The Reading–Spelling Connection: Developing and Evaluating a Beginning Spelling Intervention for Children at Risk of Reading Disability

Abstract In this article, we describe the development and evaluation of a beginning spelling intervention for young children at risk of reading disability. We first summarize the literature that supports beginning spelling as an ideal method for strategically integrating the beginning reading big ideas of phonemic awareness and alphabetic understanding. We then summarize the literature on effective instructional principles for students at risk of reading disability. Next, we describe how instructional design was applied to the development of an intervention for young children at risk of reading disability, then summarize the findings of an experimental study supporting the effectiveness of this intervention. Finally, we provide selected examples from the spelling intervention to illustrate the findings' translation into instructional practice.     

Writing in Mathematics: An Alternative Form of Communication for Academically Low‐Achieving Students

Abstract. Classroom communication figures prominently in current math reform efforts. In this study, we analyze how one teacher used writing to support communication in a seventh‐grade, low‐track mathematics class. For one school year, we studied four low‐achieving students in the class. Students wrote in journals on a weekly basis. Using classroom observations and interviews with the teacher, we developed profiles of the four students, capturing their participation in class discussions. The profiles highlighted an important similarity among the four students: marginal participation in both small‐group and whole‐class discussions. However, our analysis of the students' journals identified multiple instances where the students were able to explain their mathematical reasoning, revealing their conceptual understanding, ability to explain, and skill at representing a problem. In this respect, journals potentially facilitate another important form of classroom communication. The promise of writing is that it offers an alternative to the visions of classroom communication that are strictly oral in nature.     

Practical Applications of Student Response Analysis

What standard reports are included in TAP and SPP? What information is provided in item analysis output? How may teachers use the information in their instruction?     

A Lost Dimension? The political education of women in the suffragette movement in Edwardian Britain

It is argued that present‐day definitions of education that focus upon educational forms, such as schools, further education, universities and adult education, have little relevance for the educational experiences of the majority of women in the past. To illustrate this point, the article explores the ‘education’ of women in a major political grouping in Edwardian Britain, namely the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) which, as a militant women‐only organisation, became the most famous of all the groupings campaigning for the enfranchisement of women. The WSPU offered its women members the opportunity to invade and enter the male sphere of politics. Thus, in its early years, members learnt a political role through peaceful means of campaigning, such as heckling politicians, carrying petitions to parliament, public speaking and writing to the press. Later, after many years of such protesting, when the government refused to yield on the issue of women's enfranchisement, more militant roles were adopted by a minority of the membership. These ‘guerilla activists’ engaged in activities such as the large‐scale breaking of windows, vandalising art treasures and setting fire to empty houses. For many of these WSPU women, their participation in the feminist movement was the educational experience of a lifetime, that far outshone any more formal schooling that they might have received in schools, adult education or colleges.     

Contemporaneous and longitudinal associations between social behavior and literacy achievement in a sample of low-income elementary school children

This study investigates associations between social skills (aggression and prosocial behavior) and literacy achievement in a sample of low-income children (between 4 and 6 years old when the study began) during elementary school. Results revealed consistent associations between social skills and literacy achievement in the first, third, and fifth grades, but the patterns of the associations were different for aggression and prosocial behavior. While the strength of the association between aggression and literacy achievement increased over the elementary grades, the association between prosocial behavior and literacy achievement decreased. In addition, path analyses revealed that poor literacy achievement in the first and third grades predicted relatively high aggressive behavior in the third and fifth grades, respectively.