Offering insights from a research-practice partnership, we examine how five pre-K-6 teachers discussed using LGBTQ+-inclusive children's literature as backup to counter curricular censorship and community pushback.

This Teaching and Learning Guide highlights how early childhood teachers can support emotional intelligence and inferential comprehension by drawing children's attention to characters' feelings and by asking students to notice evidence from the illustrations and text. During this read-aloud in Ms. Clark's first grade classroom, we see evidence of…

This article revisits a recently published, critical qualitative review of research on culturally informed literacy instruction in preschool and elementary school contexts. The original published review analyzed literacy instruction described as culturally relevant, culturally responsive, or culturally sustaining across 56 peer-reviewed studies.…

A contributing factor to the loss of play in many early childhood classrooms is a sharp separation between literacy learning as serious, even urgent, academic work and play as optional, socially-beneficial-at-best, fun. To recenter play in the academic curriculum, early childhood educators must not only demonstrate how play benefits the existing…

The article presents a classroom-based study that engaged linguistically diverse preschool and early school-age children in illustrating books, jointly composing written narratives to accompany their illustrations, and enacting these child-authored books through shared sociodramatic play. Findings from story retell tasks show significant…

Given increased attention to disciplinary literacy in K-5 contexts, there is a need to explore how elementary preservice teachers are trained to engage in disciplinary instruction. The authors present a curriculum for fostering disciplinary language and literacy awareness in elementary teacher preparation. First, they explain how and why they…

Early childhood teachers promote literacy learning through intentional instructional practices and the establishment of classroom environments that encourage and support the work, interest, and curiosity of young learners. They provide opportunities for children to engage with their teacher and peers and consider this an important component of…

Inference generation makes a strong, unique contribution to reading comprehension. Young children engage in many of the same inference generation processes as sophisticated readers. This article discusses instructional practices that can be used in prekindergarten through grade two to help children think beyond the words of the text. Suggestions…

When response activities and comprehension strategies are combined, classroom instruction can enhance student engagement and understanding of a text, enrich student response, and improve students' awareness of their own strategic reading. This article presents some activities, adapted from the new IRA book "Children's Literature in the Reading…