As diversity grows in schools, educators must consider how to create environments where students develop respect and empathy toward others. Integrating high quality multicultural literature provides meaningful experiences for students to investigate society and acknowledge and interrogate their own beliefs and biases. While many teachers…

This article seeks to empower teachers to create a literacy environment in which children begin to identify as writers: confident, willing to take risks, engaged, excited, persistent, resilient, resourceful, and self-starting. The teaching methods provided in the article are centered around the writer's workshop model, applied in a Kindergarten…

Learning to question power relationships, symbols of power, and how power is used and negotiated in children's literature through critical dialogue can support young readers to move toward a social justice mindset. The authors of this article share critical strategies and analytic tools to support teachers and readers to analyze types of power,…

This paper describes the textual practices of kindergarten children as they co-created and participated in a movie theatre play context within their rural classroom. Data informing this paper were drawn from classroom videos of children (aged 3-5 years) as they engaged in activities associated with the movie theatre, field notes from action…

English-Spanish cognates are words that possess identical or nearly identical spellings and meanings in both English and Spanish as a result of being derived mainly from Latin and Greek. Of major importance is the fact that many of the more than 20,000 cognates in English are academic vocabulary words, terms essential for comprehending school…

Legible penmanship is important. However, young students have difficulty producing legible handwriting (Marr, Windsor, & Cermak, 2001). As legible handwriting is a benefit for both the students and the teachers in the classroom setting, this study examined if pencil size had an impact on preschool and kindergarten students' handwriting. The…