Fourth-grade students were introduced to a detailed process approach to examining mentor texts and then transferring their newfound knowledge of author craft to their own independent writing. The EASE strategy was created as a way to scaffold students from merely noticing the exceptional moves that authors make to adeptly applying these…

Purpose: This study took place in an elementary English language arts classroom during a comics writers workshop unit and focused on one fourth-grade author. This paper aims to explain how a fourth-grade student receiving special education services positions himself and is positioned by others as an expert during a unit on comics. When students'…

This article examines students' identities in teacher-student interactions during an eight-week comic unit within a fourth-grade literacy classroom. Though researchers have increasingly studied how teachers incorporated graphic novels and comics into the school literacy curriculum, few have documented the social interactions that students'…

The goals of this formative experiment were threefold: (a) to teach the story/visual elements and characteristics of picturebooks to pre-service teachers (PSTs) from the classroom teacher education department and to help them use these elements with elementary school students, (b) to enable the PSTs to create original self-published picturebooks…

This article explores the range of ways two teacher educators and preservice teachers engaged with and learned from writers and their families in town and village schools during a faculty-led study abroad experience in Belize, Central America. During this experience, the authors drew on three guiding principles: engaging in side-by-side writing…

Paul Jablon's "The Synergy of Inquiry" (2014) is well-timed. The 2014 deadline set by No Child Left Behind (NCLB, 2002) for universal student proficiency has come and gone, and according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, "proficiency rates last year were below 50 percent for nearly every racial and ethnic group, in…

Writing assessments have attended to the mechanics of writing, reflecting a value on the teaching of writing conventions. One quality of writing rarely assessed is authorial voice, a personal style that communicates the author's stance toward events reported and the author's relationship to the audience. The authors explore associations among…

In this article, the author talks about the philosophical adventures of the characters in L. Frank Baum's Lands of Oz and Ev stories and discusses how such stories can stimulate reflections on philosophically interesting questions. Frank Baum is considered as the first American writer of philosophical fantasy for children for writing "The…

The Change Writers project was born in the Title I schools of Elk Grove, California, when Gail Desler, a technology integration specialist, became motivated to open up the district's mandated "Open Court" curriculum to better serve intermediate-grade students. Through writing, technology, and imagination, a larger conversation was…

This study had two main aims: (a) to develop checklists adapted for the French culture and the age of the children whose level of print exposure (PE) was to be assessed and (b) to analyse the impact of print exposure on various literacy skills. The checklists consisted of Titles, Magazines, and Authors (targets and foils). The children's responses…

This textbook is a fourth-year supplementary reader. Stories include "A Christmas Dream," "The Skipping Shoes," "The Fairy Box," and "A Hole in the Wall."