This article illustrates how two fourth-grade bilingual teachers transformed their writing instruction for bi/multilingual learners by integrating a functional approach to language and literacy teaching and learning. The authors use a systemic functional linguistics genre pedagogy to explore and elucidate the teachers' innovative instructional…

Children's literature plays an essential role in the literacy development of children. This department column focuses on the teaching and use of children's literature and provides educators with information about a wide range of books across multiple genres that are representative of the diverse world in which we live. A strong emphasis is placed…

This column focuses on the innovative strategies some teachers from Kazakhstan and Oceania are using to overcome the challenges they face. In Kazakhstan, schools organize reading days to encourage and inspire children to read. In the predominantly oral culture of the Cook Islands, Niue Island, and Rarotonga, teachers and administrators model…

A number of studies available through the ERIC system raise the possibility of major changes in the testing of reading comprehension during the 1980s. (DD)

Explains the purpose of this column, inviting teachers to support one another in thinking carefully about the transition to new forms of literacy and learning brought about by rapid changes in information technology. Invites teachers to participate in the changing nature of literacy and learning. (SR)

Discusses the role KIDS magazine might play in teaching reading. (MB)

Teacher questionnaire indicates that curriculum and instruction can change the organizational pattern. (TO)

Presents reflections of six primary school teachers and their principal on the growth of their literacy program based on whole language principles; and their professional development as teachers of young children. Discusses a nurturing environment, changes in their literacy program, strategies for success, and future goals. (SR)

Suggests several innovations in classroom physical environment that can facilitate students' learning to read and encourage their reading. (TO)

Sees reading not as a subject to be taught but as an integral part of an open classroom that fosters some basic principles of learning. (TO)

Describes how one resource person demonstrated and discussed whole language teaching methods in five elementary and middle schools to start the process of educational change. (MG)

Explores literature on educational change and examines two literacy innovations gone "bad": process writing and literature-based reading. Argues that growth occurs from the interaction of "bad" things with good ideas (which are never perfect ideas), thereby reshaping, reforming, and strengthening them. Examines how this affects educational policy,…