The purpose of this study was to understand how the social and cultural practices of classroom literacy instruction afforded students opportunities to make meaning with texts. Research was conducted from a sociocultural perspective that focused on students as participants in social learning, in a context of interactive relations. This study was…

This paper defines the notion of "dialogic local space" and highlights its importance to teaching and learning. A dialogic local space values multiple local realities as it invites us to listen to, take up, and have confidence in our own local everyday and personal realities, and to listen to, consider, and respond to other local…

There is an urgent need for more ethical and equitable approaches to reading instruction for young emergent bilingual children in English medium classrooms. Translanguaging pedagogies are one approach that may address this issue as they encourage emergent bilinguals to use all of their linguistic and semiotic resources during reading. This study…

Text complexity in elementary classrooms is typically measured by traditional readability tools, which rely on surface-level measures of word and sentence complexity. Theoretical and empirical work on text complexity, however, indicates that additional measures of semantics, syntax, and discourse structure may be equally important for…

In recent years, many students have developed a fixed mindset as a result of the national focus on raising test scores. The present study aims to investigate the effects of teacher language and the inclusion of growth mindset feedback on the writing motivation of second and third grade students. The researcher used a mixed-methods,…

In theory, engaging students in discussion helps them learn how to understand and think critically about texts. Researchers have sought to identify effective features of teacher-led text-based discussions by designing specific discussion-group programs and investigating their influence on students' comprehension in upper elementary classrooms.…

This research explores the ability of grade 2 students to engage in productive discussion about the state of their knowledge building using group-level feedback tools to support their metadiscourse. Two aspects of knowledge work were common to the comparison and experimental classes: "Knowledge Building talk" (KB talk) involving…

This narrative case study examined the relationship between teacher identity and elementary science teaching. Teacher identity was described using a modification of Gee's framework incorporating three perspectives: the teachers' self-described identity, the researchers' view of teacher identity, and the students' views of teacher identity. Over…

This study compared the characteristics of second graders' mathematical writing between an intervention and comparison group. Two six-week Project M2 units were implemented with students in the intervention group. The units position students to communicate in ways similar to mathematicians, including engaging in verbal discourse where they…

Although games--including board games, video games, and Massive Multiplayer Online Games--have garnered significant attention in recent years for their impact on educational outcomes, a primary focus of this interest is the transfer of knowledge from game to nongame settings. Building on this literature, our research explores how game designs that…

This article presents the lighthouse literacy strategies model using the concentrated language encounter (CLE) approach that has been successfully replicated in many countries in different languages and cultures. A review of CLE research studies and the project implementation in Thailand showed highly significant results in students' literacy…

This article shows how various dialogic discourse strategies were used in read-alouds of English science information books in a 2nd-grade bilingual classroom. Using a variety of discursive strategies, Ibett encouraged her Spanish-speaking students to provide explanations and reasoning related to science ideas. Similarly, she used intertextual…

This article presents an ethnographic study of how bilingual teachers and children use their home language, TexMex, to mediate academic content and standard languages. From the premise that TESOL educators can benefit from a fuller understanding of students' linguistic repertoires, the study describes language practices in a second-grade classroom…

By the age of seven, many children would have eaten jelly and many would have experienced its preparation by watching adults. This small scale study explores the use of different levels of thinking skills and language in discussing the process of jelly making among Grade 2 students. Semi-structured, one-to-one interviews with fifteen students were…

As digital media practices become readily available in today's classrooms, literacy and literacy instruction are changing in profound ways (Alvermann, 2010). Professional organizations emphasize the importance of integrating new literacies (New London Group, 1996) practices into language-arts instruction (IRA, 2009; NCTE, 2005). As a result,…