Connecting literacy to social issues such as gender stereotypes supports reading and writing achievement while also allowing students to think critically and in justice-focused ways. Such practices allow students to critique gender stereotypes in texts while also examining and even challenging their own implicit perceptions of gender. However,…

Using data from a year-long case study in a Midwestern public school in the United States, the author invites readers into the play world of four multilingual and multiracial boys, affectionately named the "LEGO Boys" by their third-grade teacher. As documented in the findings, the boys maintained a cohesive narrative about how their…

In this article we report the results and classroom implications of a qualitative study that explored third-grade students' interactions with each other as they partner read. Participants included 10 students, each of whom engaged in three readings with a partner during recorded observations. All students had been taught structures for partner…

Students in the 3rd and 4th grade often encounter what has been called a reading "slump" when their class curriculums increasingly ask them to comprehend and learn from texts. Students are more likely to struggle if they have not been offered sufficient opportunities to build world and domain knowledge and engage in challenging…

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…

Children in a grade two/three classroom co-designed photographs of each other's important family objects to develop critical empathy and better understand their peers' home cultures. They engaged in visual critical literacy practices. The paper provides a narrative of what happened and a framework for creative collaborative pedagogy.

The authors describe Literary Analysis and Writing, an integrated instructional routine, developed through a formative experiment research project, that prompts students to uncover the deeper meanings of literary texts. The routine weaves together brief preteaching of carefully selected vocabulary words, whole-class assisted reading of text, close…

Journey with a third-grade community of writers as they develop their writing identities and abilities in a responsive approach to writers' workshop. Instruction is framed around the writers' workshop approach, where students' choice and voice are centered within extended periods of time for writing, alongside daily mini-lessons addressing the…

Because dual-language books (DLBs) print the entire text in two languages nearby on the page, they have great potential for supporting children's biliteracy development by providing contexts to compare/contrast languages. However, little is known about how children read DLBs independently and how they may/may not use such characteristics to…

The authors explored the impact of a novel, interactive performing arts-based program on students' writing skills. The program featured the Story Pirates, a group that teaches children how to write stories and then turns their stories into a musical sketch comedy show. Written stories from the third-grade students in an elementary school were…

The aim of this teaching tip is to share four key takeaways from virtual implementation of a reading intervention in a four-week summer reading camp (SRC) for rising second- and third-grade students in need of foundational skills support. The SRC, which was a partnership between a university and school district, pivoted to a virtual format for…

The elementary grades provide a rich context for literacy and science learning. Reading, writing, and talk support students' conceptual understanding of and engagement with science. The authors provide theoretical and research evidence to support the teaching of five instructional strategies that can facilitate literacy and science learning in…

Literature circles, or book clubs, are a long-standing pedagogical tradition designed to support students' reading and response to literature. However, critics of these student-led literature discussions have argued that this format can limit opportunities for students to engage meaningfully with political, social, and cultural issues. The purpose…

Young readers notice details in pictures and images with great precision, yet young writers often struggle in adding enough detail to their writing. Third-grade students use a published author's scene from a graphic novel as a scaffold for storytelling. Partners notice the detail in the images; they take turns orally telling the story, and finally…

Teachers balance many goals when selecting texts for small-group reading. The author explored the impact of one variable that teachers consider, quantitative text difficulty, on students' participation, discussion, comprehension, and fluency in small-group discussions of informational science texts. Six bilingual third graders identified as…