This forum highlights research that literacy teachers, students, and others can explore, use, or adapt as they provide literacy instruction and develop related programs and research agendas.

This article seeks to reframe how early childhood educators think about their role in play by answering these questions: What really matters in play? How should we spend our time and energy planning, implementing, and building our expertise around play in early childhood teaching and learning? The answers reside in 5 big ideas from play research…

How might the work of professional learning communities (PLCs) focus on the changes necessary to ensure that "all" students are engaged, inspired, and successful? The authors of this article developed five discussion questions that they believe allow educator teams to put equity front and center in their collaborative conversations…

Through teaching science, teachers have the pleasure of developing and implementing learning experiences that allow students to discover how the world works. Interweaving the laws, principles, and theories of the universe with scientific practices that have allowed scientists to discover these ideas is the focus of teaching and learning in the…

The authors analyzed 88 classroom observations to determine whether there were actions that teachers were taking to send a message to students that rereading was not valuable. They identified three practices during shared reading, guided reading, and independent reading that telegraphed messages to students against rereading. The authors also…

For students, the authors argue, the ability to assess their own learning--that is, to actively understand their own progress and trajectory--can have a significant impact on achievement levels. The authors discuss factors associated with "assessment-capable learners" and offer examples of how to foster such characteristics in classrooms.

Reflective writing has become part of a vast spectrum of professional practices across academia, which includes the hard sciences--notably in the fields of medicine and nursing, as well as in the humanities, including social work, higher education, teacher education, and educational leadership. In this article, we seek to describe the results of…

Assessments are the essential link between teaching and learning, yet the assessments used in face-to-face classrooms are not always practical or impactful in remote learning environments. Now that teachers are teaching from a distance, how will you assess what your students have learned? Tapping the expertise of teachers who are successfully…

This article provides an organizational review of content literacy instructional strategies to forward a claim that some strategies work better for surface learning, whereas others are more effective for deep learning and still others for transfer learning. The authors argue that the failure to adopt content literacy strategies by disciplinary…

In this article, we address the common criticisms of the Visible Learning research and offer a long-term view of the potential presented with this body of knowledge. We contextualize our view with some experiences in a high school that is focused on improving student learning.

Using the evidence from teacher professional learning communities, we explore the ways in which students can collaborate and build their collective efficacy.

"Your Students, My Students, Our Students" explores the hard truths of current special education practice and outlines five essential disruptions to the status quo. Authors Lee Ann Jung, Nancy Frey, Douglas Fisher, and Julie Kroener show you how to: (1) Establish a school culture that champions equity and inclusion; (2) Rethink the…

Although research indicates that feedback can be one of the most effective instructional strategies for improving student performance, getting students to listen and act on feedback can be complicated. If feedback is vague and personal, students may pay attention only to positive comments that are positive and boost their self-image ("That…

Modeling in complex texts requires that teachers analyze the text for factors of qualitative complexity and then design lessons that introduce students to that complexity. In addition, teachers can model the disciplinary nature of content area texts as well as word solving and comprehension strategies. Included is a planning guide for think aloud.

In this article we investigate the systems that need to be in place for students to learn from increasingly complex texts. Our concept, drawn from past research, includes clear learning targets, teacher modeling, collaborative conversations, close reading, small group reading, and wide reading. Using a "proof of concept" model, we follow…