A third-grade educator and university researcher collaborated to develop an after-school virtual book club curriculum for students during the pandemic. Third-grade students were encouraged to explore social justice issues prevalent in their community first by reading relevant children's books, doing research, and collaborating to develop potential…

This study analyzes how second, third, and fourth graders in a racially integrated suburban school engaged in multimodal meaning making in the context of a book club discussing Ben Hatke's graphic novel "Zita the Spacegirl." Qualitative analysis of field notes and assessments indicated three overall findings: First, students responded to…

This Teaching Tips article describes a classroom-based research project conducted between a teacher and a researcher. The topic arose from the teacher's concern about the inaccuracies and misconceptions exhibited by many of her third-grade students as they fluently decoded unfamiliar expository texts. The teacher researched her practice and the…

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…

Using Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) as a theoretical framework, a team of university staff and educators at a traditionally under-performing urban elementary school built a collaboration aimed at enhancing writing instruction. The current qualitative research study, which was part of this larger project, focused on biography writing in Eva…

Due in part to conflicting opinions and research results, the practice of sustained silent reading (SSR) in schools has been questioned. After a frustrating experience with SSR, the author of this article began a data-driven decision-making process to gain new insights on how to structure silent reading in a classroom, including a comparison…

An easily-implemented instructional innovation that improved reading comprehension for students including striving readers, average readers, and advanced readers is described in this article. START (Students and Teachers Actively Reading Text) was developed to improve reading comprehension instruction and achievement. This innovative instructional…