This article describes academic conversations in kindergarten classrooms and how they vary across two different instructional activities: teacher-led and student-led book conversations. Conversations about texts have been recommended to improve the comprehension of kindergarten through third graders. The research was conducted in a K-8 urban,…

Author Gwen J. Pauloski introduces four flexible adolescent literacy practices that help secondary students make deeper sense of the complex informational texts they encounter in school and beyond. Adolescent readers learn age-appropriate comprehension strategies and practice applying them as they discuss, analyze, and write about their reading.…

The purpose of this research study was to investigate pedagogical approaches for improving reading compliance and critical, insightful discussion in the higher education classroom. Research on reading compliance in higher education reveals that students are often not reading their assigned texts. This problem compounds when instructors attempt to…

This study contributes to the science of teaching reading by illustrating how a ubiquitous classroom practice -- read alouds -- can be enhanced by fostering teacher language practices that support students' ability to read for understanding. This experimental study examines whether and to what extent providing "structured teacher read…

This study investigated the role of translanguaging pedagogy in reading comprehension of first-year students studying in an English medium classroom of a Bangladeshi private university. Data were collected through classroom observations, pedagogical intervention, focus group discussion with students and a semi-structured interview with the class…

The significance of reading comprehension can hardly be overestimated. Nevertheless, teachers vary in their disposition or willingness to teach reading comprehension. A wealth of field experimental studies have confirmed the importance of text talk, in class or in teacher-guided small groups, for students´ reading comprehension. However,…

Pedagogical translanguaging refers to the use of different planned strategies based on activating students' resources from their whole linguistic repertoire . The aim of this article is to examine the theoretical foundations of pedagogical translanguaging and its application in the classroom. The core characteristics of pedagogical translanguaging…

This article presents a protocol for utilizing conferring strategies for reading conferences with English Language Learners (ELLs) as a means to support their reading comprehension skills and develop content area vocabulary in middle level education. The Conferring with English Language Learners (CELL) Protocol emphasizes ELLs' conversational…

Drawing upon a theoretical framework that acknowledges the bidirectional relationship between local discursive acts and institutional structures, this paper analyzes classroom observations with student interviews to understand how fifth-grade multilingual learners are making sense of dialogic literacy instruction to support their reading…

Academic success is contingent on multiple factors not the least of which is literacy and comprehension. However, research demonstrates that literacy and comprehension levels for traditional aged high secondary school students, as well as non-traditional adult college students threaten the academic success of these demographics. Identifying…

This study investigated the relations between bilingual students' amount of talk during classroom discussion, motivation, and self-reported bi-literacy skills (i.e. reading, writing skills in their native and school languages). Sixth-grade Spanish-English bilinguals in the United States (N = 121; M age = 12.119 years old; SD = 0.358) reported on…

This study examined the relation between middle school Dual Language Learners' (DLLs'; N = 413; M age = 11.66 years old; 87.1% Latino; female = 234, male = 179) reading comprehension skills and their teachers' (N = 32; M age = 36.53 years; 81.3% Caucasian; female = 27, male = 5) questioning practices across the school year. This study also…

Drawing on the principles underlying conversation analysis (CA), this paper is a single case analysis of interaction in an English as a foreign language (EFL) reading comprehension classroom in Saudi Arabia. It looks at learning from a sociocultural perspective and uses constructs from this theoretical perspective. It focuses on Classroom…

Both early childhood maternal language input and the quality of classroom instruction in elementary school have been shown to be important environmental supports in predicting children's literacy skill development. However, no studies have simultaneously examined these two environmental supports in relation to children's early language skills and…

In the telling case presented here, the instructional practices an exemplary teacher used to scaffold fourth-grade emergent bilinguals' comprehension of a challenging informational science text are identified, analyzed, and discussed. Data sources included observation field notes, video and audio recording of 11 hours of instruction, the teacher's…