high level…

For many years, homework has been a topic of heated public discussion and concern of students, parents, teachers, and administrators. Perhaps the most crucial question regards its efficacy for improving academic achievement. This book combines the results of research studies and exemplary practices to provide guidance about homework to…

Peter Beidler reflects in this essay upon his experiences with his first year students following the events of 9-11. When the class met, still numb with the horror of events, Beidler and his apprentice teacher devised a different kind of exercise for the class. Having taken fifteen minutes to talk about the attacks with students, the author passed…