This article presents a review of the author's long-term research in urban classrooms. The authors explore six illustrated information books created by children as culminating activities of integrated science-literacy units, Forest and Matter, that they developed, implemented, and studied in several 1st-3rd grade classrooms in Chicago Public…

Two first-grade teachers and a university researcher study children's inquiry-oriented responses to literature to better understand how children's experiences during read-alouds (and in related, later conversations) help them enlist others in their efforts to make sense of race. The authors argue teachers should be making spaces for children's…

This article examines the curricular possibilities within critical inquiry-based primary classrooms. The children in this first through third grade multi-age, multi-lingual classroom participated in a two-year critical and collaborative inquiry around issues of segregation and the Jim Crow laws. A touchstone text, Freedom Summer (Wiles, 2001) and…

Playing the Play describes the experiences of a storyteller and teacher of literature who created a literature-based literacy program at Concourse House, a homeless shelter in Bronx, New York, for women and their young children. This program is based on the belief that pleasure is the primary reason children want to learn to read, and that where…