During the 2020-2021 school year, the COVID-19 pandemic forced millions of students and teachers into hybrid or fully remote modalities. Compiling the experiences of teachers who taught foundational reading skills to their primary-age students in a hybrid model (a mix of both remote learners at home, joining via video conferencing, as well as…

The purpose of this article was to offer guidance to educators in evaluating the strengths, weaknesses, and most effective uses of commercial reading assessment suites. We provide three resources to help educators who are responsible for making instructional decisions in reading using formal screening, benchmark, interim, and progress-monitoring…

Literacy teachers often feel underprepared to provide instruction that integrates technology in meaningful ways. Yet, there is evidence that teachers can be supported to overcome this barrier through professional development using a framework for instructional planning. Although efforts to support teachers' short-term technology integration have…

The relative ease of digitally documenting and sharing classroom life creates new challenges for teachers faced with critical decisions about what digital representations to share with families/caregivers and for what purposes. The authors explored one kindergarten teacher's yearlong approach to using Seesaw, a digital portfolio app, to make the…

Interest-based instruction involves attending to students' individual interests, including their existing topical interests, and triggering new situational interests, which can be cultivated during instruction. Understanding four teaching actions--approaching curricular planning intentionally, contextualizing learning, building relevance and value…

Selecting and integrating the use of digital texts/tools in literacy lessons are complex tasks. The DigiLit framework provides a succinct model to guide planning, reflection, coaching, and formative evaluation of teachers' successful digital text/tool selection and integration for literacy lessons. For digital text/tool selection, teachers need to…

Critical literacy provides the opportunity to queer picture books and challenge normative depictions of family. In this autoethnography, the author describes her 4-year-old's journey of learning to talk back to texts as she actively constructs a better, more just world. The author argues that a critical literacy tool kit is vital to every child's…

Literacy assessment scores in an urban 5th grade classroom left much to be desired. In this diverse classroom population, typical urban distractions such as poverty, crime, English as a second language, and lack of parental support contribute to extremely low literacy scores. This classroom study examined the effects of implementing clickers, a…

Digital literacies abound in playing a foundational role in the rhythm and pattern of our lives, yet debates continue about how to harness them to teach and learn literacy. In an effort to humanize digital literacies, this department column offers a vast array of topics, from participatory work that pushes educators and researchers to communicate…

This teaching tip showcases instructional strategies and scaffolds from an out-of-school digital writing camp. Often, teachers may be hesitant to incorporate digital tools into their literacy instruction for various reasons (e.g., scripted curriculum, fear and uncertainty of digital tools, lack of experience and knowledge with technology), yet it…

Every day, we are surrounded by stories in print, on social media, in blogs, on the radio, and in stories from our friends and family. The ways people make meaning and communicate are increasingly multimodal and digital; yet, the preschool classroom, for all its multimodal learning, is sometimes devoid of technology. In this action research…

The Common Core State Standards advocate more writing than previous standards; however, in taking a college and career readiness perspective, the Standards neglect to emphasize the role of context and culture in learning to write. We argue that sociocultural perspectives that pay attention to these factors offer insights into how to interpret and…

Technology-enhanced classrooms offer dynamic possibilities for teachers and students. The teacher's role can shift from being an expert in control of the class to being a coach who challenges students to use technology to explore the world and share their findings in innovative ways. Such redefining of roles, however, involves risk and often…

The authors describe a strategy that empowers students to edit and revise their own writing. Students input their writing in to text-to-speech software that rereads the text aloud. While listening, students make necessary revisions and edits.

There are numerous benefits of using blogs to discuss reading in the elementary classroom. Teachers can assess reading comprehension for individual students while managing several book clubs in a digital space. The resulting assessment-based data can be used to differentiate instruction. Additionally, students can experience growth as independent,…