This article focuses on the development of the Texas comprehension standards as found in the comprehension strand of the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS). The standards are described in relation to effective comprehension strategies.

This article describes lessons learned from the implementation of an instructional strategy that was conducted with preservice teachers enrolled in an undergraduate literacy course highlighting reading and writing as instructional tools to teach content area material across the curriculum. One requirement in the course was a Poetry Project. This…

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…

The use and importance of culturally relevant literature in the elementary classroom is discussed in this article. Common classroom practices with regard to use of literature and a review of the need for culturally relevant literature that provides students with windows and mirrors into lived experiences are both explored. Ways to identify and use…

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,…

Teachers can foster a love of reading in their students by regularly modeling their own reading lives. This sort of modeling involves both helping students to develop reading skills and sharing personal stories that illustrate the importance of reading in adulthood. The present study describes the impact of purposefully sharing my personal reading…

Today's student must be able to work in an online environment. This often presents unique challenges for elementary students as they develop and extend fundamental literacy skills to various media. Many text features such as titles, headings, authors, and copyrights are easily transferable from paper to an online format; however, orientation and…

In most cases, the curriculum chosen for wide-use does not mirror or address the pressing needs of bi/multilingual learners, especially for those who are in middle and high school settings. In light of this and the increasingly negative national discourse surrounding minoritized students, our focus in this article is to offer in-service teachers a…

The Four Es (Explain, Engage, Extend, Examine) is a concrete approach to incorporating research-based practice into daily vocabulary instruction by focusing on the pivotal role of teacher and student talk in word learning. Specifically, teachers use language that is understandable to students, identify misunderstandings and correct them within a…

Our students' voices matter; their stories are important. Digital tools can help students craft and publish their stories for wide, varied, authentic audiences. As little as a decade ago, it was difficult and expensive to publish digital stories. Given the myriad of apps and tools now available, teachers in elementary, middle, and high school…

Choral reading is reading in unison, like a chorus, with the teacher taking the lead (Rasinski, 1989). It is highly efficient because all students practice at the same time (Paige & Magpuri-Lavell, 2014). It is also effective with struggling readers and English Learners because of the "tent of anonymity" it provides when readers read…

How did Cuba erase illiteracy in a single year? How did they combine both a phonics approach with the constructivist meaning-based model for teaching reading that we cannot seem to manage here in the states? This paper seeks to shed light on Cuba's impressive 1961 National Literacy Campaign and reflects upon implications for early literacy…

This article introduces an approach that middle-school teachers can follow to help their students carry out linguistic-based literary analyses. As an example, it draws on Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) to show how J.K. Rowling used language to characterize Hermione as an intelligent female in "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows."…

Close Reading utilizes several strategies to help readers think more critically about a text. Close reading can be performed within the context of shared readings, read-alouds by the teacher, literature discussion groups, and guided reading groups. Students attempting to more closely read difficult texts may benefit from technologies and platforms…

A speech-language pathologist and former primary teacher who is now a researcher conducting action research with kindergarten teachers in northern rural Canadian classrooms collaborate in an analysis of one teacher's interactions with her students in a dramatic play center. We use three principles to show how the teacher supports children's…