This study examined a professional development (PD) intervention that provided kindergarten-through third-grade teachers with drama-based pedagogy to improve student reading achievement. The PD consisted of collaboration between teaching artists and teachers to integrate drama into English language arts instruction for a school year. Twenty-six…

Young children love opportunities to build, discover, and solve problems. Teachers can take advantage of these natural tendencies by introducing students to aspects of engineering design while they engage in classroom activities. Engineering also lends itself to supporting students in developing disciplinary literacy practices such as learning…

Providing challenging curriculum in a literacy classroom of students whose reading abilities range widely can be a challenge. Integrating interdisciplinary book selections into a self-selected reading program, however, provides students with challenge by engaging them with big ideas. This article describes methods of integrating advanced…

Science often takes a back burner to English Language Arts (ELA) and Math. With ELA and Math being tested from early years and school funding relying on each, many teachers are pushed by administrators to spend as much time as possible on those two subjects. During the authors' years as classroom teachers and professional development providers,…

Each fall at harvest time, young students in the authors' part of the Midwest visit apple orchards to learn more about the life cycle of plants. This tradition is one part of a larger unit centered on apples, integrating life science with language arts and social studies. The authors partnered with kindergarten teachers at several schools to…

Both those inside and outside of the education community are becoming increasingly familiar with the STEM acronym and the extensive efforts underway nationally to develop integrated PK-12 STEM programs that promote critical thinking, problem solving, 21st Century skill development and authentic learning experiences (Ingram, 2019). However, for…

Spending more time teaching science and social studies in K-3 can have at least four potential benefits: (1) Increased learning in these subjects is likely to improve students' reading comprehension in later grades; (2) Introducing students to science and social studies in the early grades is likely to better prepare them for learning those…

The authors--a second grade classroom teacher and a university professor of education--decided to collaborate. Melanie wanted to find out if she could help her students increase their reading and writing comprehension by presenting a sequence of events in an activity (for example, the steps in building a house) and then have the students write the…