This manuscript introduces a multidimensional framework for academic literacies to help instructors become more aware of different aspects of literacies and how they might be used to plan and orchestrate meaningful, multifaceted literacy experiences in their classes. More specifically, this broad framework for literacy and learning explicitly…

Technology has become a catalyst influencing not only the medium, but also the variety of texts that adolescents encounter. It blurs the standard distinction between in-school and out-of-school literacies and fosters an interplay of reading for recreational and academic purposes. How students feel about reading remains an important question, to be…

A history teacher examines what is successful and not successful in group work in his high school classroom and gives concrete suggestions for improving group practice. Topics discussed include preparing students for group work, supporting collaboration, inviting critical analysis, and assessing both group and individual performance. (Contains 2…

The texts that adolescents encounter today are often multimodal, meaning they incorporate a variety of modes, including visual images, hypertext, and graphic design elements along with written text. Expanding the perspectives readers use to make sense of the multimodal texts is an important aspect of comprehension instruction. Moving beyond the…

In this article, the author argues that critical work in teacher education should begin with teacher educators turning a critical eye on their own practices. The author uses Lesko's conception of contingent, recursive growth and change to analyze a lesson he observed as part of a phenomenological study aimed at understanding more about what it is…

In the English language arts classroom, social justice is a way to increase students' abilities to articulate their experiences, critique their world, and address those identified issues with subsequent action. Teachers who practice social justice education cultivate student voice through class activities, readings, assignments, and assessments…

Teacher-composed digital stories can assist an English-language learner in accessing academic reading while aiding in the learner's acquisition of academic language. Acknowledging the synergy between oral language and reading comprehension for English learners, every teacher of reading to English learners must also be a teacher of oral and aural…

This article presents a lesson cycle of activities for teaching reading and writing skills for expository text. The lesson cycle consists of four parts: (1) vocabulary words, (2) text structures, (3) modified sentence completion activity, and (4) rewriting text. Sixth- and seventh-grade summer school students were taught to recognize and…

Erika was a failing student at a large urban public middle school. She was poor, Hispanic, bilingual, and had repeated fourth grade. She scored low on her standardized tests and was failing several subject areas. In class, Erika was a student who sat silently with her head on her desk, and rarely turned in any of her assignments. She was a…

This article explores how immigrant experiences are represented in the narratives of three graphic novels published in the last decade: Tan's (2007) "The Arrival," Kiyama's (1931/1999) "The Four Immigrants Manga: A Japanese Experience in San Francisco, 1904-1924," and Yang's (2006) "American Born Chinese." Through a theoretical lens informed by…

Schools have a legitimate and vital role in providing Americans with a better and more accurate understanding of the Muslim world. Given the cultural and ideological issues at play in any understanding of Islam, the theories and practices of critical literacy can provide useful guidance to teachers. The purposes of this article are to counteract…

Schools have a legitimate and vital role in providing Americans with a better and more accurate understanding of the Muslim world. Given the cultural and ideological issues at play in any understanding of Islam, the theories and practices of critical literacy can provide useful guidance to teachers. The purposes of this article are to counteract…

A literacy coach collaborates with a new teacher to incorporate structured note-taking and summarizing into a science class. Many students struggle with these skills and require explicit instruction before they are able to work independently. Using the gradual release of responsibility framework, the literacy coach begins by modeling how to choose…

The purpose of this article is to explore the motivation for and content of young adult author's blogs and the potential use of these blogs for teaching and learning the English language arts and 21st-century literacy skills. (Contains 1 table and 2 figures.)

Using interviews and 10 weeks of consecutive lesson plans with supporting documentation, the author analyzes four first-year teachers' assigned in-class and out-of-class reading assignments and their choices and uses of reading strategies they learned in their preservice program. (Contains 2 tables.)