Connecting literacy to social issues such as gender stereotypes supports reading and writing achievement while also allowing students to think critically and in justice-focused ways. Such practices allow students to critique gender stereotypes in texts while also examining and even challenging their own implicit perceptions of gender. However,…

Using data from a year-long case study in a Midwestern public school in the United States, the author invites readers into the play world of four multilingual and multiracial boys, affectionately named the "LEGO Boys" by their third-grade teacher. As documented in the findings, the boys maintained a cohesive narrative about how their…

This article explores learning through modes of signification in literacy activity books for early childhood learners in Kenya. These modes of signification are important for the cognitive and social development of children. Early childhood education in Kenya aims to prepare children for primary school by building foundational skills in a…

In this article we report the results and classroom implications of a qualitative study that explored third-grade students' interactions with each other as they partner read. Participants included 10 students, each of whom engaged in three readings with a partner during recorded observations. All students had been taught structures for partner…

Students in the 3rd and 4th grade often encounter what has been called a reading "slump" when their class curriculums increasingly ask them to comprehend and learn from texts. Students are more likely to struggle if they have not been offered sufficient opportunities to build world and domain knowledge and engage in challenging…

A third-grade educator and university researcher collaborated to develop an after-school virtual book club curriculum for students during the pandemic. Third-grade students were encouraged to explore social justice issues prevalent in their community first by reading relevant children's books, doing research, and collaborating to develop potential…

Children in a grade two/three classroom co-designed photographs of each other's important family objects to develop critical empathy and better understand their peers' home cultures. They engaged in visual critical literacy practices. The paper provides a narrative of what happened and a framework for creative collaborative pedagogy.

The authors describe Literary Analysis and Writing, an integrated instructional routine, developed through a formative experiment research project, that prompts students to uncover the deeper meanings of literary texts. The routine weaves together brief preteaching of carefully selected vocabulary words, whole-class assisted reading of text, close…

Journey with a third-grade community of writers as they develop their writing identities and abilities in a responsive approach to writers' workshop. Instruction is framed around the writers' workshop approach, where students' choice and voice are centered within extended periods of time for writing, alongside daily mini-lessons addressing the…

Because dual-language books (DLBs) print the entire text in two languages nearby on the page, they have great potential for supporting children's biliteracy development by providing contexts to compare/contrast languages. However, little is known about how children read DLBs independently and how they may/may not use such characteristics to…

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…

Spanish-English cognates (words from ancestrally related languages similar in appearance and meaning) are plentiful in students' reading materials, but few researchers have documented elementary-age bilingual (Spanish-English) students' actual use of cognates. The authors drew from two qualitative research studies to show how bilingual students…

The authors explored the impact of a novel, interactive performing arts-based program on students' writing skills. The program featured the Story Pirates, a group that teaches children how to write stories and then turns their stories into a musical sketch comedy show. Written stories from the third-grade students in an elementary school were…

The aim of this teaching tip is to share four key takeaways from virtual implementation of a reading intervention in a four-week summer reading camp (SRC) for rising second- and third-grade students in need of foundational skills support. The SRC, which was a partnership between a university and school district, pivoted to a virtual format for…

Picturebooks are highly sophisticated multimodal ensembles. Understanding the semiotic resources and affordances of the visual mode to represent and communicate meaning is fundamental to appreciating the artistry and complexity of picturebooks. A recent classroom-based research project with grade 2 students featured explicit instruction on…