Beginning with a brief rationale for selecting quality digital picture book apps for beginning readers, the authors describe the elements of digital picture books and provide a brief review of the instructional benefits of digital picture book use for beginning readers. They then present a detailed taxonomy for selecting quality picture book apps.…

This article details one teacher's implementation of reading workshop in her second grade classroom. She provided a framework for authentic reading using the five components of reading workshop: time, choice, response, community, and structure. She found that reading workshop is a highly effective practice for not only increasing students'…

Standard 10 of the Common Core State Standards attends to students' capacity with complex text. This standard distinguishes the Common Core State Standards from previous standards documents. This article describes a process--the Text Complexity Multi-Index (TCMI)--that supports teachers in studying texts to support their students in…

Numerous research studies prove that wide reading improves children's comprehension, background knowledge, vocabulary, fluency, and writing. The author, a sixth-grade language arts teacher, describes the classroom conditions and instructional practices that encourage wide reading and increase her students' reading motivation such as choice in…

Too often, instruction designed to improve literacy achievement for black male readers and writers focuses on skill-based learning, ignoring cultural, social, and personal development. This article calls for the use of critical literacy strategies with African American male students, which can raise expectations for academic achievement by…

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…

Whole-class choral reading (WCCR) is an oral reading fluency strategy that can help older elementary students in need of fluency development. Implementation is simple and requires only a few minutes per day. WCCR can be easily adapted for use with narrative and expository texts and allows all students the opportunity to practice within an…

Teachers often have no preparation for handling the questions and conversations that arise in the classroom when discussing literature having adoption or foster care themes. Instead of relying on personal experiences or stereotypes portrayed through the media, teachers are advised to understand the developmental tasks of children from families…

Noted scholar, teacher educator, and IRA past-president Linda Gambrell answers readers' questions about motivating young and struggling readers.

The purpose of this article is to assert that there are classic African American children's books and to identify a sampling of them. The author presents multiple definitions of the term classic based on the responses of children's literature experts and relevant scholarship. Next, the manner in which data were collected and analyzed in regard to…

Teachers often use science trade books in the classroom for a number of reasons: to enhance science instruction, to augment an adopted science textbook, or to integrate literacy with subject-area content. Using Patricia Hunsader's mathematics trade book evaluation rubric published in the April 2004 issue of "Reading Teacher" as a model, the…

The author explores how the use of joke books can promote fluency in young readers. One young girl's fluency improved measurably, and her engagement and motivation to read the particular kind of text involved played a significant role. (Contains 2 tables.)

Previous research has demonstrated that African American children do not always relate to the literature available in their classrooms. The study examined fifth-grade students' responses to African American literature to determine the criteria students use to select books. Students' selection criteria were then compared with teachers' selection…

In Botswana, it is common to hear the lament that there is no culture of reading. We aim to contribute to the development of more specific understanding of a culture of reading by reporting on information gathered from teachers who attended workshops we offered titled "Teachers as Readers AND Readers as Teachers: Creating Young Readers and…

What kinds of books do children want to read? And how can a teacher find those books? The author provides some ideas for interesting new books in the categories of graphic novels, humorous adventures, poetry, and books about math.