This guide to developing literacy skills with deaf and hard of hearing children stresses the flexible use of various methods based on the needs of individual children. The paper begins by examining selected methods and approaches to literacy instruction, citing ways that these might or might not benefit students depending upon implementation. This…

This study explores ways of helping fifth grade students edit their work appropriately for their grade level. The use of Daily Oral Language, grammar worksheets, or the reliance on the teacher to edit were eliminated. Instead, more direction for students was provided through the use of checklists, peer editing, and word processing on a computer.…

In this book, Teresa M. Redd and Karen Schuster Webb explain not only what African American English (AAE) is, but also what role it may play in students' mastery of Standard Written English. Designed especially for writing teachers, this volume is a concise, coherent, and current source that summarizes the major schools of thought about…

In this article, I focus on a review of the existing research pertaining to the use of word processors in K-6 writing classrooms and the effects of technologies on students' writing ability. As integrated as technology appears to be in today's curriculum, the effects of using word processors for writing enhancement, instruction and practice…

This lesson plan based on "Freak the Mighty" by Rodman Philbrick includes the modeling and practicing of specific reading comprehension strategies, vocabulary and word study, a figurative language activity, and a selection of final projects which can be used for assessment with the accompanying rubric. During three 60-minute sessions for four…

Teachers of second language writing classes are faced with the task of choosing writing methods that provide their students the greatest opportunity to gain writing skills, but there is a lack of research in this area. This topical bibliography and commentary reviews existing research on second language writing instruction. It concludes that free…

There are many ways and options available for children to publish their work, other than just writing for their teachers. This research summary discusses the benefits of publishing students' writing and ways that students go public with their writing: the author's chair, publishing individual authors, classbooks, classroom and school newspapers,…

For one middle school teacher, the "functional grammar" approach to narrative writing promised to offer students explicit instruction in how to structure a narrative text to build up suspense, and it could give focus to the types of descriptive language that further engage readers. Her classroom research was built on the teacher…

This framework for teaching sets out teaching objectives for Reception to Year 6 to enable pupils to become fully literate. It also gives guidance on the Literacy Hour in which this teaching will take place. The document is a reference point for day-to-day teaching, and help for headteachers and governors of schools in England as they plan and…

In this unit of work, the children will continue to learn about the features of playscripts, through reading and analyzing a play and writing a play based on a narrative. In the course of learning how to interpret and write stage directions, the children will apply their knowledge of adverbs. In the discrete work on vocabulary and spelling, the…

Her Majesty's Inspectors (HMI) inspected the teaching of literacy and mathematics in the reception year in a sample of 129 schools between autumn 2000 and summer 2001. Most of the schools were designated as primary, teaching children from the age of four or five to eleven. A few schools had nursery classes or units attached to them. In half the…

For one educator, an assistant professor of English with a specialization in writing, the short but dramatic move "up the block" from the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) to DePaul University eight miles north occasioned an adjustment to a radically different institutional personality and student body, despite similar street…

A teacher may assume he or she has power in the classroom and utilize what he or she considers to be thoughtful dramatic pauses to frame and enhance certain points during the lecture. A student, seated in the back row, may regard these pauses not as the rhetorical flourishes intended but as indicative of the teacher's hesitancy or confusion and…

To write cohesively means doing many things at once--wrestling with ideas, balancing form and function, pushing words this way and that, attending to syntax and diction, and employing imagery and metaphor until a coherent message emerges. Though full of promise, student writing typically lacks cohesion, and the question is whether the fault lies…

The increasing role of computer technology in the classroom has left many teachers searching for resources that will make sense of complex theories and provide them with practical pedagogical direction. Offering instructional stories, histories, and classroom applications, this book connects the theoretical aspirations of the field with the craft…