During recess a conflict occurred between two fourth graders. A peer attempted to mediate unsuccessfully. Frustrated, the student protested, "[Teachers] never listen to us!" The student felt unheard and sought to play a more active role in conflict resolution. This article explores the use of literature to facilitate restorative…

This study aims to examine the effects of a social studies course supported by stories on the critical and empathetic thinking skills of 4th-grade students. The study was conducted according to the intervention design, a method used in mixed-method research. The 10-week study was conducted in two public schools in Gaziantep in the 2018-2019…

Students in grades 3-6 need to use increasingly sophisticated comprehension skills and strategies as they read and build knowledge across disciplinary content areas. Grounded in research, this book presents effective practices for integrating literacy instruction with literature, science, and social studies. Chapters address text selection,…

Several national and international studies have indicated that there is an achievement gap between student literary reading and student informational reading, with the gap favoring literary reading. One plausible explanation for this gap is that reading informational text has been neglected in early grades in the U.S. (Dreher, 2003; Kletzien &…

Throughout our targeted approach of explicit collaborative translation during small-group reading instruction in a bilingual education classroom, fourth grade emergent bilinguals employed the strategy to comprehend narrative text in a range of ways, similar to middle school students in reading instruction research. As students acknowledged the…

The competency-based model implies a process of humanization of education that diversifies content, focusing in this case on the development of the civic and artistic competence of the students. This paper presents the CIVABLES Program designed within the framework of teaching and research collaboration between the University and the Primary…

Technology can play an important role in the development of reading fluency. Taking notes, recording brainstorm sessions, peer-reviewing, and publishing are all skills that support students in becoming academically literate for advanced schooling. This descriptive case study explored the use of the iBook application and features that come…

The Louisiana English language arts student standards were created by over one hundred Louisiana educators with input by thousands of parents and teachers from across the state. Educators envisioned what proficient students should know and be able to do to compete in society and focused their efforts on creating standards that would allow them to…

Reasoning words are linguistic features associated with classroom exploratory talk as students talk-to-learn, explore ideas, and probe each other's thinking. This study extends established research on use of reasoning words to a fourth- to fifth-grade literature-based English language learning context. We examined frequency and patterning of…

The merits of decentralized small groups has been questioned in literature and by practicing teachers; thus this study shows the academic and identity work children do as they attempt to make meaning in these spaces. This study explores the affordances and drawbacks of decentralized small group discussion contexts in a multiage (3rd/4th) grade…

This study explored how ideologies of language and literacy and social and academic identities were constructed and contested during a literature discussion. In the event, a group of five (and later six) boys in a fourth grade bilingual classroom attempt to identify an unknown word in their novel: booger. Microethnographic discourse analysis and…

As teachers and leaders move forward in implementing the Common Core State Standards within classrooms across 46 states, it is essential to consider the question of what knowledge is included in the English Language Arts Standards, and what knowledge is not present. The authors of the Common Core delineate an increasingly complex body of knowledge…

The development and application of a framework that captures main characteristics of learning in nature--the Field Trip in Natural Environments (FiNE) framework--is the main outcome of this study that followed up 22 daily field trips of 4-6th grade students to nature parks. The theoretical and practical framework, which was developed based on the…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of two innovative, art-and-literature-based approaches to teaching writing (Picturing Writing: Fostering Literacy Through Art and Image-Making Within The Writing Process) on elementary school students' writing, visual literacy, and reading skills. RMC Research Corporation of Portsmouth, New…

This study built on previous research in the area of peer-led literature discussion. Even though there are numerous studies investigating this type of literacy activity, little is known about Taiwanese elementary students' participation in peer-led literature discussion. This study explored a group of six Taiwanese fourth graders' participation in…