Although the focus in the early grades is often on teaching young children how to read, the ultimate goal of reading is to understand the text--whether to learn new information or simply enjoy a story. Building the groundwork needed for this understanding starts right from the beginning of life--and it's essential from the beginning of school.…

This article recounts my experience in enhancing my students' boredom regulation by designing, implementing, and evaluating a strategy instruction project. The project was undertaken with 25 Thai university students enrolled in my English oral communication course for 15 weeks. The project began with exploring how and why my students experienced…

English language teacher education is not only about making students who learn to teach English focus on language teaching, learning, and use but also about how teacher educators can delve into the life purposes of themselves, their students, and their students' learners. The role of a language teacher educator is hence pivotal in orchestrating…

Forest school and nature-based pedagogy have grown in popularity in recent years. Previously, I examined the perspectives of parents who chose to enrol their children within these programs to learn and understand why. As I furthered my studies, I became concerned about how these forest and nature schools connect to Indigenous ways of knowing,…

In a world overflowing with information, how can we adapt our learning methods to thrive? Dave Cormier, a pioneering figure in digital education, presents a thought-provoking manifesto in "Learning in a Time of Abundance." A leading voice in digital learning, Cormier offers a fresh perspective on how we can face the uncertainty of a…

When music educators discuss repertoire, they often discuss "what" pieces to perform and "when" in the year to perform them. In this article, I ask, "Who should choose the music for ensemble study, and "how" should it be chosen?" I share a rationale for why music educators might include students in ensemble…

Building on Jack Richard's interest in vocabulary, this paper looks at the importance of morphology (how words are formed) in language learning and teaching. It describes why knowledge of morphology is important, and how it affects vocabulary learning. It provides clear guidelines on what word parts to focus on, how much time to spend on word…

A MyPad as a teaching aid can be a bridge or a border in children's learning of expression and communication, depending on how and why it is used. Onto genetic and phylogenetic aspects are among the most important in a child's development, i. e. teaching children to talk. Multimodality refers to communication and integration using various…

Although a range of authors have argued for the inclusion of swearing and taboo language in EFL/ESL curriculums (see Mercury, 1995; Horan, 2013; Holster, 2005; Liyanage, Walker, Bartlett, & Guo, 2015; Finn, 2017), to the best of my knowledge, no research has investigated how this could be done in a professional and pedagogically sound manner.…

An 11-year-old U.S. fifth grader with a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) participated in a writing intervention using the self-regulated strategy development (SRSD) approach for story writing. The child summarized stories adapted from the Read Works® website using POW (Pick my idea, Organize my notes, and Write and say more) and WWW,…

Both a practitioner's guide and a school reform model, the new edition of this popular book shares exemplary arts-integration practices across the K-8 curriculum. Rather than providing formulas or scripts to be followed, each chapter carefully describes how the arts offer an entry point for gaining insight into why and how students learn to assist…

ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence language model introduced in November 2022, is potentially applicable in many contexts, including higher education. Although academics are already using it to draft papers or develop search queries for systematic reviews, its use as a tool aiding the learning process has not been examined. To address this…

Noise, although ubiquitous, is seldom considered as a factor that may impede learning. In South Africa, most learners are multilingual and learn in English, which is their second language. Most noise studies have been conducted in the Global North, where the school context differs from the Global South. In this article, using questions selected…

What does it mean for a teacher to welcome all children? This article explores this question by first documenting my own difficulty as an elementary school classroom teacher to welcome one particular child who had recently immigrated from a refugee camp. I explain how the theory of hospitality both addresses the failures of my own teaching and…

People have many reasons to want to learn a foreign language: some want to enjoy foreign media in its original form, some need it for business or travel, personal enrichment, and so on. Roughly 1/6 of Earth's population's learn languages with logographic writing systems (LWS) such as Chinese, Japanese and Korean as their native tongues. These…