This paper reports a study that examines the integration of tablet technologies such as iPads into literacy lessons to investigate how reading and meaning-making occur within this digital medium. Specifically in this paper, we discuss the concept of reading paths as applied to physical and cognitive planes of meaning-making. The paper reports on…

Images of childhood are ideas and expectations of childhood and children, and are reflections of individual perception and cultural ideologies. In writing children's books, authors draw on their conscious and unconscious thoughts of childhood to create an implied reader. In this paper I investigate images of childhood through examination of the…

Changes in the teaching of reading during the past decade include a shift away from a previous emphasis on "one-to-one" learning experiences to a focus upon more communal forms of learning which place the teacher center stage. With the teacher's role thus highlighted, teacher-pupil interaction in practice has come under the spotlight, with a…

This article explores ways in which children's picture books form networks of relationships, and their implications for readers and classroom teachers. In this exploration, reading is seen to involve making connections within and beyond the text at hand. These connections, evoked differently across readers, shape readers' interpretations of text.…

Over the past decade in the United States, levelled texts, or "little books" with finely graduated levelling of text difficulty, have regained their status as a literacy staple for beginning readers. Despite their resurgence, questions remain regarding the reliability and quality of these books. In this study, we conducted a detailed…

This paper describes the impact of an oral retelling of Homer's "Iliad" on pupils' learning in Key Stage 2 classrooms (children aged 9-11) in schools in East London. We argue that the oral nature of the retelling and responses promoted high levels of engagement and inclusion, leading to enhanced understanding by the pupils. The use of a…

This paper presents a pedagogical intervention project conducted in secondary English classrooms in Singapore, entitled "Building Communities of Readers among Teachers." The project is positioned against the dominant instrumentalism of Singaporean approaches to creativity and promotes a socio-cultural stance to creativity and criticality…

This article reports on a term's work with students in Initial Teacher Education (ITE) in which the adult classic text Silas Marner was studied in both written and film form (Eliot, 1994; BBCFo, 1985). Through an extended consideration of the structures employed by different forms of narrative, students were invited to consider the knowledge and…