This practical resource emphasizes the special contribution that visual art, drama, music, and dance can make to student literacy and understanding of content-area reading assignments. Focusing on those areas where students tend to struggle, this book helps K-5 teachers provide an age-appropriate curriculum that is accessible to an increasingly…

As an instructional framework, Universal Design for Learning (UDL) can guide science teachers to purposefully apply evidence-based instructional practices to increase engagement and learning of students with disabilities (Israel, Ribuffo, and Smith 2014; Marino et al. 2014; Ok et al. 2016). This article describes how to use the Universal Design…

This follow-up report provides a revised Literacy Assignment Analysis Framework that incorporates discussion and teacher scaffolding. This new framework serves as a guidepost for studying sets of assignments across multiple days or weeks within a single classroom, school, or district. A closer look at more assignments from real classrooms provides…

Children entering kindergarten and grade 1 vary greatly in their emergent literacy skills. Because preschool teachers can help set the foundation of literacy skills related to school readiness, one way to address those gaps is to build teachers' capacity to apply evidence-based strategies in their language and literacy instruction.…

Traditional methods for teaching the Lewis dot structure model emphasize rule-based learning and often neglect the purpose and function of the model. Thus, many students are unable to extend their understanding of molecular structures in new contexts. The assignment described here addresses this issue by asking students to read and write about the…

Prepared for school district and education leaders, "Checking In" is the first in the "Equity in Motion" series, which scrutinizes how issues of equity are translating into the daily activities of schools and educators. Nearly every state has adopted new, more rigorous standards for college and career readiness over the past…

Teachers recognize that frequent independent reading increases student knowledge on a wide range of topics, enhances vocabulary, and improves comprehension. "Ban the Book Report" inspires teachers to go beyond narrow and analytical book reports by exploring the potential of book talks, alternate book covers, identifying features of informational…

This guide is intended to make it easier to implement the Reading for Meaning strategy from the ultimate guide to teaching strategies, "The Strategic Teacher". When you and your colleagues want to explore more ways to help students understand what they read, make inferences, and support their thinking with evidence, this book is your ideal tool.…

An expense account book report encourages students to be creative and doesn't penalize students with reading and writing disabilities. Pie graphs showing expenditures a character from a book might make reveal divergent thinking skills and with a minimum of words. A reproducible worksheet is included. (MT)

Weddings are unique and dynamic--each flavored differently and each with a life of its own. They celebrate specific customs, rituals, and the importance of family and culture. Always, they stir up emotions, and, on occasion, they may spin and whirl, looping out of control. For children, they may inspire romantic dreams, and provide new roles to…

Describes a project for middle school librarians to use to motivate students to read for pleasure. Explains activities based on the idea of a mystery at the school, and describes how clues were developed and linked to books in certain genres that students had to read. (LRW)

Suggests an approach to teaching the poetry of T. S. Eliot.

This 1989 activity calendar, developed to commemorate the "Year of the Young Reader," is divided into three sections. The first contains a calendar that lists authors' birthdays, special commemorations, anniversaries, and events. The second includes descriptions of book-related activities that complement monthly themes, weekly themes, or…

Suggest that investigating the lives of other people expands students' knowledge about themselves, others, and the world while developing and refining literacy skills. Proposes that biography study addresses the language arts standards. Explains two activities that employ biography study, called "biography expense accounts" and "link-up." (PM)

Suggests that having students read and analyze scientific articles gives them an understanding of scientific information as presented in the literature. Describes how after studying classic and recent research articles, students can answer homework questions individually and in groups that stress higher-order thinking. (Author/MM)