ABSTRACT
In today's era of accountability and standards reform, academic language and literacy skills are highly targeted areas of instruction in schools that serve English language learners (ELLs). The case study presented in this chapter draws on a subset of data collected from a larger research project funded by the Institute of Education Sciences called STEPS to Literacy (Kleifgen, Kinzer, Hoffman, Gorski, Kim, Lira, & Ronan, 2014). The project was led by a group of researchers, including the author of this chapter, from Teachers College, Columbia University. There is a paucity of research on how adolescent ELLs draw on digital tools to support their writing. This study addresses this research gap by examining how students use a bilingual, digital writing platform to access content-area knowledge and new forms of academic literacy. Data from the user logs revealed that each student interacted with the digital tools in a unique way, resulting in different paths and interactional patterns within the platform.
