The authors guide early childhood educators through steps for empowering the inner authentic writer in young preschool children by maximizing illustrations. Preschoolers' emergent writing experiences should be authentic and support positive writing identities as their skills develop. The authors explain how to model flexible and authentic…

One of the major goals of science education is preparing students to be scientifically literate. Argumentation is a core practice to promote both scientific literacy and science learning. However, incorporating argumentation into science teaching can be challenging for both teachers and students. The author introduces the Science Talk--Writing…

Fourth-grade students were introduced to a detailed process approach to examining mentor texts and then transferring their newfound knowledge of author craft to their own independent writing. The EASE strategy was created as a way to scaffold students from merely noticing the exceptional moves that authors make to adeptly applying these…

In this article, the authors introduce ways to use disciplinary literacy (DL) instructional strategies to foster civic engagement and reasoning for middle-grade multilingual students. Four phases of DL strategies--"framing," "reading," "discussion," and "writing"--are illustrated with examples from an…

The authors present the literacy pedagogical approach LAUNCH and reveal its influence on young learners as engineers of literacy learning through text production. Findings are reported from design-based research in a case study of an Australian early years classroom. Using a qualitative orientation, data were generated from video and audio…

The authors describe a culturally sustaining bilingual family engagement project that draws upon Latinx families' experiential and cultural wealth and integrates that knowledge within the literacy curriculum of a bilingual fourth grade classroom. Through the use of monthly writing prompts, Project "Recuerdo," engages families in sharing…

The authors document work in a fifth-grade classroom investigating informational texts. Students investigated a range of informational texts and their potential forms. In the spirit of challenging a given curriculum and conventional understandings of informational texts, texts in the Science Comics series were invited into this learning space.…

In this exploratory study, the authors investigated students' perceptions of justice. A stanza from a poem was used to stimulate student writing, drawing, and conversation. Students were engaged with the exploration and considered issues surrounding being good or bad, race, and power. They also represented justice abstractly in their drawings and…

When students write informational text, they have the opportunity to engage with meaningful topics, become curious about the world, learn domain-specific knowledge, and use academic vocabulary. Given the possibilities for learning through writing informational text, it is important for teachers to reflect on and improve their informational writing…

The purpose of this article is to describe the development of writing in young dual language learners, who are children under 5 years old who are learning the dominant language and another language at the same time. Early writing has been associated with literacy outcomes in the later years of elementary school. The article presents samples of…

Writing is an important mode of thinking and learning for elementary students. Consistent efforts have been made to encourage discipline-specific writing, yet defining qualities of elementary mathematical writing have historically been underdeveloped. This article offers educators a new framework that conceptualizes mathematical writing as writing…

Composing is an essential part of literacy development in early childhood classrooms, and writing experiences are continually changing through advances in technology. Writing in a new language can be particularly challenging for emergent bilinguals as they navigate learning how to spell in English as part of the writing process. New pedagogical…

The article presents a classroom-based study that engaged linguistically diverse preschool and early school-age children in illustrating books, jointly composing written narratives to accompany their illustrations, and enacting these child-authored books through shared sociodramatic play. Findings from story retell tasks show significant…

Translanguaging pedagogies support student writers in expressing themselves using their full language repertoires, writing for authentic audiences, and connecting to their identities. However, many teachers, particularly those who identify as "monolingual" and teach in English-medium classrooms, may not know how to introduce…

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…