Before ever entering a formal educational setting, children use writing to make themselves known. Yet by the time students reach the fourth grade, only a small minority of students demonstrate writing skills considered competent by national standards. By this time in their school career, many have begun to internalize that they are poor writers…

Systemic racism, and the white privilege that it supports and maintains, remains firmly entrenched in U.S. culture. The current educational climate may be experiencing an increase in racial animus, and students are not immune to the challenges they face as a result. For teachers who truly believe that all children can learn and are entitled to the…

The author examines the benefits of journaling in his fifth-grade classroom. Reviewing student journal data from the past 25 years, he shares an effective method for preparing a classroom for daily journaling, one that minimizes teacher-issued prompts and implements procedures for sharing and reflecting. Positive effects include insights into…

As K-5 dual language programs gain popularity in the United States, language teaching, however, often still prioritizes discrete and decontextualized learning that is not built on students' interests and experiences or their multilingual and multimodal resources. This article reports on a classroom-based ethnographic case study and illustrates how…

Travel provides students with multiple opportunities to learn about people, places, and the world around them. At times, students are given opportunities to travel causing them to be absent from the classroom. This manuscript provides a practical suggestion for engaging students in learning while on the journey. Students are asked to share and…

Preschoolers may be novices in the area of writing but, as this article highlights, they are indeed writers. In a year-long ethnography of preschoolers during structured writing time the teacher/researcher explored how students adapted to a writing workshop format. Students participated in daily journal writing and sharing, and weekly conference…

In this article, the author reports on findings of second and third graders' science writing about Jupiter in order to describe their expressive fluency with scientific discourse. The students' artifacts were created within a setting of integrated science/literacy instruction in which students participated in hands-on science activities, engaged…

Fifth-grade inner city boys engaged in reader response via e-mail with preservice teacher education candidates. Books and laptops were provided via funding from a federal grant. At the semester break, the boys were assigned new partners with which to correspond regarding their reading. All e-mails were filtered through the classroom teachers and…

The socioemotional factors, which influence students' trajectories on their pathways to reading success, are often overlooked in literacy screenings and reading instruction. This article outlines the connections between personality factors, in particular resilient personalities, and early literacy success. It also offers teachers a series of six…

Characters in children's books can help to guide readers through stories, contributing to deepened understandings of plot and themes. The authors discuss why characters become vivid and lasting in readers' minds, the ways in which students are often asked to think about characters in classroom literature study, and how students' understanding of…

Discusses three books that can be helpful to teachers in demonstrating the connections between thinking and writing with journals, thus offering good models for "thinking journals." Notes that these books cover a wide range: beginning journal writers, professional journal writers, and the journal writer in all people. (SR)

Provides information on how teachers can contribute additional encouragement, direction, and guidance for exploring and expanding intermediate-grade students' personal response to literature. Describes eight response options and offers guidelines. (PRA)

Presents a classroom teacher's reflections on her personal experiences with reading and how she incorporated what she was learning into her teaching. Describes how she reads to renew her spirit, to dispel some of the worry of the school setting, and for new insights and inspiration. (SG)

Discusses the advantages of dialogue journal writing in elementary education. Describes the organization of dialogue journal writing in a sixth grade classroom, noting that dialogue journals provide an ideal tool of empowerment for both students and teachers, and enable teachers to integrate reading and writing in a whole language approach. (MM)

Discusses a variety of assessment practices used in primary classrooms to meet the need of a diverse student population, including concepts about print, running records, anecdotal notes, writing vocabulary and word dictation, self-assessment/goal-setting interviews, nonfiction journals, and scoring rubrics. (SR)