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This qualitative analysis of small-group book discussions documents how bilingual third-grade students interacted around informational books at their reading levels and books one year ahead of their reading levels. The interactions included: answering the teacher, building on previous ideas, asking questions, introducing new topics, answering own or peer's questions, disagreeing, agreeing, and peer coaching. The last three of these interactions occurred rarely. Each group adopted opposite interaction patterns in relation to text difficulty. Group 1 predominately asked questions with matched texts, and with difficult texts they introduced new topics and built up related previous ideas. Group 2 mostly asked questions with difficult texts, and they introduced new topics and built them up mostly when speaking about matched texts. It is not clear that one interaction pattern is "better" than the other, and differences in the levels may explain some of the interactions adopted.

In the wake of racial justice protests in the United States, many states adopted policies to constrain the discussion of racism, particularly contemporary and systemic racism, in K-12 classrooms. Discursively framed as "critical race theory bans," these policies enumerate lists of "prohibited concepts" to be eliminated from classroom instruction and curriculum materials. This brief document analysis provides an overview of first-wave prohibited concepts policies among the states to adopt such policies during the 2020-2022 legislative sessions. The analysis summarizes the prohibited concepts, teaching practices that remain allowed, and the nature of the prohibitions.

This article examines students' identities in teacher-student interactions during an eight-week comic unit within a fourth-grade literacy classroom. Though researchers have increasingly studied how teachers incorporated graphic novels and comics into the school literacy curriculum, few have documented the social interactions that students' multimodal composing is embedded in. Using microethnographic discourse analysis, we traced the identity work of two case studies at different reading levels during whole-class discussions and writing conferences and how their teacher supported their positive identity development through discourse moves. In this article, we show that the teacher's dialogic approach to teaching provided both students with opportunities to position themselves and be positioned as expert and comic author. We encourage educators to use multimodal literacy to create a supportive learning environment that transforms verbocentric school literacy and students' identities.

This study expands and complicates ideas about what makes text complex in picturebooks. The study involved multimodal analysis of one visually and scientifically complex picturebook, "Gravity," by Jason Chin. The authors also analyzed a transcript of three third graders discussing the text. This analysis illuminated how student talk provides further information for understanding what makes a particular text complex to particular students. The authors elaborate three themes from the data: genre ambiguity and sentences that spread across multiple pages challenge students; simple science may not be so simple; and, students do not always identify metafictive devices. The authors encourage future researchers to include visual and content analysis in making determinations and claims about text complexity. They suggest implications for preparing teachers to teach with visually and scientifically complex picturebooks.

This article revisits a recently published, critical qualitative review of research on culturally informed literacy instruction in preschool and elementary school contexts. The original published review analyzed literacy instruction described as culturally relevant, culturally responsive, or culturally sustaining across 56 peer-reviewed studies. In this article, we interpret the findings of that research review for teachers and suggest several broad lessons, with specific examples of their application in literacy classrooms, for effectively implementing these culturally informed approaches: (1) address the impact of your own identity, (2) know your students, and (3) transform your literacy curriculum with critical approaches.

This discussion describes a collaboration between a high school for recently arrived immigrant and refugee youth and a local college. Across 6 weeks, college tutors read a wordless graphic novel, "The Arrival" (Tan, 2007), with newcomer students to support oral English language development, to develop interpretations, and to invite personal connections. This discussion addresses tensions and lessons learned from welcoming newcomer students to share sensitive personal stories, such as their migration stories, in English classes.

This teaching tip describes a translanguaging read-aloud protocol. In a translanguaging read-aloud, teachers and students interact with a text (either a bilingual text or a monolingual one) in multiple languages. Teachers plan explanations, questions, and other interactions in multiple languages to amplify and clarify the text. Teachers can adapt these read-alouds to different purposes such as blending languages in a read-aloud to accommodate a mix of linguistic backgrounds in the same class or using a more familiar language to make a text written in a less familiar language comprehensible to students.

In this study, the researchers analyzed writing produced by newcomer immigrant and refugee students in a literacy workshop facilitated by visiting college tutors. Fourteen adolescent students, primarily from Central America, worked over a semester with a college partner to read mentor texts about youth immigration experiences, write their own stories, and produce digital presentations of their work. Using the community cultural wealth framework, the researchers analyzed these digital presentations and found examples of aspirational, linguistic, familial, social, navigational, and resistant capital. The authors consider how the examples of capital that students revealed could support educators in knowing their students better and thus planning appropriate instruction for them.

This critical, integrative qualitative review explores how researchers approach, describe, and justify culturally relevant, culturally responsive, or culturally sustaining literacy instruction in prekindergarten through fifth-grade (P-5) classrooms. We reviewed 56 studies published between 1995 and 2018. We documented terms researchers use, theorists cited, methods, student outcomes, and student populations. We also analyzed how researchers talked about achievement gaps, addressed their own positionality, and determined that specific literacy instructional practices were culturally informed. We found that researchers most commonly claim to document culturally relevant or responsive instruction, in some cases conflating the terms and related theorists. Most studies were qualitative, occurred with traditionally marginalized students (usually Black or Latinx) in the United States, and involved students reading a text that researchers deem culturally informed. We make recommendations for teachers and researchers to move the field of culturally informed literacy forward.

This self-study reports a teacher educator's efforts to support college student tutors in facilitating English language discussions about a wordless picturebook with immigrant and refugee youth at a newcomer high school. Drawing on critical sociocultural theory and practice-based teacher education, the study reports how tutors adopted a new and unfamiliar pedagogical repertoire as they became more skilled discussion facilitators. The study documents support needed (and missing) for the college tutors to take up this skill. Additionally, the study reports the affordances of a particular wordless book, The Arrival, as a tool that college student tutors used in the process of learning to facilitate second language discussions that fostered English language development. Wordless picturebooks offer a fertile instructional context for significant talk to support English language development and a helpful context for practice-based teacher education about learning to facilitate student talk. Yet using them to foster discussion requires skill and support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study reports how authors use Spanish in award-winning Latinx children's picturebooks in the USA. Teachers, families, and librarians use these books to support heritage language and culture or to broaden children's understanding of cultures other than their own. Thus, how these books use Spanish matters because of the potential of these books to promote cultural and linguistic diversity to children. This study investigated how authors used Spanish, which characters spoke Spanish, and what language ideologies texts explicitly communicate. Across 9 books (award winners between 2010 and 2015), there were 78 instances of Spanish use, and 21 of these were complete sentences or exclamations. The books provided a high level of support for understanding Spanish. Supports include immediate translation, appositive explanations, contextual cues, and picture cues, with little use of fluid translanguaging, which more approximates the communicative practices of bilingual communities. The paper concludes with implications for teachers to develop critical language awareness among students in response to literature and suggestions for authors and publishers to represent Spanish-speaking communities in children's literature.

Current standards push for elementary students to have text-based and text-centric discussions of what they read. This study explored what bilingual third-grade students talked about during small-group text-based discussions of informational texts. The author conducted a qualitative analysis of 10 video-recorded discussions, five of books matched to students' reading levels and five of complex texts one year ahead of students' reading levels. Two groups of three students participated. All students needed additional support to read successfully at grade level. Findings show that only a quarter of student talk clearly connected to printed text. Their talk oriented toward ideas, images, and texts. Ideas and images provided an accessible entry point into the discussion for all students and in some cases facilitated interactions with text. When students did talk about text, it did not always further develop the discussion topic. For the students needing the most support to read at grade level, more talk about text and ideas occurred with difficult books, whereas matched books led to more conversations oriented toward images. Implications include the need for teachers and researchers to value responses beyond overtly text-oriented ones in discussions.

Schools often fail to offer minoritized student groups access to quality STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education experiences. While policymakers should systemically address this curriculum gap problem, out-of-school educational programs offer an important way to provide quality STEM instruction while integrating students' communities in culturally sustaining ways. This article describes one such program. The Orchard Community Learning Center operates as an urban farm in south Phoenix. Students engage in hands-on, project-based STEA[superscript 2]M (science, technology, engineering, arts, agriculture, and math) learning through a bilingual program that employs the framework of community cultural wealth. This framework recognizes the aspirational, linguistic, familial, social, navigational, and resistant capital that communities of color possess. The programs at the Orchard draw heavily on the students' and their families' capital in these areas and integrate them into the curriculum through culturally sustaining pedagogies. The work of urban agriculture at the Orchard provides a context for students to engage in authentic STEA[superscript 2]M learning through a curriculum developed in response to their interests and cultural backgrounds.

The author explored text difficulty for third-grade bilingual students reading below grade level. In six small-group discussions, students read and discussed informational texts matched to their reading levels, and in six other sessions they read and discussed texts one year ahead of their reading levels. The alternating treatment design and qualitative analysis of transcripts revealed different text levels have both advantages and drawbacks. Findings included the following: Group 1 had more inferential or interpretive responses with matched texts and Group 2 had more inferential or interpretive responses with difficult texts. Most students participated evenly regardless of text difficulty. However, two students talked more when discussing matched texts. Text difficulty did not affect comprehension for anyone except one student, and for him it only had an effect on three of 12 days. Half of the students' fluency scores benefited from matched texts. The other half read difficult texts with similar fluency to matched texts.

This manuscript presents a content analysis of 28 picture books from the Outstanding Science Trade Books recognized by the National Science Teachers Association in 2016. Drawing on the need for culturally relevant science instruction, the research investigated the portrayal of scientists in images (gender and racial background), the scientific disciplines, what aspects of the nature of science were represented in the books and where, and the language that described scientific work. Previous work suggested that science trade books do not often portray diverse scientists, the breadth of science, or the nature of science and scientific work. This study examined whether recently published and award-winning books had these weaknesses. Findings showed that the sample did not show improvement in the diversity of scientific fields or scientists. Most scientists shown in images were white and male, and most books presented life science, often animals. However, the findings also showed that the extent to which books represented the nature of science varied widely. Some books contained no references, and others contained many references to different aspects of the nature of science. The study noted that biographies and books that described in detail the work of scientific teams provided the most nature of science content. Many books also had substantial nature of science content in peritextual material such as author's notes. The study collected and categorized all the verbs used to describe scientific activity and found that these descriptions of scientific activity have a wide scope and show scientists engaging in work ranging from data collection to activism. The article concludes with a recognition of the importance of broad scientific education programs about nature of science; the current children's book market, while offering valuable tools, does not adequately provide resources to teach the diversity of science and scientists.

In this formative experiment, we examined interventions in and modifications to literacy instruction in a first-grade classroom with the aim of cultivating a love of reading among the students. Consistent with the design of formative experiments, the teacher established a pedagogical goal of building a love of reading, and throughout the year reflective modifications were made during the literacy block to encourage this love among the students. The participants were part of a diverse urban first-grade class of 28 students in the Southwest United States. The initial intervention included making a broad array of texts accessible to students and frequently discussing the teacher's and students' enjoyment of reading. Modifications throughout the year included establishing literary discussion groups, purchasing accessible text sets including many non-fiction books, author studies based on students' most frequently checked-out books, book spotlights presented by students and a book exchange party proposed by the students. The findings demonstrate that students did in fact develop a positive view of reading as shown through positive talk about books, establishing favourite authors and genres, resisting the end of reading time, choosing to read over other activities and making reading a part of their social interactions.

In this study, 12 preservice teachers in a community college English as a second language (ESL) K-12 teacher education program drew pictures and wrote descriptions of teachers teaching English language learners (ELLs) at the beginning and end of an ESL methods course. Using content analysis, the researcher analyzed the drawings and descriptions with respect to the role of the teacher, the role of the students, the teaching strategies shown, the instructional content, and how the drawings changed over the semester. Preservice teachers depicted more and varied teaching strategies in end-of-course drawings, but overall findings showed that preservice teachers viewed teaching ELLs as a teacher implementing direct instruction in basic literacy to passive students at both the beginning and end of the course. The article discusses the importance of impacting preservice teacher beliefs through teacher education and explores the benefits and limits of using drawings for this purpose.

I analyze two bills from the state legislatures of California (SB 1174) and Arizona (SB 1242) that propose to expand bilingual education where English-only education was previously the default. Using a critical discourse analysis lens to conduct a directed content analysis, I ask who bilingual education is for, why it is offered, and how the proposed programs would affect the education of English learners. The theoretical framework draws heavily from interest convergence theory, which holds that minoritized communities make civil rights gains when their interests converge with interests of the majority/state. Additionally, the framework employs the idea of economic preparation through education as a hegemonic force, driving the expansion of dual language programs. The bills demonstrate the shifting discourse from supporting English learners to an economic interest in bilingualism. The Arizona bill restricts bilingual education to students who already speak English fluently, making the programs unavailable to English learners. The California bill explicitly makes the potential programs available to all students, including English learners. The bills mention multiple reasons for expanding bilingual education, but the primary emphases are economic benefits and national security. While the promotion of bilingualism is a step forward, interest convergence theory and hegemony are useful analytical tools to understand the change and ensure that all students have equitable access to language programs.

Teacher educators needing to meet requirements of state licensing bodies and accrediting organizations are in a position similar to that of K-12 teachers: they must adhere to externally imposed standards and curricular requirements while keeping their courses rigorous, interesting, and critical. This article reports results from a self-study exploring (1) how a teacher educator used a state-mandated course with prescribed curriculum to model adhering to the curriculum while also challenging it, and (2) how a teacher educator encouraged critical evaluation of state policy while adhering to the prescribed state curriculum. Drawing from data collected during a pre-service ESL methods course, the key assertion of the study is that it is both possible and desirable to model critical teaching in courses that require strict adherence to standards and may include a prescribed scope and sequence, mandated topics, or time allotment requirements.

In this study, the researchers examined how first-grade students initially positioned as struggling readers took up literacy practices to reposition themselves as capable competent readers and part of a literate community of practice over an academic year. Using positive discourse analysis and case study methodology, the researchers documented and analyzed the identity work of two students, an English monolingual and a Spanish-English emerging bilingual, who worked to reposition themselves in their classroom community. The participants were part of a diverse, urban, first-grade dialogic inquiry-based classroom in the Southwest. The yearlong study documented students taking up inclusive literacy practices, practices that invited the participation of all students regardless of literacy level or language background, to negotiate positive identities in the literate community. The in-depth qualitative analysis utilized both positive and critical discourse analysis lenses to provide research that not only deconstructs power but also identifies positive ways in which students make room for themselves within academic settings. The use of both lenses led to findings on identity negotiations that provide insight into possibilities for power to be redistributed in positive ways for young children.

Sometimes students manage to complete investigations without really using complex and scientific language. Even when they use scientific vocabulary, they do not always build logical arguments to communicate their findings. In this article, the author describes how several elementary science teachers addressed this challenge in after-school STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) clubs and a summer STEM camp. The clubs and camps had a goal of increasing academic vocabulary among language learners, but the teachers shared a commitment to discussion and helping students use academic vocabulary to discuss scientific concepts meaningfully. The author shares the strategies they used to make scientific discussions work. The clubs included kindergarten to fifth-grade students. Two clubs taught in English included fluent English speakers and English learners. One club taught in Spanish included Mexican-American students who spoke fluent English and were learning STEM concepts in their heritage language of Spanish. The summer camp was entirely in English and included 75 diverse students from grades 3 through 5. These strategies should help teach students of all language backgrounds, including those who speak English fluently but lack familiarity with norms of scientific discussion.

This Teaching Tips describes a yearlong process of facilitating meaningful discussion groups about literature with first-grade students in an urban Title I school. At the beginning of the year, the teacher provided explicit instruction in speaking and listening skills to support students with the social skills needed for thoughtful discussion. She established whole-group discussions as a forum for sharing thinking and new knowledge, engaging in dialog about books, and recommending books to friends. Building on this foundation, the class moved to small-group discussions. The article details three different types of discussion groups: informational texts and sharing learning; Mo Willems author study and sharing responses to humor; and Jon Klassen author study and sharing inferences supported by textual evidence. This article shares how first grade students took up discussion opportunities to engage in critical thinking and dialog about books.

Several states in the United States, including Tennessee, have enacted laws prohibiting so-called critical race theory in public schools. Positioning teachers as policy actors, this study examines how future and current teachers understand and plan to navigate Tennessee's legislation. In focus groups, participants disapproved of the legislation. They expressed active opposition, reluctant compliance, and intentional disregard. We theorize these responses as reflecting teachers' calculations regarding power in their contexts. Findings illustrate that teachers are not merely passive subjects enacting mandates, but instead intentionally and strategically interpret policy. The study has implications for global contexts in which teachers navigate censorship policies. • Educators opposed Tennessee's so-called critical race theory ban. • Educators voiced active opposition, reluctant compliance, and intentional disregard. • Teachers had multifaceted responses, influenced by their local teaching context. • Teachers described individual, rather than collective, response and resistance. • Teachers take an active role in interpreting and implementing policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Th authors discuss the process of teaching conversation to first graders. They mention the skills such as speaking and listening required in sustained discussion, the importance of developing respect, and present techniques for enhancing conversation among students.

The article presents a lesson plan for primary education which teaches concepts about drawing a picture of scientist.