Literature supports children's literacy growth in many ways. It helps children extend their understanding and clarify different situations in their lives, recognize and deal with feelings, and be more empathetic. Hands-on activities based on stories support children in giving shape to their thoughts. These creative activities not only empower…

The "Toolbox" column features content adapted from ReadWriteThink.org lesson plans and provides practical tools for classroom teachers. This issue's column features a lesson plan adapted from "Graphing Plot and Character in a Novel" by Lisa Storm Fink and "Bio-graph: Graphing Life Events" by Susan Spangler. Students retell biographic events…

Building on the work of an earlier article ["The Word Writing CAFE: Assessing Student Writing for Complexity, Accuracy, and Fluency," Dorothy J. Leal, "Reading Teacher," 59 (4) Dec 2005 (EJ738016)], these authors investigated the use of a simple assessment tool with a different audience to yield similar useful results. (Contains 3 figures and 4…

Writers carefully include critical information in the opening lines of their chapters, but students often gloss over these beginning sentences, missing information that could help them better comprehend the text. To address this concern, the authors created a strategy that prompts students to examine the opening lines of chapters, helping readers…

Guided reading lessons are a powerful context for beginning reading instruction, particularly for children who struggle with initial literacy learning. Providing immediate responses to students' oral reading of partially familiar texts requires teachers to make complex and highly skilled decisions. This decision process is based on knowledge of…

The author asserts that "Children benefit when teachers and parents reinforce the same concepts and ideas. For this to happen, teachers and parents must have some knowledge of what happens in the classroom and what happens at home that support reading acquisition." In this article, the author describes several strategies that teachers can share…

A reading specialist who worked in a high-poverty urban elementary school that initially did not have an exemplary reading program provides seven lessons that can serve as a guidepost for other reading specialists. Several approaches that led to improved reading achievement of upper elementary school children are described. The seven lessons, when…

This article presents an instructional strategy that helps young students perform critical literacy practices that incorporate democratic ideals. The model outlines a plan to stimulate young people's critical engagement with social justice issues. The model features an actual historical event involving young activists in civil rights. The author…

This article describes effective instructional strategies for teaching verbs with inflected endings. The ability to spell past and present progressive verbs provides an example of how children need to learn to integrate their developing understanding of letter-sound correspondences with knowledge of morphological and orthographic patterns in order…

This article describes the tension between standards-based assessment on a macro level and authentic assessment on a micro level. Content standards arguably supply systematic criteria for quantitative measures to report trends and establish policy. Qualitative measures, such as rubrics, student profiles, and observational records, fill in the gaps…

This article begins with a rationale for using "great" poems with children and the justification for linking the reading and writing of poetry. First, the author provides tips for teachers to use when selecting adult poems and offers a brief bibliography of classic poetry collections and anthologies appropriate for children. Next, suggestions for…

In this article, Rosenblatt's transactional theory of reading is used to build a rationale for using drama to promote an aesthetic stance to novel study. One teacher's experience with implementing a variety of drama strategies within the study of the text "Hatchet," by Gary Paulsen, is explored. The focus of the exploration is on the types of…

This article addresses word study for upper elementary and middle school classrooms. Word study is often neglected in classrooms due to misconceptions and fears of classroom teachers, especially teachers of older students. Conclusions from a research project conducted with teachers reveal both positive and negative understandings of implementing…

While a wealth of knowledge about the teaching of poetry exists, many teachers are still fearful about teaching it. Others have tried unsuccessfully to write poetry with students and have turned to merely reading poetry on occasion as a means to teach the genre. This article seeks to debunk the mystery surrounding the teaching of poetry through…

In order to make predictions about a text, students must have prior knowledge or experiences about the topic and a means or a reason to retrieve this latent information and knowledge. The Imagine, Elaborate, Predict, and Confirm (IEPC) strategy takes the predictive process back to its origins in the imagination and extends it throughout the…