To provide insight into the issue of multimodal literacy instruction, the authors explore presentation techniques and instructional activities employed in their secondary language arts classes. They collaborate on assignments that focus students on "anchored media instruction" and engage them in producing multimodal, technology-infused projects,…

We successfully integrated science and language arts in a third-grade classroom. The students used "scientist's eyes" and "poet's eyes" to write original poetry. In addition, they created habitat posters about a swamp organism. Scoring guides for the habitat poems and posters are also included. (Contains 5 figures and 2 tables.)

This article addressed the need for authentic interdisciplinary instruction. Authentic interdisciplinary instruction is defined as a learning activity that simultaneously improves student performance related to grade-level standards in two or more disciplines (e.g., science and physical education). The process described for creating authentic…

This article examines how a teacher drew on her urban students' outside-school literacies to inform teaching and learning in a reading/language arts classroom. The following findings are discussed: curricular invitations the teacher offered to students; the teacher's curriculum development process; the relationships between the genres of students'…

Reading experts have consistently cited the importance of independent reading, reading for pleasure, and fostering "a love of reading." Unfortunately, fanning the fire of fan readership is not so easy in the service of our clear-cut and standards-aligned curricula, except perhaps in small, carefully channeled doses. Moreover, the impetus for such…

In the English language arts classroom, social justice is a way to increase students' abilities to articulate their experiences, critique their world, and address those identified issues with subsequent action. Teachers who practice social justice education cultivate student voice through class activities, readings, assignments, and assessments…

Many school districts in the United States are facing severe teacher shortages (Bordonaro, 2017; Palmer, 2017; Seattle Pacific University, 2017; Whaley, 2017). In several states--including Idaho--the difficulty of hiring qualified candidates has expanded beyond historical high-need content areas such as special education and mathematics to include…

Many parents, educators, and policy makers see great potential for leveraging tools like laptop computers, tablets, and smartphones in the classrooms of the world. Although increasing students' technology access may be associated with increased student achievement, there is little research directly investigating objective measures of student…

This article explores how one specially prepared, accomplished teacher managed dilemmas that arose as she worked to enact responsive language arts instruction with English Learners in a policy context that privileged high-stakes accountability and standardization. Drawing on sociocultural learning theory, the article illustrates how the teacher's…

The goal of Head Start is to develop the cognitive and social-emotional skills of children from low-income families to prepare them to succeed in kindergarten and beyond. Presently, Houston Independent School District (HISD) collaborates with four federally-funded Head Start agencies: AVANCE, Gulf Coast Community Services Association (GCCSA),…

This essay addresses issues central to educational discourse in the United States by calling on texts and forms of inquiry generally unfamiliar and often unrecognized in current conversations regarding schooling and education, the Jewish tradition of Talmudic studies. Although Rabbis in this tradition never doubted the necessity of standards,…

This paper presents findings from a 4-year project that developed and implemented a blended inquiry science and English Language Development (ELD) program in a large urban California school district. The sample included over 2,000 students in Kindergarten through 5th grade. Participating students' English and science achievement was compared to a…

The author primarily teaches traditional high school English texts in a largely white, middle-class school, but the method she uses allows her to address important issues relevant to students. One unit she teaches is an investigation of the criminal justice system and a variety of issues related to the school-to-prison pipeline. A crucial text…

This article provides an overview of the Autobiography Project, listing the topics of the ten chapters and the targeted skills that accompany them. The authors discuss the purposes of each chapter and describe the methods incorporated to promote the four broad components of literacy. This unit also addresses almost all components of the Common…

Preservice teachers sometimes experience a gap between best practices that they learn in teacher preparation programs and actual practices that they encounter in classrooms as student teachers. In this self-study, I investigate the gap between best and actual practices, as experienced by a university teacher educator who spent a year as a student…