This article provides early educators with guidance for promoting early writing development by integrating writing opportunities throughout the school day.

This paper argues that the plan and study phases of lesson study are productive in helping educators with varied expertise and experience to explore scientific practices like modeling with ties to disciplinary literacy. Points are illustrated with data from a lesson-study cycle in science that two university-based teacher educators, one in…

This article addresses the considerations on what they term "digitally supported elementary disciplinary literacy" in elementary grade (K-5) instruction. In doing so, the authors focus on the particularities of elementary instruction and what disciplinary literacy might look like in those grade levels, with a particular emphasis on…

Disciplinary literacy approaches recently have been finding their way into early elementary classrooms (K-2) and preschool, but this idea still needs more careful study, discussion, and operationalizing before determining its value and place in the early grades curriculum. The purpose of this article is to describe a case of curriculum exploration…

Integrating content-area and literacy instruction in primary-grade classrooms creates authentic and engaging opportunities for students to build background knowledge and literacy skills. Furthermore, when students engage in meaningful dialogue about content-area topics they can discuss complex ideas and use content-specific vocabulary. These…

In today's multimodal landscape, coding has a space in the elementary literacy curriculum. Coding and literacy have many parallels, which are described in further detail. The author also explains why coding should be integrated into the primary grades and the steps that teachers can take to implement coding in the literacy curriculum. The free app…

Writing is an important mode of thinking and learning for elementary students. Consistent efforts have been made to encourage discipline-specific writing, yet defining qualities of elementary mathematical writing have historically been underdeveloped. This article offers educators a new framework that conceptualizes mathematical writing as writing…

Teachers everywhere are embracing the challenge of conveying differences in literacy practices across fields of study. However, whereas disciplinary literacy and inquiry approaches are expanding in popularity at the secondary level, few resources exist for teaching discipline-specific writing in the elementary grades. The authors describe three…

Becoming more disciplined about teaching disciplinary literacy in our classrooms can be a challenge. Encouraging student production of the academic language and the demands and styles of thinking associated with each discipline requires an additional push that was often overlooked in content area instruction of the past. As this new journey in…

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…

Given increased attention to disciplinary literacy in K-5 contexts, there is a need to explore how elementary preservice teachers are trained to engage in disciplinary instruction. The authors present a curriculum for fostering disciplinary language and literacy awareness in elementary teacher preparation. First, they explain how and why they…

With the goal of supporting students' writing and content area learning using play as a pedagogical model, teachers' action research projects involved kindergarten and grade 1 students collaborating to create texts for a range of purposes. The authors analyzed the project activities for their starting points or motivators, student and teacher…

There is a growing awareness that reading and writing informational texts are important skills for functioning successfully in our current society. Informational texts provide purposeful and authentic reasons for reading and writing while enhancing children's vocabulary knowledge and content understanding. This article describes The Tools…

In most elementary schools, students spend more time reading and writing narrative texts and less time with informational texts. Yet, the Common Core State Standards advocate that informational texts comprise nearly half of K-8 students' entire academic reading, including content areas like science and social studies. The authors propose remixing…

Students who can use a term conversantly in academic environments know how to use it precisely in their writing and in their interactions with others; they can be said to deeply know, not just the word term in alphabetic or spoken forms, but the connections to ideas the term embodies. When students are intrigued by words and ideas, they want to…