This article describes both the benefits and the challenges of using "teachable moments" as a primary strategy for oral vocabulary instruction. It argues that children will need more intentional oral vocabulary instruction, right from the very beginning, if they are to develop the academic and content-rich vocabulary necessary to be successful in…

This article examines how sixth-grade students navigated and perceived a combined e-book and audiobook reading experience using Kindle Fires. While audiobooks and e-books are not new, little is known about students' use and perceptions of the combination of these two media, as the ability to synchronize audio contents with digital texts is rather…

Learning to write is critical in today's world, yet many students are not developing the writing abilities they need to use writing as a powerful tool for learning and for showing what they know. Research indicates that failure to acquire strong writing abilities restricts opportunities for both post-secondary education and employment. This…

Research shows that children accrue vocabulary knowledge by understanding relationships between new words and their connected concepts. This article describes three research-based principles that preschool teachers can use to design shared book reading lessons that accelerate content vocabulary knowledge by helping young children to talk about…

Language and, specifically, vocabulary development plays a critical role in early literacy development. This article describes Exceptional Coaching for Early Language and Literacy (ExCELL), which is a research-based, effective preschool program that focuses on developing Head Start enrollees' language and preliteracy skills. The ExCELL program…

Students entering school with limited vocabularies are at a disadvantage compared to classmates with robust knowledge of words and meanings. Teaching a few unrelated words at a time is insufficient for catching these students up with peers and preparing them to comprehend texts they will encounter across the grades. This article presents…

The authors offer a new perspective on close reading that uses a range of multimodal texts to capitalize on the visual nature of contemporary society and to support literacy within the academic disciplines. Specifically, a qualitative study explored teachers' perspectives on the use of Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS), a practice borrowed from…

This article makes use of Perfetti's Lexical Quality Hypothesis as a perspective for thinking about vocabulary instruction in terms of semantics (meaning), phonology (pronunciation), orthography (spelling), morphology (meaningful word parts), and syntax (how words function in sentences). Examples are presented of how these aspects of vocabulary…

The purpose of the present paper is to introduce the Teachers' Choices Cognate Database. English-Spanish cognates are words that are orthographically and semantically identical or nearly identical in both English and Spanish. To create this free online database, the cognates from every one of the 146 International Reading Association's…

Reading professional Nell K. Duke replies to questions posed via e-mail or Facebook on the topic of expository text.

The Daily 5 and CAFE were born out of The Sister's research and observations of instructional mentors, their intense desire to be able to deliver highly intentional, focused instruction to small groups and individuals while the rest of the class was engaged in truly authentic reading and writing, and their understanding that a one size fits all…

Storybook reading offers an ideal context for teaching young children new words. Text Talk is one method designed for teaching elementary students new words after reading. However, using the Text Talk vocabulary procedures with young children, the authors observed several challenges both for teachers' implementation and children's learning.…

Motivation, academic vocabulary, and the role of teachers have been themes of previous Content Literacy columns. In this installment, we suggest that the tasks, or assignments, students complete are an important aspect of content literacy because they influence students' understandings of content and reading. Additionally, we demonstrate how…

This article describes a year-long reading intervention with a first-grade English-learner who began the year as a non-reader. Systematic instruction from a literacy specialist and her classroom teacher included familiar re-reading, word study, and teacher-guided reading with carefully matched texts, within the context of English language and…

Explicit instruction on the skill of creating mental imagery from text supports reading comprehension and recall. This article shares a strategy for teaching students how to process what they read by comparing mental imagery to "brain movies." It emphasizes choosing appropriate fiction and nonfiction texts to encourage readers to build the skill…