Some readers thrive more than others because they are more actively involved in their learning. All students can become active participants in their learning through quality teacher prompting. In this article, teachers will learn how to promote emergent learners' active participation as they decode and comprehend, while problem-solving unknown…

In this article, one teacher shares her journey using decodable books with her culturally and linguistically diverse students, documenting new understandings and tensions that she has encountered. Four literacy teacher educators augment the teacher's story by connecting it with the current literature on literacy and decodable books. After reading…

In this article, I (a) overview the ebbs and flows of two beginning reading approaches (code-emphasis and balanced instruction) used in U.S. schools from 1950 to the present; (b) compare and contrast the two instructional approaches; and (c) suggest some simple assessment procedures that can be used to measure student learning. In closing, I…

In this historical analysis, we examine the context of debates over the role of phonics in literacy and current debates about the science of reading, with a focus on the work and impact of the late literacy scholar Jeanne Chall. We open by briefly tracing the roots of the enduring debates from the 19th and 20th centuries, focusing on beginning…