This manuscript describes the need elementary teachers have to analyze beginning and complex texts for teaching affordances and obstacles when teaching reading foundational skills and core ELA standards. A Guide to Analyze Texts for Elementary Students (GATES) is provided and described. Two teacher cases discuss how real teachers have used the…

Although distributed leadership and inquiry-based working are relevant topics to primary education, there has been little discussion about how team members perceive these practices as meaningful in their day-to-day work. Following on from prior quantitative studies, the present study conducted a case study in which semi-structured interviews were…

A lot of the activities of daily living require energy, playing video games, making dinner, turning on the lights, using a computer, and perhaps even brushing our teeth requires energy. In this unit students discover what energy is, think about where it comes from, analyze options for making energy evaluate feasibility in different parts of the…

This qualitative descriptive study explored which components of intervention programs, if any, influence grade retention of struggling readers at the elementary school level in one school district on the East Coast. Multi-tiered systems of supports (MTSS) is the theoretical framework that guided this study. The sample group consisted of 12…

Acknowledging that our professional development (or methods course) was not going as well as we had hoped was difficult. However, knowing what to do and correcting the problem was even more challenging. This article explains how we engaged teachers in helping us rethink our video club by listening to and acting on their ideas. Through "coffee…

ELA Guidebooks is an English language arts curriculum for core instruction. Made by teachers for teachers, the ELA Guidebooks units ensure all students can read, understand, and express their understanding of complex, grade-level texts, ensuring their readiness for college or a career. Each text collection has a shared idea and contains authentic…

In an urban elementary school serving predominantly White and Latinx students, the second-grade teachers created an assignment that asked students to share how their families migrated to the United States. The mother of a Black student met with the teacher to discuss her discomfort with the assignment given that their family descended from…

The Community Math Night Facilitators' Toolkit is a detailed resource for elementary school educators to plan and implement a Community Math Night event. Community Math Nights use interactive math activities to engage families in building positive math attitudes, facilitate their participation in children's learning in grades K-5, and build a…

Accompanying a senior methods course, 19 teacher candidates at Southeastern Louisiana University participated in a semester-long social studies fifth grade mentorship at an International Baccalaureate World School. Teacher candidates identified factors they perceived to affect the success of the experiential learning experience through…

This article introduces a science game which can be used for innovative teaching and as an assessment tool. The Shadow Races Game is designed for first and second grade students to learn the phenomenon of shadow through inquiry-based activities and questions that require the children to apply inferences from those activities. In this amusing board…

In this article the authors demonstrate how pairing master and counter narrative picture books, along with critical literacy practices, can be used to enhance the social studies curriculum outlined by state standards taught in today's elementary schools. These intentional book pairings allow students to grapple with what history truly means and to…

In many elementary classrooms nationwide, less and less time is spent on social studies. Lack of attention to social studies is evident in states like New York where teacher evaluations are contingent on students' performance on two subjects: English Language Arts (ELA) and mathematics. In this article, the authors describe their experience…

This case is designed to help school leaders develop skills needed to work with interdisciplinary groups while demonstrating the complex issues faced while considering the special education needs of students. The case further examines a child study team meeting from the lens of different participants, including the principal, teacher, school…

In this article, the authors share frameworks for problem types and students' reasoning about integers. The authors found that all ways of reasoning (WoRs) were used across grade levels and that specific problem types tended to evoke particular WoRs. Specifically, students were more likely to use analogy-based reasoning on all-negatives problems…

Decisions about hiring are never easy, especially in education. Sharpwood Elementary School has an open teaching position and the principal is charged with hiring the best candidate. The principal knows that a diverse teaching staff benefits all stakeholders in a school, especially students, and he wants to honor that expectation. The staff really…