In today's diverse and global world, the importance of disciplinary literacy is rapidly increasing. Thus, elementary educators must consider ways to incorporate disciplinary literacy into their instruction. Elementary educators often implement the transactional theory of reading to enhance comprehension and evoke aesthetic responses to fiction…

In a time of significant change, it can be useful to explore what remains constant in literate behaviours. This article follows Oatley's suggestion that looking at the psychological function of a literate event is more productive than worrying about the analogue/digital divide. Starting with the activity of learning to read, it investigates…

"Science of reading" is a term that has been used variously, but its use within research, policy, and the press has tended to share one important commonality: an intensive focus on assessed reading proficiency as the primary goal of reading instruction. Although well intentioned, this focus directs attention toward a problematically…

This article shares a literacy strategy to support students' analysis of the theme of text and provide evidence to support their assertion. The strategy is called Visual to Print Transfer (VPT). The VPT strategy leverages students' out-of-school literacy practices involving media images of Hollywood icons as a way to support their understanding of…

What better place for young little minds who are full of energy and eager to soak up as much information as possible than a notebook for them to collect their new learning and thoughts? What is it about notebooks that makes writing and learning fun? I wanted to experience the magical feeling that notebooks create with my students--hence, the…

Recent interest in materials culture and artifactual literacies has helped the authors of this article rethink how they teach preservice and inservice teachers and collaborate with K-12 teachers. Each discipline has its own stuff that can help students understand the products and practices of a field beyond what they might be able to glean from…

The emergence of quality multimodal texts such as graphic novels may provide new vistas that allow adolescents access to more complex readings of difficult texts. This is especially true for the large number of graphic versions of Shakespearean text that have recently come on the market. However, it is still unclear as to what students actually…

The semiotic world that we inhabit (within and outside the academy) is fast changing in terms of the resources that are used and the practices in which many engage. Yet the institutional norms governing highly consequential academic texts--students' texts assessed as part of their disciplinary-based activity and scholars' papers submitted for…

The classroom dynamic has become a competition of whose information is more important: the quickly accessed and popular digital texts or the perhaps less popular print texts. Whether or not teachers or school systems sanction the reading or teaching of popular culture texts in the classroom, students are reading--are even bombarded with--messages…

Last year, the author and his ninth-grade students explored ways to use mobile media devices such as iPods and cell phones to help guide literacy practices in their English classroom. Their school, South Central High School (SCHS; a pseudonym), is a public high school located in urban Los Angeles. As part of their seven-week exploration, the…

Though its popularity has waxed and waned, cloze continues to be regarded as an instructional strategy for the fostering of reading comprehension. This article takes the view of cloze as one tactic in support of strategy instruction, rather than a strategy in its own right. In contrast to the formulaic applications of cloze for assessment…

The author outlines ways in which conceptions of texts and literacy may be distinctive across academic disciplines. Framed in theories of social semiotics, she asserts that each discipline is recreated through a series of texts, defined broadly to include any instances of communication. Texts in each content area not only instantiate a particular…

This article shares findings from a collaborative, qualitative research project investigating what happens to first and third graders' comprehension of picturebooks if we intentionally teach them the language of art--Elements of Art and Principles of Design. Work with the art teacher and two classroom teachers transformed the traditional picture…

An idea to bring ethnically diverse authors to Southeast Idaho to promote reading and cultural understandings was conceived 24 years ago. The Visiting Author Series resulted from a committee's dream and resulted in new understandings of the literacy process as well as bringing the world to this region.

The ability to read is well-recognized as essential to being successful in school history. To be able to read history textbooks effectively, students can be made aware of some features typical of history discourse. Knowledge of how nominal groups are functional in history discourse can help students and teachers engage with the meanings presented…