This article describes experiences of a literary coach working with a first-grade teacher to make Pro-Black culturally relevant pedagogy foundational to the coaching relationship. Responding to the failure of mandated programs to support Black students' literacy proficiency and the success of culturally relevant pedagogies, they addressed the…

Teaching disciplinary literacy in the elementary classroom provides rich potential for bridging the literacy-content divide, building background knowledge, extending learning, and deepening student thinking. This article explores how six elementary teachers tried and tested approaches to embedding literacy in three very different subjects:…

Teaching elementary students how to read is undeniably crucial, yet a substantial number of children encounter difficulties despite early interventions. Cross-age tutoring, a pedagogical approach that pairs older students with younger peers, emerges as a cost-effective solution that brings academic and social benefits to both the tutor and the…

Offering insights from a research-practice partnership, we examine how five pre-K-6 teachers discussed using LGBTQ+-inclusive children's literature as backup to counter curricular censorship and community pushback.

Activating joy is a rigorous and serious pursuit in literacy education. In this article, we guide educators through the framework of culturally and historically responsive education and its five pursuits: identity, skills, intellect, criticality, and joy. Our focus is on the fifth pursuit -joy-- and we support elementary school teachers in…

This manuscript describes the need elementary teachers have to analyze beginning and complex texts for teaching affordances and obstacles when teaching reading foundational skills and core ELA standards. A Guide to Analyze Texts for Elementary Students (GATES) is provided and described. Two teacher cases discuss how real teachers have used the…

How can primary literacy teachers effectively identify, adapt, and incorporate developmentally appropriate technologies to support their students' reading development? This article reports results from a case study attempting to digitize a classroom literacy practice--close reading--for Year 2 students. It suggests that digital tools can…

Family literacy programs can be effective for supporting the literacy learning of both parents and children. Educators and community members can be constructive in establishing family literacy programs in their school and in the community. Having knowledge of successful family literacy programs is important for both initiating and continuing with…

Co-teaching offers a unique opportunity space for literacy instruction; however, this opportunity is rarely optimized and the result on students' literacy growth is often unimpressive. We propose that co-teaching is only a structural intervention, but it can become a powerful pedagogical intervention if teachers approach co-teaching as an…

Many elementary teachers shy away from using expository literature for interactive read-alouds in their classrooms, preferring and privileging narrative texts over this type of nonfiction. This article first shares the complementary benefits of moving beyond fiction and narrative nonfiction in educators' read-aloud practices. Affordances include…

In the 21st century, amidst the widespread adoption of the Next Generation Science Standards, many elementary teachers find it challenging to consistently incorporate science instruction. Although the research literature indicates that using science-based content in the literacy block has the potential to improve student achievement in both areas,…

In here, I provide a description of a multiliteracies elementary classroom's ecology according to how an elementary bilingual teacher and bilingual language learners in her classroom interact and engage with traditional (linguistic) and alternative (multimodal) texts in language arts. This multiliteracies classroom ecology shows their dynamic…

Interactive read-alouds are versatile in that teachers can teach an array of literacy skills through this instructional strategy. However, our observations of six primary grade teachers and prior research revealed that teachers' implementation of interactive read-alouds varies. Without the necessary planning and preparation for interactive…

Metalinguistic Awareness is the ability to consciously reflect on and manipulate language, from the level of the phoneme, to words, to whole phrases. Research has shown that engaging in metalinguistic activities can have a positive impact on reading. This article details some of the component skills of metalinguistic awareness (in this case,…

Offering a heuristic to apprentice young children into the disciplines, we examine how one multiage classroom teacher leveraged the resources of personal digital inquiry to forward students' knowledge building.