This ethnographic study documents how a space for critical literacy practices emerged as one teacher attempted to make literacy learning authentic. The school lunch program in an urban elementary district provided the theme for an authentic and focused literacy unit. Throughout this focus unit, the students not only met state standards but also…

Teacher research has a long, rich history. However, teacher research is primarily limited to practicing teachers and those pursuing graduate education. It is only beginning to be used as means of understanding the instructional needs of English learners. In this article, a preservice teacher and her university instructor describe the role of…

L. S. Vygotsky, the psychologist and teacher from Byelorussia who became a central figure in Soviet psychological and educational circles in the 1920s and 1930s, has become a frequent citation in 21st-century scholarship. He is most-often invoked to support some form of instructional scaffolding, based on his idea of the zone of proximal…

This article explores the research on the relationship between two particular aspects of poverty and school achievement. In particular, it examines research on food insecurity and oral healthcare among elementary-school-age children. The argument here is that these sorts of experiences of children in poverty account for some of the achievement…

This Conversation Currents features Chef Kevin Gillespie, owner of Atlanta restaurant Gunshow, contestant on Bravo's "Top Chef Las Vegas" in 2009, and food activist for various organizations. He shares his journey to becoming a chef, ways to integrate healthy foods in schools, and the role of literacy in nutrition.

This column responds to a recent push in education policy toward a curriculum that requires students to read and write more informational texts. Most evident in the now well-known Common Core State Standards, these policy moves echo, in some ways, a call by researchers for more informational texts, particularly in primary classrooms. In this…

Stories are woven so tightly into the fabric of our everyday lives that it's easy to overlook their significance in framing how we think about ourselves and the world. Stories are meaning making, providing a means of structuring and reflecting on our experiences in order to understand their significance. Story is also life making, a way of…

This ethnographic study explores the literacies of bilingual families living in the Rio Grande Valley on the U.S.-Mexico border. Murillo argues that immigrant families living on the border play an important role in their children's literacy development, but that their voices are seldom heard in schools due to powerful and persistent deficit views…

This teacher research study took place in a bilingual second-grade classroom in the southwestern United States. The study investigates the "cuentos" told during "platicas literarias"/literature discussions and explores how five young Latinas used their cuentos to communicate meaning through intertextual connections. These intertextual connections…

The authors challenge educators to speculate on how to address local issues in a world that is increasingly diverse and global. This Research and Policy section emphasizes the seemingly paradoxical importance of both local and global literacy, illuminating the tension between the preservation of local literacy and a global standardization of…

Utilizing a New Literacies Studies framework, this article presents critical lessons in film production from a multiple site case study. Examples of children's classroom experiences demonstrate how filmmaking and play come together in a process of storying--a collaborative and multimodal approach to text composition. Students in both preschool and…

Standards can aid educators as they work to produce strong student writers who can create meaningful and skillfully crafted authentic pieces of writing. This once-a-month, yearlong professional development program, conducted during the school day, shifted a district's kindergarten writing program to a writing workshop model that enabled the…

This article introduces a way of seeing miscue analysis data through a "spider chart", a readily available digital graphing tool that provides an effective way to visually represent readers' complex coordination of interrelated cueing systems. A spider chart is a standard feature in recent spreadsheet software that puts a new spin on miscue…

This article is a tribute to JoBeth Allen, recipient of the Elementary Section's 2012 award for Outstanding Educator in the English Language Arts. Each year, this award recognizes a distinguished educator who has made major contributions to the field of language arts in elementary education. This article was written by second-grade teacher and…

Researchers and educators have long argued for the importance of providing time and space for rich conversations around literature. This column draws on research to consider how teachers make room for these discussions inside their classrooms. Particularly, the authors consider different dimensions along which teachers might examine and grow…