What are new literacies and how do they mesh with core curriculum? Classroom teachers who find their students' interests and bases of knowledge about new technologies expanding exponentially often ask this question. While broadening the definition of new literacies beyond internet literacy this article explores the history of new literacies and…

In our increasingly diverse schools, students bring diverse ways of speaking to the classroom. In turn, as features from students' home language varieties transfer into their readings of texts, teachers' assessment and intervention plans may be directly affected. If teachers conflate dialect influence with reading error in Standard English, they…

Initiatives such as Response to Intervention (RTI) and the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts (CCSS-ELA) have the potential to positively impact progress toward the goal of literacy for all. Because the CCSS-ELA will guide the content of the curriculum, instruction and assessment in the large number of adopting states, they will…

This manuscript provides readers with practical, evidence-based strategies, which have potential to enhance literacy instruction in rural schools. Rural teachers will find this manuscript especially useful as the unique characteristics, disparities and needs frequently present in rural communities are discussed, as well as, specific suggestions on…

This article makes use of Perfetti's Lexical Quality Hypothesis as a perspective for thinking about vocabulary instruction in terms of semantics (meaning), phonology (pronunciation), orthography (spelling), morphology (meaningful word parts), and syntax (how words function in sentences). Examples are presented of how these aspects of vocabulary…

The purpose of this "teaching tips" article is to describe practical classroom instruction that helps elementary students write expository responses to narrative texts. It focuses on the importance of scaffolded, interactive discussions comprised of a combination of teacher think alouds and similar student responses before, during, and after…

Preschoolers may be novices in the area of writing but, as this article highlights, they are indeed writers. In a year-long ethnography of preschoolers during structured writing time the teacher/researcher explored how students adapted to a writing workshop format. Students participated in daily journal writing and sharing, and weekly conference…

Recent years have witnessed a growing interest in interdisciplinary teaching and learning in the elementary grades. Teachers are increasingly looking for ways to help their students integrate literacy instruction with content area learning. This article highlights some of the similarities between reading comprehension and mathematical…

In this article, the author proposes ten principles through which she examines the essentials of teaching reading comprehension. Topics explored include the nature of reading comprehension and the roles of good readers and influential teachers. Related issues include motivation, comprehension strategies, explicit instruction, and vocabulary.…

Dialogic teaching--a pedagogical approach that involves students in a collaborative construction of meaning and is characterized by shared control over the key aspects of classroom discourse--has been largely advocated by contemporary research and theory. However, studies in the US and UK continue to document the persistence of monologic…

Teachers need a deeper understanding of the texts being discussed, in particular the various textual and visual aspects of picturebooks themselves, including the images, written text and design elements, to support how readers made sense of these texts. As teachers become familiar with aspects of literary criticism, art history, visual grammar,…

Interviews and observations were conducted in five schools using a Response to Instruction and Invention framework to investigate (a) changes in role-expectations and functions for educators, (b) perceptions about their changing roles, and (c) skills needed to be effective in this systemic effort to improve literacy instruction for all students.…

This study examines the effect of morphological instruction and synthesizes instructional methods from 30 morphological interventions into four recommended morphological instructional strategies. Results suggest children receiving morphological instruction performed significantly better on measures of literacy achievement, especially in the areas…

Fluency is a critical skill of adept readers. As listening to read alouds and performing Readers Theatre scripts are two prevalent strategies that can increase students' fluency skills, this article provides suggestions in using these strategies with digital texts through free, online resources. Digital texts can be accessed using a desktop,…

Despite arguments for more fully including informational text in early childhood classrooms, research suggests that young children's exposure to the genre is quite limited. This article focuses on the informational books that children do encounter, specifically through read-alouds, and describes the narrow focus of those books. Informational…