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This article focuses on Ezra Jack Keats's books and the ways these books enhance the literary experience through the richness of the peritextual features. Keats's picture books have the potential [...]

Any single artifact in a museum possesses the potential to serve as a starting point for the viewer to interpret its meaning, develop an idea, and then generate a written piece. In this article, the authors describe steps for using a photography exhibit collection as artifactual inquiry.

This article highlights the learning that took place among teacher candidates as they taught Generation 1.5 students during a yearly writing camp. The article also offers suggestions for supporting this group of adolescents.

Across the globe, students have been away from schools and their teachers, but literacy learning has continued. In many countries, students' literacy proficiency is often measured via high-stakes assessment tests. However, such tests do not make visible students' literacy lives away from formal learning settings, so students are positioned as task responders, rather than as agentive readers and writers. The authors explore the fluidity and diversity of literacy events and practices for students and their teachers observed during the recent period of COVID-19 lockdown restrictions.

This article compares the ILA 2017 Standards for preparing specialized literacy professionals with the 2010 Standards. The authors also describe levels of emphases for each specialized literacy role and implications of the new Standards for those serving in the field and for those who prepare them.

The divergence between a predominately White teacher education population and a diverse public school system poses this question: how do universities best prepare teacher candidates to teach children of racially and linguistically different backgrounds than their own? Teacher education programs have addressed this issue in a variety of ways, such as requiring multicultural coursework and/or requiring placements in urban schools. States, too, vary with respect to their requirements for diversity. In many states, students are tested on their development of a multicultural perspective on a standardized test. A test, immersion placements, and stand-alone multicultural education courses may all forms of teacher preparation and accountability in many states, but what are the ways to develop a critical understanding of diversity in order for students to not only pass a standardized teacher's test, but more importantly, to integrate culturally responsive teaching strategies into their public school classroom? This article describes how online discussions between diverse ethnically and linguistic groups of teachers from Egypt, Japan, Ghana, and the U.S., over a one-year period, allowed teacher candidates and teachers to openly discuss issues of race, culture, and language. The interactions through this online dialogue created a community of learners in which students and teachers felt comfortable in stating their viewpoints, and the students were eager to learn from other teachers. Through this online dialogue, these students became familiar with how important it is for teachers to view the world from multiple lenses.

Ancient coppice woodlands are coppice-originated forest stands with a long-term continual development, and with the preserved typical natural and historic elements of old sprout forests. Prominent natural elements in the ancient coppice woodlands are namely old coppice stools. There is, in scientific literature, lack of information about features of ancient coppice stools. Therefore, our contribution aims to describe shape and form of ancient coppice stools, including the most important microhabitat of coppice woodlands – dendrothelms. Based on field survey of 20 localities of important coppice woodlands we recorded 135 ancient coppice stools of 13 tree species and a total of 80 dendrothelms in 9 tree species. Basic features of ancient coppice stools and dendrothlems were measured and evaluated.

The sprouting capacity of some broadleaves has been used for their regeneration since ancient times. Often concurrently with taking advantage of sprouting stools, the trees used to be shaped also by pruning their stems, namely on pasturelands and in grazing forests. The activity of woodcutters and shepherds was obviously rather common in warmer climates with broadleaved stands because coppice and pollard trees appear relatively often in the visual arts from ancient works through the period if the Italian and German Renaissance up to the romantic and realistic landscape painting of the 19th century overlapping into the 20th century. For centuries, most frequently illustrated in European and Czech paintings have been pollard willows (Salix spp.). Other coppice and pollard tree species identified in paintings are oaks (Quercus spp.), hornbeam (Carpinus betulus), European beech (Fagus sylvatica), European chestnut (Castanea sativa), and rarely other species, too. Artists apparently often used bizarrely shaped woods to increase the dramatic atmosphere of their landscape sceneries as well as figural compositions, and the coppice and pollard trees had certainly also a symbolic meaning in some of their works.

Within the area of Central Europe, and especially in the Czech Republic (and former Czechoslovakia), geobiocoenological landscape differentiation has been applied for more than 40 years to create a spatial model of the natural (potential) condition of geobiocoenoses in the landscape. Because long-term objective of geobiocoenology is to contribute to the creation of harmonic cultural landscape by gradual development of a comprehensive system of groundworks for sustainable landscape use, and as Mendel University experts work in various countries, adaptions of geobiocoenology were used also outside Europe, in tropical areas. Examples of such a work could be shown on islands such as Socotra (belonging politically to Yemen), Tasmania, and Cuba.

One of common methods of determining landscape change usually is to compare maps and photographic images of the same places in different time horizons. Landscape painting, which has a long and rich tradition in the Czech Republic, can be used similarly. Landscape-ecological interpretation of selected works by painters of the 19th century - Julius Mařák, František Kaván and Antonín Slavíček was done in this paper. Some pictures of the Českomoravská vrchovina (Bohemian-Moravian highlands) by Josef Jambor from the mid-20th century were used for detailed comparative analysis to the level of habitats. We compared 80 landscape paintings and found that most of the painted sceneries have changed for worse.

The purpose of this article is to explore ways in which blogs can support literacy communities while developing a writing community. Examples of how a classroom teacher uses blogs to strengthen the writing process is described. (Contains 2 figures and 1 table.)

In this column, we invited the ILA Children's Literature and Reading Special Interest Group (CLR SIG)'s 2022 NBGS Research Award Winner, Jan Lacina, to share some of the work she conducted with the NBGS award‐winning books. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many recent publications describe writing as the neglected "r"; however, there is very little data on what writing instruction looks like in schools, especially in grades 4-6. The purpose of this article is to describe large urban school district literacy leaders' views on the state of writing instruction within their districts--and their projections for the future of writing instruction. Educators at all levels must re-think how they approach the teaching of writing, re-envisioning how to transform teaching practices to impact our students and their world for the next decade to come. (Contains 1 figure and 1 table.)

"If we teach today as we taught yesterday, then we rob our children of tomorrow" (Dewey, 1916). Dewey's words are still relevant today as educators across the world consider how to best connect the print-based literacies of the past to the technologically based literacies of the present. Dewey's advice of re-envisioning how to best teach children is especially applicable as teachers consider the technologies that engage children (Dalton & Grisham, 2011), and the pervasiveness of technology in schools. Virtually every school in the United States has Internet access (Dalton & Grisham, 2011; Gray, Thomas, & Lewis, 2010; Wells & Lewis, 2006). The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of excellent online storybooks and technology resources that have the potential for connecting children with text, while also noting strategies that help children's comprehension. (Contains 5 figures.)

The children's book "Two Is for Twins" celebrates twins and illustrates the many "twos" in a child's world. The uniqueness of twos does not have to mean separate classrooms for twins in child development programs, preschool, or elementary school settings. With recent dramatic increases in the US twin population, how should educators address the separation of twins in different classrooms? This article will answer this question by providing a synthesis of research studies on twins and their separation in school and recommending best practices for teachers and school leaders when deciding to include or separate twins by classroom. (Contains 5 online resources.)

This study is a research collaborative conducted with multiple sites to examine the programmatic features within six literacy teacher education programs that have received the Certificate of Distinction of the International Reading Association (IRA). The objectives were to identify the features that were most highly ranked by internal and external experts and to delineate specific examples of how the features were actualized. A classical Delphi method was applied, and participants included leading literacy faculty members at each of the six institutions, the internal experts (n = 18), and members of program review teams identified by IRA, the external experts (n = 3). Analyses of results revealed that 14 programmatic features ranked higher in value than others at a statistically significant level. The study found that the internal and external literacy teacher education experts agreed on the most highly valued programmatic factors. These include the importance of relevant field experiences, the development of teacher candidates' abilities to teach and assess children through a wide variety of instructional strategies and assessment instruments, and ways to integrate literacy and language strategies throughout the curriculum. (Contains 5 tables.)

This article presents an excerpt from the most recent ACEI publication. It describes the characteristics of effective middle level teachers and the characteristics of effective content-area instruction which makes use of reading and writing as often as possible. The use of literacy processes in content disciplines can lead to improved understanding and retention of content area knowledge.

Technology is a way of life for most Americans. A recent study published by the National Writing Project (2007) found that Americans believe that computers have a positive effect on writing skills. The importance of learning to use technology ranked just below learning to read and write, and 74 percent of the survey respondents noted that children should begin to learn about computers at a young age. The purpose of this article is to explain ways that parents, caregivers, and teachers of young children can introduce technology to young children while building early literacy skills. (Contains 1 table.)

East Texas, home to a large English language learner (ELL) population, is the setting for a successful program that offers students support for both language development and subject-matter learning. In this article, the authors examine why East Texas is so successful in closing the achievement gap of its minority students. The authors also describe the instructional strategies employed by a successful ELL teacher named Tara. Summarized in this article are important lessons the authors learned about addressing the achievement gap and connected these lessons to research. These lessons include: (1) Lesson 1: Scaffold language instruction throughout the content areas; (2) Lesson 2: Be familiar with a variety of instructional strategies; and (3) Lesson 3: A positive sociocultural climate and high expectations equal high ESL academic achievement. (Contains 1 figure and 1 table.)

The article focuses on the 3C Network, a framework implemented in the Early Childhood–6 Grade Education program at Texas Christian University. It emphasizes the importance of consistent field experiences, careful selection of placement sites, and strong university-school partnerships in preparing future educators to effectively support diverse learners.

Two teachers reflect on their combined experiences in teaching middle school, teaching preservice teachers, and teaching online in order to adapt and apply strategies for bringing positive experiences in a computer-based environment to middle grade students. The result is five valuable lessons, each of which is explained theoretically and described practically through a writers' workshop example.