This article provides a critical literacy approach to reading picture books that represent individuals with disabilities. It details close reading with a critical literacy stance as a scaffolded method for teachers to support students' increased access to conversations about disability. A sample lesson plan and three prompting guides are provided…

Learning how to choose and use diverse literature for students to read and as an inspiration for their writing has never been more important, as more than 50% of today's students in U.S. classrooms do not identify as white. This teaching tip explores the importance of finding high-quality diverse literature for all learners and how to use these…

Grounded in the work of critical literacy, the authors describe one preservice teacher's journey as she develops her own critical lens while selecting children's literature and designing instruction to engage second graders in critical conversations. She helps students unpack their biases and reflects on her own assumptions while becoming more…

Educators can take advantage of Latino English learners' linguistic backgrounds by teaching Spanish-English cognate vocabulary using the Children's Choices picture books. Cognates are words that have identical or nearly identical spellings and meanings in two languages because of their Latin and Greek origins. Students can learn to recognize…

12 teachers were interviewed and observed as they engaged students in close reading. We analyzed their responses and instruction to determine the scaffolds that were used as well as the contingency teaching plans they implemented when students were unable to understand the text.

The emphasis on improving writing instruction, especially the writing of non-narrative texts, may lead some teachers to seek effective ways to teach students. The IMSCI model, a scaffolded model for writing instruction, is useful for planning effective instruction. This article describes a research project conducted in a 4th grade classroom…

Inference generation makes a strong, unique contribution to reading comprehension. Young children engage in many of the same inference generation processes as sophisticated readers. This article discusses instructional practices that can be used in prekindergarten through grade two to help children think beyond the words of the text. Suggestions…

This article reports on one instructional lesson that integrates literacy and mathematics. Specifically, it describes a lesson conducted in a fourth-grade classroom that integrates reading, writing, drawing, and literature to teach linear measurement to the inch and fractional measurement. The article begins with a rationale for integrating…

Meaningful conversations are a powerful tool to help students understand what they read and make text-to-self connections. This simple lesson, which is designed for repeated use with both fiction and nonfiction, provides students with strategies to support conversations about texts. Students will learn how to determine which ideas work best to…

Spanish-English cognates have been used for decades to facilitate the acquisition of English by Latino English learners (ELs). Using the online program, WordSift, in tandem with the online Find-a-Cognate database, teachers can identify important Spanish-English cognates and noncognate words in text. With this information, teachers can plan and…

There are many effective strategies that can be used to support student learning from expository text, but how do teachers choose and use them? The authors provide readers with a process for selecting instructional strategies that embed literacy instruction into teaching with content area text. A a veteran sixth-grade teacher is followed as she…

As the texts readers encounter in and out of school grow in complexity, the strategies that teachers demonstrate and encourage students to employ need to expand to accommodate the changing nature of these texts. In this article, the authors present a three-part framework for utilizing historical fiction picturebooks as instructional resources.…

Recent reading research has shown teachers how to help students comprehend and has identified strategies that good comprehenders use. At the same time, however, researchers report that few if any of these techniques are used in classrooms. Reading teachers and content area teachers alike need to be able to design lessons that help students…

Presents a research-based system for developing lesson plans to be used with any basal series. (DD)

Poetry should be an integral part of children's learning in elementary school. This article explains the classroom structures and routines through which third-grade students in an inner-city school became familiar with poetic language and learned to appreciate the artistry of poetry. Most of the students were struggling readers. Reading poetry…