Because authenticity in education is a subjective judgment regarding the meaningfulness of an activity, a need exists to co-investigate with students classroom factors increasing authenticity of writing. In this case study, one 8th grade student's needs for authentic writing are explored in detail. Xavier's take on authentic writing…

This mixed-methods study examines middle school students' academic language development in the context of a year-long professional development project titled, Developing Content Area Academic Language (DCAAL). The purpose of DCAAL was to partner middle school teachers (n = 8) with a team of university researchers to explore how to integrate…

Violent writing is a real, yet rarely understood phenomenon in the secondary and post-secondary classroom. The 2007 Virginia Tech shooting tragedy sensationalized violent writing as a marker of disturbed and violent persons. However, violent writing comes in multiple forms and is composed for multiple reasons. As secondary schools wrestle with…

As a postcolonial Indian woman now living in the West, I managed to overcome my own circumstances by finding my voice and resisting the oppression of an abusive arranged marriage. Subsequently, as a teacher of at risk marginalized and immigrant youth in the inner cities of 21st century America, who continue to be "colonized" by a public…

This commentary addresses the complexities of reading comprehension with an explicit focus on reading in the disciplines. The author proposes reading as entailing multi-dimensional demands of the reader and posing complex challenges for teachers. These challenges are intensified by restrictive conceptions of relevant prior knowledge and experience…

Tour Across America is an interdisciplinary, project-based, multimodal (IPM) activity where students get the opportunity to apply what they learn to a real-life situation while illustrating the interdisciplinary nature of literacy. It provides students with a high-interest, creative platform to review, reinforce, and integrate learned literacy…

Digital tools have the potential to transform instruction and promote literacies outlined in the Common Core State Standards. Empirical research is examined to illustrate this potential in grades 6-12 instruction.

The Common Core State Standards emphasize the integration of technology skills into English Language Arts (ELA) instruction, recognizing the demand for technology-based literacy skills to be college- and career- ready. This study aims to examine how collaborative cloud-based writing is used in in a Colorado school district, where one-to-one…

The purpose of this study was to explore middle school (grade 6-8) students' understanding and interpretation of human rights issues with local and global implications as they engaged in the process of creating a film after reading print and multimedia texts and participating in human rights education activities. As the students explored…

Apps, specialized programs used on mobile computers, can be used in innovative ways to enhance science and literacy learning. With the skilled guidance of their teachers, students can exploit app affordances for learning and acquire disciplinary literacies unique to science. This article showcases apps that help students to access information,…

This study is concerned with the significance of the affordances of multimodality in contemporary conceptualizations of ESL/literacy pedagogies. Using a cellular phone advertisement, 18 students composed visual representations of their understandings of the text. Drawing on the social semiotic framework of Kress and van Leeuwen, the annotated…

In order to investigate whether published standards for secondary literacy coaches align with the qualifications, roles, and responsibilities of literacy coaches currently active in the secondary setting, the researchers used survey research. Research questions included the extent to which coaches were qualified, the roles and responsibilities…

In this article, the author describes her multimodal teaching practices in her "Adolescent Literacy Methods" course at a graduate university in the United States. By doing so, she highlights content teacher's understanding and use of various multimodal texts to effectively teach adolescents inside the classroom. In lieu of this, she raises…

The integration of nature studies within language arts instruction offers multiple possibilities for guiding students toward close readings of literature, their changing selves, natural phenomena, and the world around them. The authors document their own rediscovery of nature study and what happened when environmental observations were…

Many authors suggest that there is a coming crisis in U.S. middle and secondary schools (Moje, Young, Readence, & Moore, 2000). This crisis comes in the form of reading difficulties. While many primary schools have emphasized word recognition and decoding, decoding does not guarantee comprehension. The result is that many students who can read…