In the last ten years, historical fiction picturebooks have won numerous children's literature awards and have assumed a prominent role in the literacy landscape of elementary and middle school classrooms. Whether read in read-alouds, study groups, as a focus of genre study, or as a supplement to the social studies curriculum, historical fiction…

Drawing and writing in response to picturebook read-alouds, elementary children construct varying "visual hooks" in their sketches as effective visual devices for extending ideas for writing: the bubble hook, the zoom hook, and the group hook. This article reports on a 12-week qualitative study in which children in second grade develop as writers…

This column explores the research that investigates teaching children with informational texts, which is a growing concern and focus in Common Core State Standards (CCSS.) The authors highlight empirical data that study the use of informational texts with young learners. The article is foregrounded in four key findings: make the texts available…

Two teachers engage in assessment discussions based on an analytical rubric to assess an ELL student's writing. Discourse analysis methods were used to analyze recorded/transcribed assessments and discussions. The teachers focused on descriptors for the rubric's lowest scores, neglecting their own knowledge and experience with English learners. As…

This article explores how reading strategy instruction that targets children's literature can unwittingly interfere with the development of a reading life. It compares the use of story-based children's literature for reading strategy instruction with the "untaught" story. It asks: What, if any, role does a read aloud that is unfettered by formal…

This article presents a review of the author's long-term research in urban classrooms. The authors explore six illustrated information books created by children as culminating activities of integrated science-literacy units, Forest and Matter, that they developed, implemented, and studied in several 1st-3rd grade classrooms in Chicago Public…

Letras y Arte: Literacy and Art, is a summer course that pairs college students and children from a Latino neighborhood for literacy and art learning. Started five years ago, Letras y Arte provides opportunities in four areas: (1) literacy opportunities that foster distinctive identities and voice; (2) immersion in a broad view of literacy that…

This study describes the interactions of three adult-child reading partnerships in a program that matches corporate volunteers with "at risk" students for weekly hour-long story reading sessions. Using discourse analysis within a sociocultural framework, the researcher identified variation in the way these partners were constructing the act and…

Two first-grade teachers and a university researcher study children's inquiry-oriented responses to literature to better understand how children's experiences during read-alouds (and in related, later conversations) help them enlist others in their efforts to make sense of race. The authors argue teachers should be making spaces for children's…

This article examines the curricular possibilities within critical inquiry-based primary classrooms. The children in this first through third grade multi-age, multi-lingual classroom participated in a two-year critical and collaborative inquiry around issues of segregation and the Jim Crow laws. A touchstone text, Freedom Summer (Wiles, 2001) and…

Playing the Play describes the experiences of a storyteller and teacher of literature who created a literature-based literacy program at Concourse House, a homeless shelter in Bronx, New York, for women and their young children. This program is based on the belief that pleasure is the primary reason children want to learn to read, and that where…