In recent years, scholars and other educators have encouraged language arts teachers to include LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) issues and texts in their classrooms. Despite these efforts, scholars have pointed out that LGBT perspectives are seldom included in language arts pedagogy. Studies of teacher attitudes toward addressing LGBT…

In this article, we address the ways children collaborate to inquire about text in the context of group discussions, addressing the question: How do students stay on-topic and sustain their discussions of text? We speculate that a framework for dialogic discourse, referred to as exploratory talk, allows students to understand that discussions of…

In this article, the author explores how a group of ten fourth-grade students who were avid readers became a community of inquiry. The primary goal of this study was to document the children's reading engagement: how they created, entered, and sustained the world of the story. This article also reflects the impact of three elements--data…

In this paper, the author looks at how she attempted to teach her students--preservice teachers--to engage in dialogic conversation about gay and lesbian identity using children's literature with gay and lesbian characters as a jumping off point. Through her analysis, the author has identified two requirements for dialogic conversation among…

In this study over the course of one school year, I set out to look closely at what the diverse fifth-grade students in Ms. Jean's urban class were learning from the social justice curriculum. As a former kindergarten teacher at Gonzales myself, in this project I wanted to know what children said, thought, and did when they were asked to read…

This article explores the possibilities of graphic novels with young readers. During the 2009-2010 school year, while working with four fifth-grade students, the author examined the question "In what ways do readers engage while reading a graphic novel?" The fifth graders took part in book discussions and one-on-one interviews after reading two…

This study involved fourth grade children as co-researchers of their engaged, aesthetic reading experience. As members of the "Readers as Researchers Club," they documented their engagement with text--how they create, enter, and sustain the story world. The children, who self-identified as avid readers, explored the activities central to their…

Comprehension has often been conceptualized in ways that privilege either the "right" understanding of a text (comprehension-as-outcome), or getting to that "right" understanding (comprehension-as-procedure). This article makes a case that we should, instead, teach with an eye toward fostering comprehension-as-sense-making--a socially purposeful…

The article details the transformation of one literature discussion group reading the story, Felita, by Nicholosa Mohr. The research study documented the process of implementing literature discussion groups with multicultural children's literature in a fourth grade English language arts classroom. Through a discussion of a critical incident in the…