This article describes a year-long reading intervention with a first-grade English-learner who began the year as a non-reader. Systematic instruction from a literacy specialist and her classroom teacher included familiar re-reading, word study, and teacher-guided reading with carefully matched texts, within the context of English language and vocabulary development. Intervention instruction facilitated this young English learner's grade-level achievement by the end of the school year. Intervention strategies, intensity, and the student's progress are described.

Discussing and exploring concepts is an important element of literacy and mathematics instruction in elementary classrooms. Read-alouds provide an opportunity for teachers to engage students in meaningful discussion. This article describes a quick three-step process for mathematizing books, that is, weaving together read-alouds, discussion, and mathematics in order to maximize student learning using a variety of literary and informational texts. A planning sheet, list of example books, and samples of student work are included.

The integration of literacy in science education has been supported by both literacy and science researchers and educators. Recent federal initiatives such as the Common Core State Standards and A Framework for K-12 Science Education have also emphasized the need to integrate literacy and science. However, few tools exist to help educators think about how to integrate best literacy practices into their science lessons. PONG Cycles is an argument-to-learn framework for teaching and learning science that can be used to integrate all aspects of literacy (speaking, listening, reading, writing and viewing). An explanation of PONG Cycles, along with implications and suggestions for its use in the upper elementary classroom, is provided.

How can we supplement the limited time available for vocabulary instruction while motivating students to attend to the words they are learning? As a part of an academic word vocabulary intervention, we challenged sixth-grade students to find their words in the world around them. This activity, In the Media, garnered responses from 51 of the 61 students involved in the intervention. Analysis of students' reading comprehension achievement showed that it was not just high-achieving students who responded; rather the full range of achievement was represented. Analysis of pretest and posttest data revealed that students who found more words had the highest gains in the final assessment. Examples of students' encounters and where they found them are discussed. These examples suggest that students developed flexible knowledge of their words, as they were able to find them in uses beyond those taught and in related forms that had not been introduced.

A group of elementary school reading teachers used their time in a Professional Learning Community to develop a systematic intervention to address the needs of struggling readers in grades 3 to 5. Working as a team, they identified a collection of books that was culturally diverse, high interest, appealing to boys and girls, aligned with curriculum across the grades, and equally representative of fiction and non-fiction. Using the collection of books as a starting place, the group wrote lessons that addressed decoding, vocabulary development, comprehension strategies, and responding to standardized test question stems. The resulting intervention led to growth in reading level as well as accelerated progress on the state mandated end of grade test in reading. The PLC offered this group of experienced reading teachers a district-supported framework for working together to create a locally relevant solution for the students they teach.

Anecdotal records have long been used as a means of formative assessment. This article explores how traditional anecdotal records can be enhanced with digital technology. Using a portable device and one of many available note-taking applications, teachers have the opportunity to create a richer picture of the student. Highlighted in this Teaching Tip is information on how to take digital notes, how to organize them to assist in making instructional decisions, and ways to use the app's embedded media options to document student learning.

People who have impacted generations have left legacies we can explore today through biographies. The 5L instructional design introduced in this article includes five components: Listen, Learn, Locate, Link, and Legacy. In the “Listen” section, teachers use storytelling and read-alouds to introduce individuals who shaped history. During the “Learn” component, each student selects a historical figure and, using print and online sources, examines his or her life. In the “Locate” portion of the design, students use graphic organizers to locate and record important events in the person's life alongside related world events or cultural opportunities of the period. In the “Link” component, students connect with someone else to share their work and receive feedback and questions. The final section, “Legacy,” encourages students to consider the financial, intellectual, social, or other kind of legacy left by the historical figure as well as the legacies they themselves want to leave the world.

In this article, authors Ellin Oliver Keene and Susan Zimmermann reflect on comprehension strategy instruction 15 years after the publication of their book, Mosaic of Thought: Teaching Comprehension in a Reader's Worskhop. They reassert their claim that to teach comprehension well, we must first read widely and scrutinize our own reading processes. They begin by using the structure from Mosaic of Thought in which they respond to a short selection to demonstrate the thinking strategies at work. Keene and Zimmermann report on the heartening progress in students’ comprehension learning in the last 15 years but also caution that comprehension strategies are a means to an end, not the end goal in comprehension. They recommend ways for teachers to maximize comprehension strategy instruction in an era dominated by assessment and the Common Core State Standards.

This article presents an engaging means for turning disfluent readers into prosody superstars. Each week students align with Poetry Power Man and his superhero friends to battle the evil Robot Reader and his sidekicks. The Fluency Foursome helps students adhere to the multidimensional aspects of fluency where expression and comprehension are addressed along with rate and accuracy. By the end of the week, students are flying through phrases, leaving Robot Reader in the dust!

This article presents general implications for using interactive electronic picture books in the classroom. The suggestions are rooted in research with middle grades readers in a tutoring setting and kindergarten through fourth-grade classroom settings. Specific attention is given toward those features in eBooks that may distract, support, or extend comprehension. The article also addresses ways to familiarize students with multi-touch tablet devices while encouraging students and teachers to transfer print-based reading strategies to this new medium. In addition, the authors provide a framework for considering the relationship between interactive features in eBooks and students’ comprehension while establishing the need for more scaffolding of reading instruction when using ebooks.

Children with reading difficulties often face social and emotional challenges as well. These struggles may be particularly taxing for these children as classrooms increase in diversity and they encounter fewer people like themselves. In response to these issues, we developed an approach to teaching reading called Relationally Oriented Reading Instruction (RORI) which attempts to build relational capacities through a systematic approach to reading picture books. In this article we present the background and rationale for this approach, describe its implementation, as well as what we learned from that implementation.

Understanding relies on the reader's ability to ‘read between the lines’ and connect textual evidence with their own experience, knowledge and beliefs. The Common Core State Standards highlight the importance of using text−based evidence to develop arguments and support interpretations, including analysis and appreciation of author's craft. In this article, Dalton suggests a multimodal strategy for engaging students’ in close reading. Using an original text as the base, students compose a multimodal hypertext version with hyperlinks from selected pieces of text to their multimodal commentary. Illustrations are remixed with the addition of speech and thought balloons. An example hypertext is presented, along with suggestions for teaching.

Providing preschoolers with rich writing experiences can help to lay a foundation for their later reading and writing success. Early writing experiences can be greatly enhanced by how preschool teachers answer young children's questions about writing and engage them in productive writing instruction. With appropriate scaffolding, early writing provides support for children's overall literacy development. Taking an individualized approach to writing instruction allows teachers to capitalize on children's literacy skills at each level of development. This article provides a framework for teachers to evaluate and understand the writing that young children produce and research-based guidance on how to shape instruction in response to each child's strengths. Scenarios are presented to illustrate the varied child-centered responses teachers can use to support and develop foundational literacy skills through writing across typical preschool classroom contexts (i.e., centers, journals, morning message).

Too often, instruction designed to improve literacy achievement for black male readers and writers focuses on skill-based learning, ignoring cultural, social, and personal development. This article calls for the use of critical literacy strategies with African American male students, which can raise expectations for academic achievement by challenging traditional notions of literacy instruction, encouraging cooperative learning, and allowing students to develop a sense of social justice. Three dimensions (the 3 Cs) of critical literacy for young black males are explored: culturally relevant texts, collaboration, and critical conversations. In addition, suggestions and examples are offered to help teachers create critical literacy experiences in which black male elementary students can have the opportunity to become socially conscious text users who see themselves and their cultural histories reflected in texts.

In this article the authors integrate literacy with classroom-based technologies to create a student produced movie. The authors explain the steps to classroom movie production that deepens students' comprehension, engages students' in purposeful writing, and utilizes new technologies.