Research shows that many students entering postsecondary education are unprepared for college reading demands. This article highlights college reading readiness according to four essential reading skills. We illustrate these skills by featuring vignettes of high school seniors who are college-ready and not college-ready. Then we contextualize the…

Open learning is becoming a critical focus for K-12 technology-supported programs as the importance of digital literacy and digital freedoms for all learners grows. This article describes current open learning policy, open educational resources and potential implications for open practice and ends with suggestions for future research in open…

Research has repeatedly proven that parental participation in the education of their children plays a major role in their academic performance and general development. Children whose parents and families in general stay engaged in their education have been shown to perform better than those who do not receive such family support. In Kenya, the…

Ubiquitous and instant access to information on the Web is challenging what constitutes 21st century literacies. This article explores the notion of Web-mediated knowledge synthesis, an approach to integrating Web-based learning that may result in generative synthesis of ideas. This article describes the skills and strategies that may support…

This paper draws upon an explanation of the proleptic, an understanding of time as being socially constructed within specific contexts, to interpret a series of dramatic sequences enacted in ethnodramatic pedagogy. The authors present two major arguments: (1) teachers can help students analyze the processes that influence and shape their…

This article describes a teacher created formative assessment useful for content area teachers in English, mathematics, science, and social studies. The assessment can be administered in one class period and results can be used to guide planning for disciplinary literacy implementation.

Among the disciplinary skills necessary for understanding in the social studies classroom is the ability to determine context and build meaning from past events. Historical buildings are an important component of historical study, and they serve as a type of nontraditional text that students can decode and use to construct meaning about multiple…

Research suggests that young adults are motivated in school contexts when they believe in their own self-efficacy, have intrinsic motivation, set goals, experience agency, and demonstrate interest. To highlight how online spaces foster motivation, we focus specifically on two project-based DIY sites, Figment.com and Scratch.mit.edu. From reading…

This article, the first column for this issue's Policy and Advocacy department, features a discussion about a recent experience in a graduate program in Medellín, Colombia introducing students to critical literacy. Graduate students used ideas from critical literacy to engage in an in-depth analysis of textbooks they had used in their…

The recent call for secondary reading instruction to move away from a focus on generic literacy strategies to discipline-specific language and literacy practices presents new challenges for secondary teacher preparation. This column identifies some of the roles literacy teacher educators can play in helping address these challenges.

Tour Across America is an interdisciplinary, project-based, multimodal (IPM) activity where students get the opportunity to apply what they learn to a real-life situation while illustrating the interdisciplinary nature of literacy. It provides students with a high-interest, creative platform to review, reinforce, and integrate learned literacy…

Contemporary views of literacy, and of English and Language Arts curriculum recognise the importance of digital culture and communication forms in many young people's lives and the multiple forms of literacy students engage with as they work, interact and play. Amongst these, videogames, whether played on PCs, laptops, wiis, or on mobile…

Developing science literacy requires not only firsthand explorations of the material world but also secondhand investigations with text. A potentially powerful kind of text in science is trade books. This column describes four classroom ploys for using science trade books to enhance students' secondhand experiences.

In explaining the importance of critical literacy, this commentary suggests what teachers need to be able to do--essential "repertoires of practice" (Comber, 2006). These include making connections with students' lives, enabling them to do the necessary research, exploring texts and practices, considering the social effects of texts…

This "water cooler" column features e-mail conversations between Erin Koning and three teachers--Beth, Jenna, and Patrice--and is a reflection of their participation in a Chicago Public School (CPS), professional development series designed to support the implementation of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in grades K-12. At the…