Reanna, Janet, and Jaimyka are early childhood educators who are recent graduates of the Early Learning and Child Care (ELCC) Diploma program in Aurora College in the Northwest Territories of Canada. They used storytelling and related follow-up activities to teach their Indigenous language, Tlicho, in their early childhood field placements in…

The authors argue for an expansive and inclusive approach to literacy instruction that moves beyond multimodality to embrace multiplicity in readers, texts, mediums, activities, environments, and contexts aligned to our 21st century world. In particular, rather than privileging the linguistic mode, the authors argue for using all modes and…

Vocabulary learning is an essential component of early literacy instruction. However, choosing appropriate words for instruction can be a challenge, with many resources encouraging the instruction of words that are either too easy or too obscure. This article, based on a systematic review of vocabulary interventions, presents research-based…

Research suggests that when young children have many opportunities to write they start believing they are the sort of people who can write for intellectual, academic, and social purposes. They also learn foundational reading skills. Project-like compositional writing involving design, strategies, and problem solving versus functional writing or…

Given the emerging evidence on the importance of learning content-specific vocabulary in the early years, many early childhood teachers try to incorporate science vocabulary teaching as part of classroom activities. In this article, the authors argue for the importance of teaching science vocabulary in engaging ways using read-aloud and the…

This article presents a way to use award-winning books as mentor texts for very young writers. Books were selected as mentor texts from the winners of the Australian Early Childhood Children's Book of the Year Award and the American Theodor Seuss Geisel Award. The authors explain the value of using award-winning texts in the classroom and describe…

Assessing children's narratives through the lens of intertexual process makes visible children's funds of knowledge. The authors describe two interrelated alternative assessments that teachers can use to make sense of young children's narratives in classroom settings. Implications for promoting an intertextually-rich environment…

This article provides primary teachers with assessment tools and curricular examples to expand writers' workshop by adding a multimodal storytelling unit on drama and filmmaking, allowing students to create engaging off-the-page stories through films and play performances that enrich writing. Too often, children's literacy abilities are assessed…

Early writing is important to young children's development--research indicates that writing is predictive of later reading and writing. Despite this, preschool teachers often do not focus on writing and offer limited scaffolding to foster children's writing development. This article shares innovative ways to scaffold early writing across the three…

Primary-grade students' experiences with text should prepare them to critically read an extensive range of text types throughout their schooling and career, a primary goal of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). However, research demonstrates that narrative text overshadows other text types in the primary grades. The purpose of this…

Online reading requires traditional and new comprehension skills and strategies, and these skills and strategies will have to be taught and supported, especially for young beginning readers. But how do elementary teachers go about doing this? Much of the research regarding teaching and supporting online reading comprehension has focused on older…

Comic strips are great to share with parents, younger students, and peers. This article presents an activity where students use a six-paneled comic strip to summarize a story. This activity allows for multiple interpretations and enhances comprehension by drawing attention to story elements.

Early childhood instruction tends to focus heavily on literacy development, sometimes at the expense of rich concept development (CEP, 2007; Neuman, 2006; NRC, 2012; NSTA, 2014). Because of the emphasis on literacy instruction, many early childhood teachers integrate content areas, such as science, in literacy instruction through read alouds of…

This paper examines, from the perspective of mediated action (Wertsch, 1991, 1998), the ways in which an experienced, primary-grade teacher used and continually modified an instructional too--"the practice page"--to mediate specific aspects of interactive writing, an approach to beginning writing instruction. The authors provide a detailed,…

The primary focus of this piece is the fundamental need to read to children to set the scene for their literacy development. It is asserted, reading to all children should happen daily for the first three years of their schooling. The reasons for this assertion are explored and explained: a vast vocabulary is gleaned, learned and used; the simple…