The fifth grade students in this project were part of a yearlong ethnographic study in an urban elementary school. They engaged in a student initiated inquiry project combining bakeries and mysteries, which culminated in the production of an original film. Situated in a socio-spatialized stance on literacy involving networks of participation and…

Poetry is one of the most feared and least understood literary genres in our public schools. Boys, in particular, are frequently perceived to be resistant to poetry instruction; a view that often stems from a limited vision of what poetry is and a misread of masculinity. Nevertheless, the study of poetry provides many benefits in the journey to…

The purpose of this interpretive case study is to explore--through a close analysis of one fifth-grade class project--teacher's scaffolding and students' use of visual and linguistic modes when composing multimodally. Using Kress and van Leeuwen's multimodal theory of communication as a framework, this case study examines why teachers, whose…