This teacher-action research project explores using critical contemplative pedagogy in an upper elementary classroom setting to determine how youth media practices can be informed with combined critical media literacy instruction and contemplative exercises. Analysis of students' media production and deconstructions reveal promising outcomes for…

This Teaching and Learning Guide highlights how early childhood teachers can support emotional intelligence and inferential comprehension by drawing children's attention to characters' feelings and by asking students to notice evidence from the illustrations and text. During this read-aloud in Ms. Clark's first grade classroom, we see evidence of…

The number line is a powerful tool for supporting students' understanding of fraction magnitude. Fractions are a critical component of mathematics instruction in the elementary and intermediate grades. More specifically, understanding fraction magnitude is central to mathematical development. Yet, fractions are challenging for many students,…

Values are the trans-situational goals guiding human attitudes and behavior (Schwartz, 1992). As early socialization agents, teachers have a responsibility to promote democratic values of citizenship to create an inclusive, fair, and sustainable society, necessary for individual and collective well-being (OECD, 2019). By facilitating social…

MITCA (homework implementation method) was born with the purpose of turning homework into an educational resource capable of improving the self-regulation of learning and the school engagement of students. In this article, following the current theoretical framework, we evaluate the impact of the MITCA method on school engagement in students in…

Today computing is intricate in all aspects of our lives, beginning with communications and education to banking, information security, health, shopping, and social media. Development of the computing is proportional to the development of software which is becoming a serious part of all daily lives. This paper, therefore, assessed the impact of…

As social studies teachers, the authors feel they have a moral and ethical responsibility to provide students with the knowledge, skills, and dispositions necessary to become active participants in democracy. This starts with a transformative social studies curriculum that promotes critical thinking, is meaningful and relevant to the lives of…

Immersive virtual reality (VR) is anticipated to peak in development this decade bringing new opportunities for 3D multimodal designing across all levels of education. The need for students to gain capabilities with multimodal texts--texts that combine two or more modes, such as spoken, written, and visual--is emphasised at all levels of education…

Writing skills grow along a predictable developmental trajectory, yet what is considered "writing" can look very different in preschool and early elementary classrooms. The way in which writing may look in each setting reflects that teachers are working with different sets of learning standards, with different conceptualizations of…

Elementary school students are often placed into groups with peers of similar reading ability for leveled guided reading instruction. Through this practice, students are differentially exposed to reading skills, strategies, and texts that are presumed to match their reading ability. This widespread practice is problematic given that (1) current…

Reading proficiency levels among elementary-aged students in the United States have been alarmingly unsatisfactory for decades. The absence of basic foundational reading skills will induce struggles in every other subject area, causing students to feel exhausted, defeated, and fall behind. Intervention can be successful when instruction is…

Family-school partnerships are considered essential to the success of multiply marginalized children in urban contexts. These partnerships often, however, reinforce middle-class white normativity and subsequent oppression of families outside the dominant culture. Home visiting is one such practice spreading throughout urban centers. Is it possible…

Typically, vocabulary instruction is associated as part of reading instruction. However, vocabulary instruction is also a necessary component of mathematics instruction. In fact, state and national standards (e.g., Common Core State Standards) require elementary students to communicate about mathematics to provide clear explanations, construct…

The paper presents findings from a study that examined, through the lens of the Image Having layer of the Pirie-Kieren model, the qualitative characteristics of the images that different children formed when engaging with eight, novel partitive quotient tasks. The Image Having layer is the first point of abstraction within the Pirie-Kieren model.…

This study identifies characteristics of polygon class learning opportunities for 8-9-year-old children during the whole-class instruction. We consider the interplay between the geometrical tasks demanding different ways of reasoning, features of children's geometrical thinking, and the teacher's moves to identify characteristics of learning…