Standards for the Assessment of Reading and Writing
With this updated document, NCTE and IRA reaffirm their position that the primary purpose of assessment must be to improve teaching and learning for all students. Eleven core standards are presented and explained, and a helpful glossary makes this document suitable not only for educators but for parents, policymakers, school board members, and other stakeholders. Case studies of large-scale national tests and smaller scale classroom assessments (particularly in the context of RTI, or Response to Intervention) are used to highlight how assessments in use today do or do not meet the standards.
Effective student writing begins with well-designed classroom assignments. In Designing Writing Assignments, veteran educator Traci Gardner offers practical ways for teachers to develop assignments that will allow students to express their creativity and grow as writers and thinkers while still addressing the many demands of resource-stretched classrooms.
Rehearsing New Roles: How College Students Develop as Writers
In Rehearsing New Roles: How College Students Develop as Writers, Lee Ann Carroll argues for a developmental perspective to counter the fantasy held by many college faculty that students should, or could, be taught to write once so that ever after, they can write effectively on any topic, any place, any time. Carroll demonstrates in this volume why a one- or two-semester, first-year course in writing cannot meet all the needs of even more experienced writers. She then shows how students' complex literacy skills develop slowly, often idiosyncratically, over the course of their college years, as they choose or are coerced to take on new roles as writers.
Learning Re-Abled: The Learning Disability Controversy and Composition Studies
In the first comprehensive study to connect composition and learning disabilities, Patricia Dunn both challenges and confirms what many believe about writing. Learning Re-Abled examines the many issues that contribute to the learning disability controversy and provides historical perspectives on LD and composition, showing how the two fields complement and conflict with each other. She discusses the disagreements surrounding different educational approaches and makes sense of the claims and counterclaims of the experts.
A New Literacies Dictionary: Primer for the Twenty-first Century Learner
The book is addressed to twenty-first century teachers and twenty-first century learners. The hyperlinked entries are a resource, a reference, and a tool for those interested in teaching lessons in new literacies or for those seeking ideas, samples, discussions, and reflections on digital and multimodal texts. An underlying goal of the dictionary is to connect teachers and students in the twenty-first century with a resource that offers multi-literate inspiration in an age of ever-changing literacy.
