After the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, the disruption of in-person schooling has significantly affected many students including emergent bilingual students. Designed as an ethnographic study, this research study examines two Spanish-English dual language bilingual education teachers' implementation of translanguaging pedagogies and language…

This report uses data from the RAND Corporation's American Educator Panels to understand the state of infrastructure to support elementary social studies instruction during the 2021-2022 school year. The report is focused at the elementary (specifically, kindergarten through grade 5 [K-5]) level because the authors hypothesized that infrastructure…

To support reading comprehension and content acquisition among middle school students with reading disabilities and difficulties, content area teachers must employ evidence-based literacy instruction. This type of instruction is especially crucial in the content areas because the majority of students with disabilities--those who typically struggle…

In recent decades, digital technologies have facilitated new opportunities for educators to share and co-construct teaching and learning ideas and resources. One largely unresearched example of this phenomena is HyperDocs, which are interactive, digital teaching and learning materials created, disseminated, and remixed by educators. Despite…

The Common Core State Standards for English language arts expect that teachers will use narrative and informational texts to teach content area material across the curriculum. However, many teachers at all grade levels struggle to incorporate both kinds of text, especially given the vast amount of specialized content they are required to teach.…

This technical report provides detailed information about the sample, survey instruments, and resultant data for the 2022 American Instructional Resources Surveys (AIRS) that were administered to principals and teachers in spring 2022 via the RAND Corporation's American Educator Panels (AEP). The 2022 AIRS focused on the usage of, perceptions of,…

The objective of this study is to better understand the process by which K-12 school districts select curricula materials in four critical subject areas: Mathematics, English Language Arts, Science, and History and Social Studies. This research has two primary goals: (1) to understand the process by which K-12 school districts select and adopt…

Finding materials to help students make connections is difficult for many teachers across all grade levels. Traditionally, the textbook is the primary resource for instruction. Textbooks, however, do not naturally support students in making connections across texts. To do this, teachers must find other resources. Finding other resources is…

In this paper, we report on teachers' use of curricula and other instructional resources to address Common Core State Standards (CCSS), as well as how use of instructional materials is related to instructional practice. We draw on data from the American Teacher Panel, a nationally representative sample of teachers who periodically provide…

This white paper describes instructional approaches that apply to successful teaching with the Smithsonian "Learning Lab." After defining its use of terms such as "deeper learning" and "authentic resources" the authors review the research basis of three broad approaches that support integrating digital resources into…

The emphasis on disciplinary literacy skills embedded within the Common Core State Standards requires a shift in preparing teachers to explicitly address the craft of reading and writing within social studies instruction. As teacher educators, we think it is imperative to understand the ways in which our teacher candidates integrate literacy…

Learning social studies curriculum can present challenges for English-language learners (ELLs). The language used to present concepts is often decontextualized and abstract, making it difficult for these students to understand the content and have successful learning experiences. In this article, the authors describe strategies elementary teachers…

Briefly discusses classroom uses of the filmstrip and lists and annotates a number of filmstrip programs in a variety of content areas. (TO)

A monthly exchange of tips, projects, ideas and resources. (Editor)

Suggestions are offered to elementary school teachers for more effective bulletin boards, which encourage hands-on manipulation, reinforce a wide spectrum of concepts and learning skills, provide visual confirmation for learning, and encourage student creativity and hard work. Examples are provided from social studies and language arts. (DB)