The development of academic literacy requires students to think critically about multiple text types. Picturebooks can be rich and varied resources on which to base well-designed instruction that will facilitate thinking, discussions, connections, and problem solving in multiple content areas. From the Holocaust to ecology to grammar, picturebooks…

Recognizing the importance of vocabulary for comprehension, Wilhelm asks two key questions: "which words do I teach and how should I teach them?" Through years of trial and error, Wilhelm has adopted these principles to answer "which words": teach "important" words students will see and use again; words necessary to conceptual understanding; words…

Many recent publications describe writing as the neglected "r"; however, there is very little data on what writing instruction looks like in schools, especially in grades 4-6. The purpose of this article is to describe large urban school district literacy leaders' views on the state of writing instruction within their districts--and their…

In middle school, the focus of writing instruction shifts away from narrative writing to more academic writing. In the process, many students become less engaged as they respond to inauthentic prompts; additionally, their writing becomes stilted and formulaic. This article addresses the role narrative writing plays by acting as a springboard to…

A collaborative team of five international teacher educators/researchers examine the importance of student voice for authentic discourse and instructional design in contemporary classrooms. Excerpts from their perspectives on teaching, research, and innovative programs are woven together and include suggested Actions/Reflections for the reader.…

Writing needs to be taught, not assigned, but teaching writing well within a 43-minute period is a daunting task. This article describes how three 8th-grade teachers implemented a unit of study approach to teaching memoir writing in their language arts classes. Teacher and student decision making are highlighted in this inquiry process. ["Teaching…

If we listen to them, the words of our students can provide a road map for instructional responses that meet their diverse literacy needs. In this article, Cara Gutzmer, a middle school literacy coach, and Phil Wilder, a teacher collaborator at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, discuss how a responsive teaching framework guided their…

Students need to develop five kinds of knowledge to be successful in any kind of specific reading or writing task. These kinds of knowledge can be developed through five different kinds of composing that lead to deep understanding of how texts are constructed with specific content to create particular effects and meaning. Following this process…

New literacies are affecting the ways that we choose to spend our time in teaching and learning. In this article, Hagood describes the work of nine middle grades teachers' explorations of new literacies, including digital technologies and pop culture, and their implementations in their content area instruction. She also highlights some of the…

This article synthesizes 15 years of research in middle school classrooms that have started to integrate new literacies into their daily teaching and learning. Trends of the data suggest there are certain salient characteristics of middle school teachers and students in these grade levels that make such innovations more successful with them than…

Many teachers find it difficult to encourage their students to write in class, yet writing is becoming increasingly important in academic and workplace settings. Students are already writing through cell phone texting, gaming systems, and social networking sites every day, but these resources go largely untapped in many English language arts…

As adolescents spend more and more time engaging in various on line activities, teachers are questioning the role that language arts curricula might play in helping them become savvy technology users. In this study, an eighth-grade teacher responded to her students' unauthorized participation on MySpace[TM] by initiating an inquiry into social…

A middle school language arts teacher reflects on his experience in utilizing a school-housed online social network to create avenues for authentic audience, purpose, and response to student writing. With many technology proponents advocating a 21st century education, the fact that interacting with the Web 2.0 environment is essentially a reading…

Using new literacies critically can be an excellent pedagogy for motivating and empowering students who feel alienated from their school and society. This article describes how one middle school teacher engaged his inner-city English language learners with critical media literacy as a way of making their learning more meaningful and motivating.…

The authors describe the steps they took to ramp up their efforts to reach out to students by retooling their teaching. Four factors became essential: the use of writing as a tool for engagement and learning, the necessity to prepare students to compete in an increasingly digitized world, the motivational appeal of the graphic novel genre, and the…