Controlled Drawing Observation (CDO) was developed by Tove Krogh and it has been used in Denmark, Finland and Estonia for assessing a child's readiness for school. CDO is a group test, it gives information about a child's functioning in an educational setting and it serves as a starting point for later individual assessment. The goal of the study…

This paper details a non-tenured faculty peer mentoring program piloted at Uuuuu University. The Thinking, Writing, Inquiring and Learning (T.W.I.L.) pilot was modeled after a similar peer mentoring program, Support Network for Assistant/Associate Professors (S.N.A.P.), at the University of Xyyyy. The faculty development program offered structured…

The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between students' gender and intelligence types, the relationship between particular intelligence types and students' success in grammar, listening and writing in English as a foreign language and the relationship between parental education and students' types of intelligences. Preparatory…

As a follow up to the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) national studies of how well elementary teachers are prepared to teach reading and mathematics, NCTQ looked at preparation in both subjects in all undergraduate teacher preparation programs in Utah. This study evaluated Utah's nine undergraduate elementary teacher preparation…

The increasing numbers of English language learners (ELLs) in Canadian schools pose a significant challenge to the standards-based provincial tests used to measure proficiency levels of all students from various linguistic and cultural backgrounds. This study investigated the extent to which reading item bundles or items on the Ontario Secondary…

A literature review reveals limited information regarding the modeling of authentic writing practices by teacher educators for their students. This study examines the effect of the author's modeling processes as evidenced by education students' assessments of his courses. The author analyzed data using a grounded approach to document their…

YouTube, the video sharing website that allows viewers to upload video content ranging from cute dog tricks to rare rock videos, also supports a lively community devoted to the performance of Shakespeare and Shakespearean adaptations. YouTube is also a popular site for student producers of Shakespeare performances, parodies, and other artistic…

In the light of recommendations made by the Tomlinson and Dearing reports, this article explores the distinctive contribution that vocational language courses can make to the language learning experience of secondary-school pupils. It starts by presenting an overview of vocational options currently on offer to stem the disaffection with modern…

This article examines the writing of three Grade 3 students and discusses how these girls drew upon their symbolic tools, specifically those developed as a result of their experiences with particular kinds of texts. The students were participants in a multifaceted study that explored Grades 3 and 4 students' understandings of and responses to…

This paper discusses writing as a social practice and speculates on how wikis might be used to promote higher quality academic writing and support collaborative learning. This study of undergraduate teacher trainees' online learning activities focuses on how shared spaces--wikis--might be used to communicate ideas and generate course-specific…

In this article, the author gives some ideas on how to find funding for author and poet visits. Author and poet visits are very important for children of all ages. Young children learn much from meeting real people who write professionally. Good speakers inspire students to write and communicate in an articulate manner while in school and later in…

While evidence shows that grammar study focused on identification, description, and definition (IDD) fails to enhance writing performance, the grammar most students study remains focused on the IDD tradition. We taught a functional grammar that featured what words do in sentences, rather than what words are called and how they are defined, to two…

One of the challenges for educators is composing well-written, specifically stated outcomes of student learning. Developmental teacher training is a program designed to improve the effectiveness of university instructors. The program focuses on improving course methodology by guiding instructors through the development of correctly written and…

This book demonstrates how formative assessments, unlike standardized tests, provide the kind of communication between teachers and students that help teachers make instructional decisions to improve student performance. Included are fully developed examples of standards-based formative assessments in reading comprehension, writing, notetaking,…

One area of writing that may be particularly problematic for less skilled writers and writers with learning disabilities is constructing well-formed sentences. In this single-subject design study, sentence-combining practice with a peer-assistance component was used to improve the writing ability of 6 fourth-grade students with and without…