School textbooks are media of communicating a large amount of knowledge and teachers rely their teaching practices and schedule their instructions upon them. Except for knowledge on school subjects, textbooks also promote various ideological messages, including gender representations. This study explores gender representations in the Greek primary…

The purpose of this research study was to investigate teacher perspectives of implementing standards-based grading in kindergarten through fifth grade in language arts and math in Southern Illinois. This mixed-methods explanatory research study examined the challenges teachers encountered when implementing standards-based grading, and the changes,…

As teachers and leaders move forward in implementing the Common Core State Standards within classrooms across 46 states, it is essential to consider the question of what knowledge is included in the English Language Arts Standards, and what knowledge is not present. The authors of the Common Core delineate an increasingly complex body of knowledge…

This article honors Kathy G. Short, who has been awarded NCTE's Outstanding Educator in the English Language Arts award for 2011. Kathy's scholarly achievements as a lifelong inquirer, teacher, and mentor are featured in this article, celebrating her national and international influence in the field of literacy education. (Contains 1 figure.)

With the pressure in education to develop a 21st century learner with higher-level thinking skills, many educators connected previous state curriculum to the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). Missouri's Department of Education experts paired the previous state's curriculum known as the Missouri Grade Level Expectations (MO GLEs) with a…

For educators, the content of the curriculum really is like oxygen: it is the necessary precondition for improving schools, closing the achievement gap, engaging parents, and preparing teachers. However, when educators take the content of the curriculum for granted, they lose opportunities to coordinate and collaborate. Good curriculum instruction…

"Reading Mastery" is designed to provide explicit reading instruction to students in grades pre-K-5. One of several Direct Instruction curricula from McGraw-Hill, "Reading Mastery" is available in two versions: (1) "Reading Mastery Classic" (for grades pre-K-2) aims to help beginning readers identify letter sounds,…

This publication helps educators create differentiated reading instruction experiences for their students by showing the relationship between two distinct resources: Student Center Activities (SCAs) and the Common Core State Standards (CCSSs). Reading specialists, reading coaches, and teachers will find this document useful in lesson planning, as…

The impetus to begin Bilingual Buds came about six years ago when the author, pregnant with twins and commuting into New York City, was reading about the numerous cognitive benefits for children of acquiring a second language early in their lives. She was surprised to learn that even by the age of six months, children begin to lose the ability to…

This full-color, kid-pleasing collection of language-arts activities is ideal for K-2 children of all ability levels--and for English language learners too. The practical and easy-to-implement lessons also are convenient for substitute teachers, classroom assistants, and volunteers. Flexible and versatile, these unique cards can be used for guided…

This brief report uses data from five administrations of the Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) to examine the distribution of weekly instructional hours by regular, full-time first- through fourth-grade teachers of self-contained classrooms in four subjects: English/reading/language arts; arithmetic/mathematics; social studies/history; and,…