Writing in school has long been disconnected and inauthentic to multilingual learners due to its monolingual, language-focused, and standardized features. Although more and more researchers have called for and explored newer asset-based writing pedagogies, such as digital multimodal writing, to support diverse learners in response to emerging…

The "College, Career, and Civil Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards" guides teachers to initiate complex inquiries by sparking students' disciplinary literacy and critical analysis of rich sources. With effective scaffolding and engaging content, elementary students can explore and contextualize complex historical…

The elementary grades provide a rich context for literacy and science learning. Reading, writing, and talk support students' conceptual understanding of and engagement with science. The authors provide theoretical and research evidence to support the teaching of five instructional strategies that can facilitate literacy and science learning in…

Based on research conducted in a fourth-grade classroom, the author describes one teacher's process for integrating social studies and English language arts using a writers' workshop approach. Furthermore, the fourth-grade teacher was able to provide students with an opportunity to engage in multimodal composition. After conducting research…

Classroom instruction about other cultures all too often resembles the Disney version of "It's a Small World" with Fantasyland-like cultural stereotypes, ceremonial activities, and traditional dress that can lead to serious misunderstandings about the depth and complexity of global societies. Social studies instruction presents the…

One challenge of teaching science is getting students to communicate as scientists do. Scientists employ many different forms of communication as they develop and pass on information to others. Unfortunately, in many classrooms, student communication about science concepts is limited to filling in information on worksheets, finishing…

This article presents an authentic writing opportunity to help ninth-grade students use the writing process in a science classroom to write and illustrate picture books for fourth-grade students to demonstrate and share their understanding of a biology unit on cells. By creating a picture book, students experience the writing process, understand…

During what might have in the distant past been called "quiet time" in Arlene Anderson's fourth-grade classroom, many of her students are glued to their netbooks. The intense, enthusiastic focus and the hushed chatter amongst the students are all about high scores and strategy. Students are revising and editing their writing assignments within a…

In this article, the author relates how she realized that she needed to differentiate her approach in teaching the subject of immigration to her students. She realized that most of her students find themselves far removed from the experiences of immigrants. The unit that she developed at her class in Trinity has much in common with the…

This report offers a number of specific teaching techniques that research suggests will help 4th- to 12th-grade students in this nation's schools. The report focuses on all students, not just those who display writing difficulties, although this latter group is deservedly the focus of much attention. The premise of this report is that all students…

This article explores the writing opportunities provided to Spanish-speaking and mandarin speaking English Language Learners at the fourth and fifth-grade level across the various classroom settings in which they participated daily: an all-English speaking classroom, an English-as-a-second language (ESL) classroom, and a native-language classroom.…