French Immersion instruction has often focused on the development of oral language as the primary method of early literacy learning. Manitoba Education endorses this focus with its curricular emphasis on oral language acquisition before formal reading and writing instruction. This article examines the role of early years French immersion teachers…

The vocabulary research of the 1980s and 1990s brought a breath of fresh air into the language classroom. Teachers in many remote EFL locations had long suspected that vocabulary was their learners' main challenge, but there was little research evidence to confirm this or say what to do about it. Then, suddenly, work by Nation, Laufer, Meara,…

Storytelling in the classroom has long been recognized for its many benefits, especially as a bridge from orality to literacy. With the changing demographic landscape present in current elementary classrooms across Canada and internationally, storytelling reaps additional benefits for promoting the goals of inclusion among diverse learner…

Children's daily, embodied music experiences are integral to how children live and function in the world. Growing out of a line of work focusing on the interplay between elementary children's daily experiences of music, both in- and out-of-school and the impact on elementary music education curriculum, this research is nested within the…

There is growing recognition of the need to end the debate regarding reading instruction in favor of an approach that provides a solid foundation in phonics and other underlying language skills to become expert readers. We advance this agenda by providing evidence of specific effects of instruction focused primarily on the written code or on…

Literacy skills are the cornerstones of student learning and achievement. Now more than ever, educators are expected to produce quantitative data that demonstrates a high level of literacy success. Simultaneously, teachers are encountering a diverse student population that requires greater differentiation in instructional strategies. This research…

This study explored the effects of learner response systems (clickers) on the development of vocabulary knowledge in English (L2). Sixty-one Grade 8 learners divided in two groups participated in the experiment, which followed a pretest-posttest-delayed posttest research design. While the experimental group received a clicker-based treatment via…

Two-year, play-based, full-day kindergarten (FDK) has been shown to have long-term academic and self-regulation benefits for young children. This article addresses the question of whether FDK has particular benefits for children who may be at risk for placement in special education. Participants included 592 kindergarten children in their second…

This article reports on a study that examined the effectiveness of an intervention using text messages to enhance the academic vocabulary acquisition of English language learners (ELLs). With a random control trial design, we compared students' learning gain of target vocabulary (direct effect) and its subsequent impact on academic vocabulary…

Although host countries generally integrate refugees into public education, wide-spread and comprehensive understanding of teaching and learning with children and youth who have experienced forced displacement and migration remains an unmet goal within most education systems. This article explores the educational needs of these children and youth,…

The aim of the present study was to evaluate the appropriateness of open-access reading materials for an intensive English for Academic Purposes (EAP) course, and to provide teachers with a set of criteria to select online texts systematically and efficiently. The Corpus for Veterinarians (VetCorpus) was compiled and analyzed using Lextutor corpus…

Research in second language acquisition has paid little attention to preliterate children learning a language which is absent from their environment outside the language class. This study examines the acquisition of English words by 24 French-speaking children aged 35-59 months, who were introduced to 57 words, embedded in stories and songs. Four…

The purpose of this preliminary study was to determine whether incorporating vocabulary instruction in individual reading fluency interventions for English Language Learners (ELLs) would improve reading comprehension. Two vocabulary instructional procedures were contrasted with a fluency-building only condition in an alternating-treatments design…

This article reports on an English for academic purposes course designed following the tenets of content and language integrated learning (CLIL) to address the needs of language minority (LM) high school graduates entering Canadian universities. The language used in and required of post-secondary study is challenging for many LM students,…

This article presents qualitative findings from a larger design-based research doctoral study in which I examined the impact of a curricular innovation to challenge the monolingual and monocultural norms of literacy practices and to be responsive to the linguistic and cultural landscape of 21st century classrooms. I collaborated with 11 university…