Responding to recent challenges to Clay's Running Records (2019) and their analysis using a three-cueing system, the author examines this reading assessment from an additive perspective of both bottom-up and top-down orientations of reading instruction. Endorsing their inclusion among classroom reading assessments, the author navigates the tension…

Abstract This article provides an overview of the importance of and the steps to undertaking a classroom library diversity audit. It begins by situating the importance of the classroom library in children's development because literature can reflect and expand worldviews. Next, statistics of U.S. children's literature publishing and U.S. classroom…

Running records can be the assessments that teachers are looking for when searching for an efficient way to plan meaningful literacy instruction. Running records can give teachers immediate insights to guide on-the-fly prompting and teaching decisions to build reader independence. The authors use classroom examples to illustrate how taking and…

This manuscript describes the need elementary teachers have to analyze beginning and complex texts for teaching affordances and obstacles when teaching reading foundational skills and core ELA standards. A Guide to Analyze Texts for Elementary Students (GATES) is provided and described. Two teacher cases discuss how real teachers have used the…

In this practitioner-based teaching tip, the authors provide pragmatic tips to teachers regarding the integration of global education and literacy instruction. Through the pairing of the Sustainable Development Goals and carefully selected trade books, teachers are provided with a framework that can help them get started transforming their…

Despite strong support for integrating reading and writing instruction, writing practice is often crowded out of the schedule in elementary classrooms. To promote increased emphasis on writing, a working group of literacy researchers highlights three writing goals and six research-based reading-to-writing practices to enliven instruction with more…

Recent research on scaffolding has examined both the sources of information used and neglected during students' word-solving attempts and the amount of information provided in teachers' word-solving prompts. In this teaching tip, the authors expand the application of such research from one-to-one student-teacher interactions to a guided reading…

For more than two decades, accommodations have served as the primary strategy for ensuring the valid participation of multilingual learners (MLLs) in high-stakes summative assessments. Using historical analyses of the evolution of testing accommodation guidelines and related instructional practices, the authors explain how the application of…

English Language Learners (ELLs) often face challenges when participating in peer review activities in writers' workshops. This article identifies some of the potential difficulties that ELL writers may experience, and provides teachers with strategies to address these problems. The author describes a simple three-step peer review training model…

Anecdotal records have long been used as a means of formative assessment. This article explores how traditional anecdotal records can be enhanced with digital technology. Using a portable device and one of many available note-taking applications, teachers have the opportunity to create a richer picture of the student. Highlighted in this Teaching…

Twenty-first century literacy requires students to analyze and create images for communication across and within academic disciplines. Thus, literacy teachers are now responsible for supporting students as they engage with visual texts. We must carefully and intentionally choose images for teaching practice and consider the reader, instructional…

Five teacher educators discuss children's literature addressing Earth's changing climate. They present tools for evaluating the quality of resources likely to help teachers and students stimulate conceptual and emotional development rather than anxiety or oversimplification. An annotated selection of current books along with a checklist to…

Classroom-based assessments are important resources for teachers and reading specialists for informing instruction. Their benefits can be enhanced by designing measures that assess more than single skills, that follow formative assessment principles, and that involve multimodal formats and student responses. Because of the diversity in K-6…

In this article, the authors speak directly to new teachers in order to encourage them to be literacy leaders in their classrooms and schools. They offer the following suggestions in the hope of inspiring these new teachers: (1) Develop your vision of teaching and be true to it; (2) Be creative in using instruction that works; (3) Team with…

The challenges of understanding how reading abilities vary within the classroom can be daunting. This article offers techniques to organize a variety of assessment data to give teachers a clear picture of individual achievement, how students compare with one another, and how reliably various assessment instruments yield an accurate picture of…