This article offers a framework for more equitable classroom reading assessment known as a Critical Assessment Practices (CAPS) approach. CAPS includes a set of four principles that teachers can use to partner with, and to empower, students to support more equitable and informative classroom-based reading assessment. Teachers can apply the CAPS…

Early identification and instruction aimed at addressing potential reading difficulties is the key to preventing prolonged difficulties in learning to read and ensuring that all students are reading with proficiency by the end of third grade. Tier 1 core reading curricula needs to be: (a) evidence based, (b) systematic and structured, (c)…

The decades-long and contentious debate over how students are taught to read centers around the role that phonics and alphabetic code-related skills have in reading instruction. Some claim that these skills are not prioritized in most elementary classrooms because teacher education programs do not adequately prepare preservice teachers (PSTs) to…

This Teaching and Learning Guide highlights how early childhood teachers can support emotional intelligence and inferential comprehension by drawing children's attention to characters' feelings and by asking students to notice evidence from the illustrations and text. During this read-aloud in Ms. Clark's first grade classroom, we see evidence of…

This report describes initial findings from a study conducted across three California school districts during the 2021-22 school year of science curriculum materials that were designed to promote learning as called for by the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). The study, led by WestEd, was an independent randomized controlled trial to…

Can You Build It? is an engaging Improve It! task that asks children to construct 3D shapes based on 2D depictions. Students' initial 3D creations often need revision, and as they build and re-build, they develop spatial relationships. This task was implemented in a first-grade class, connected to composing 3D geometric shapes to address the…

Engaging in frequent, meaningful conversation during the early years of schooling is foundational for children's literacy development. Specifically, developing oral language through daily conversations is essential for language comprehension, and eventually, reading comprehension. In this article, we discuss how teachers can use the…

Engaging in frequent, meaningful conversation during the early years of schooling is foundational for children's literacy development. Specifically, developing oral language through daily conversations is essential for language comprehension, and eventually, reading comprehension. In this article, we discuss how teachers can use the…

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been an influx of virtual school enrollments and newly developed online programs. There is a body of research that supports online learning in higher educational settings but there is limited empirical evidence on the impact of online learning in K-12 settings, specifically with early learners. The purpose of…

The paper reports how a teacher and her students use drawings as a resource for observations and how such observations are connected to different epistemic practices in science lessons. Interactional data in a 1st grade classroom were analyzed based on Ethnography in Education. Results show that the use of drawings materialized children's…

This study explored the similarities between the philosophies and techniques used by select high school athletic coaches and select elementary reading teachers. The study shows parallels between the psychology behind coaching methodology within high school athletics and differentiated instruction within the elementary reading classroom. The…

Studies have shown the benefits of fingerspelling on literacy skills in school-age deaf and hard-of-hearing students. This study is an observation of 20 first- and second-grade classrooms. The classroom observations were coded for fingerspelling event frequency, type, length, and whether it was chained to print. The observations showed that…

This study examined how embodied learning experiences support students to grasp abstract CT concepts in early primary education. Forty-seven students were recruited from first- and second-grade classrooms. They had five embodied activities that simulated robot programming tasks requiring students to (1) figure out a route from a starting point to…

Making connections between children's existing means of expression (play, art, and movement) and the intricacies of print is a necessary and time-honored approach to writing instruction in the early years of school, yet, after kindergarten, one that is easily overlooked. In this article, we examine an approach to writing instruction for…

The majority of U.S fourth graders are not proficient in reading. With lawmakers in some U.S. states enacting "Read by Grade 3" laws, it is important for teachers to be well prepared to teach reading to their students. The purpose of this study was to explore novice kindergarten through second grade (K-2) teachers' perspectives of their…