Learning how to regulate emotions is a significant developmental milestone in a child's life. It is important to understand which activities help children cope with emotionally distressing situations. One such activity, I argue, is drawing. In this article, I consider 2 ways in which drawing elevates mood in children: Drawing allows them to be…

Over the past 2 decades, scholars in various educational contexts have examined Bandura's theorizing about how self-efficacy develops. Bandura proposed 4 primary informational sources of self-efficacy--enactive experiences, vicarious experiences, social persuasions, and physiological and affective states--each of which can be supported in…

This article describes the impact of asset-based pedagogies in elementary classrooms. Working with concepts such as culturally relevant/sustaining pedagogies, funds of knowledge, and Afro-centric praxis, it is possible to disrupt commonplace and pervasive assumptions about urban and diverse classroom spaces. Drawing from Grade 1 and Grade 4…

This article presents the results of a thorough content analysis of 28 LGBTQ award-winning picturebooks. As a queer teacher educator working with pre-service elementary teachers, I wanted to find out how the queer picturebooks available for use in my students' classrooms were any good at helping them and their future students understand that…

Elementary schools in the United States have been the terrain of a highly politicized push for improved reading and mathematics attainment, as well as calls for increased importance to be given to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). With priorities placed on basic skills, however, instructional time in subjects such as…

This article shows how various dialogic discourse strategies were used in read-alouds of English science information books in a 2nd-grade bilingual classroom. Using a variety of discursive strategies, Ibett encouraged her Spanish-speaking students to provide explanations and reasoning related to science ideas. Similarly, she used intertextual…

This article reframes the concept of comprehension as a social and intellectual practice. It reviews current approaches to reading instruction for linguistically and culturally diverse, indigenous and low socioeconomic students (SES), noting an emphasis on comprehension as autonomous skills. The four resources model (Freebody & Luke, 1990) is…

This article describes the changing culture of a public school as members of its community explore new ways of being accountable to progressive ideals in an age of skills-based learning and standardized testing. Using documentation makes adult and student learning visible in and outside the classroom, supporting three forms of accountability: (a)…

This article describes play activities of children from birth to age 10 from the internalist's viewpoint. (PD)

Designed to explore the ways language functions to help children gain access to meaning as they progress through the educational system, this journal issue views communication as a social, interactive process in which speakers and writers attempt to link into what listeners and readers know, want to know, or need to know. The 12 articles in the…

An instructional model, labeled "direct instruction," which contains general principles that can form the basis for in-service teacher training in teaching basic skills in reading and mathematics, is described. (JD)

The author describes an elementary school "each one teach one" tutoring program in Harlem, New York. Emphasis is placed on the necessity of establishing acceptance and credibility before full program implementation can be successful. (MJB)

In this article the stages of learning how to read are outlined, and successful methods of teaching reading are described. (JD)

An educational psychologist discusses the problems children encounter in comprehending the written word. (JD)

An elementary school child's perceptions of his teacher's nonverbal behavior is presented to illustrate how those behaviors are interpreted both correctly and incorrectly, and how--regardless of the validity of the interpretation--they affect pupil response. (MJB)