In this article, the authors report findings from a yearlong study that addressed teaching first-grade students to make inferences and engage in inferential discussion about children's literature. Because of the importance of both inferencing and discussion for comprehension, a collaborative team of two researchers and a classroom teacher focused…

In this paper, we explore the affordances of literature-based, arts-infused and digital media processes for students, as multimodal practices take centre stage in an English Language Arts unit on fractured fairy tales. The study takes up the challenge of addressing multimodal literacy instruction and research in ways that utilize a range of…

By using the fairy tale genre, one teacher was able to foster critical literacy in a first-grade classroom. By encouraging a critical perspective, the author reveals how the issues of identity, rules, and power were exposed to the students. The article also portrays how the author engaged in significant learning himself, realizing that to instill…

Provides a rationale for using trickster tales in the classroom. Introduces representative trickster tales from many cultures, and samples activities that teachers can use to introduce trickster tales to their students. (SR)

Examines the conscious and unconscious reading connections that third grade children made when they wrote fairy tales after spending six weeks studying fairy tales. Finds that students make intertextual links and that students internalized the rhythm, cadence, and sentence structure of fairy tales. (PRA)

Outlines a literature unit consisting of variations of the Cinderella story for use in the upper elementary grades. Presents a rationale for studying fairy tales in general and Cinderella stories in particular. Describes the Cinderella stories and the activities developed to study and expand upon them. Discusses the effectiveness of the unit. (RS)

Explains Bruno Bettelheim's theory that fantasy provides emotional benefits for children and suggests research possibilities to test the theory. (MKM)

Introduces a new column written for the one-computer classroom and offers several perspectives for connecting software applications to trade book reading. Describes eight software packages for extending and enhancing students' reading of different genres: fairy tales, realistic fiction, science fiction, and biography and historical fiction in…

Describes a project in which students write their own notes, postcards, and invitations from storybook characters to other book characters. (SR)

Presents a unit that uses folk and fairy tales to provide a literary background for creative writing in a fourth-grade classroom. (FL)