Search

"Relief: Observations on Creative Nonfiction as Pedagogy" offers a case study in the possibilities of using creative writing as a pedagogical tool with ESL students. Analyzing the experience, comments, and creative work of a Chinese nursing student named Wei Wan at Ryerson University, the essay explores the benefits of personal writing and peer workshops as tools for self-exploration, aesthetic appreciation, and confidence building. While urging teachers to see the advantages of this methodology, the paper also reflects on the literary values of creative work in hybrid, non-standard English forms.

When school librarians justify the purchase of electronic books (e-books) for their collections, they need to understand e-book usage patterns and whether or not e-books are meeting the recreational and informational needs of their students and teachers. Although a sizeable body of research is available examining the circulation and usage of e-books in academic and public libraries, there has yet to be a scientific study examining these variables in high school libraries. The purpose of this study was to gain a better understanding of high school e-book collections through the analysis of circulation data and interviews with school librarians. A Relative Use Factor analysis was conducted. Quantitative results revealed that e-book circulation represented a significantly low total circulation for most of the high school libraries examined. Analysis of the interviews revealed commonalities and differences between e-book collections. Findings suggested that purchasing practices and marketing strategies can have a considerable impact on the circulation and use of e-books in high school libraries.

Literacy across the content areas has often signified a focus on helping future teachers navigate nonfiction texts and promote command of textual features and literary terms, yet these teachers also need to model critical insight that invites students to question information and purported facts that define their realities. Following a brief review of literature, we situate ourselves and our students. This article documents the pedagogical moves to introduce a graphic novel in a university Content Area Literacy course while also showcasing insightful responses from teacher candidates along the way. We argue that using a graphic novel and introducing it strategically to teacher candidates complicated their ideas about literacy engagement. Further, our work challenged teacher candidates to consider literacy practices, especially involving nonfiction texts, that are multidimensional and critical.

Basing on the analysis of the general system of exercises and tasks for translator/interpreter training, the authors offer a three-component system of exercises and tasks for teaching non-fiction translation. The components discrimination is based upon their aims, which fall into one of the three categories. The first one is related to the acquisition of skills and subskills, which are required for the translation process, but do not involve translation proper. The second category includes the translation actions and operations that can be automatised, while the third one incorporates translation skills, which are based on the actions and operations of the first two categories. Taking into account the said discrimination, the authors suggest a system composed of three subsystems: (1) preparatory exercises, (2) those intended for the translation automatic components formation, and (3) for the development of translation skills. The authors offer a list of skills and subskills required at each stage of the translation process (the source text analysis, the translation proper and the target text editing), as well as describe the content of groups, types and subtypes of exercises within each subsystem. The prospects of further research are outlined.

Given increased attention toward nonfiction and informational texts due to recent educational reforms in the nation, it is critical to examine how various cultural identities are depicted in nonfiction children's picture books. Focusing on the Orbis Pictus honor and awarded texts (n = 60) from 1990 to 2019, this article reports the findings of a critical multicultural analysis of the depictions of age, sex, socio-economic status, ethnicities, and geographic regions of these awarded texts. Using a secondary analysis of opportunities for agency, we examine how focal subjects (Crisp in Lang Arts 92(4):241-255, 2015) exert their agency in their respective contexts. Our aim in doing so is to problematize the notion of agency in these texts, specifically understanding who exerts agency, how, and for what purposes. Findings suggest that the authors of these awarded texts rely on highlighting White, European males where agency is typically depicted as an act that occurs in adulthood. As a result, discussion focuses on how such texts, although well-meaning, perhaps perpetuate the traditional notion and passivity of young children in relation to their agency and calls to question the lack of multiple perspectives and voices in the awarded texts.

This Critical Comparative Content Analysis employs theories of poststructuralist feminism to examine two versions of a nonfiction fitness text for young adult readers, one written for females and one for males. The analysis reveals the persistent naming of gendered assumptions about the appropriateness of particular sports to particular athletes, purposes of fitness, understandings of the ideal athlete, and emotional capacity of young adult readers. These assumptions result in regular and repeated performances of gender that have the potential to suggest to readers that there are certain expectations around fitness that depend upon whether an athlete is a girl or a boy. Taken together, they reflect a particular positioning of athletes and expectations around performance, suggesting to readers that how bodies are shaped and how bodies perform are normative and distinctly gendered, a finding that holds particular resonance when we consider the authoritative nature of informational texts.

Purpose: This paper aims to examine the reading of a book-length fiction or non-fiction text in one disciplinary literacy (DL) teacher education course. This paper considers how the assignment may help pre- and in-service teachers understand literacy as multifaceted and connected within and beyond their content areas (Moje, 2015). The research explores how reading a book-length text may help support DL, equity-oriented curricula that consider literacy as empowerment and connected to lived and communal experiences (González et al., 2005; Muhammad, 2020). Design/methodology/approach: This work is grounded in a qualitative, humanizing methodology and thematic analysis approach (Braun and Clarke, 2006; Paris and Winn, 2014). This approach examines student work in one DL course, considering how teachers within and beyond English language arts (ELA) respond to the task of reading a book-length text. Findings: First, the assignment offered space for participants to redefine literacy as empowerment and enjoyment. Second, the assignment helped participants connect literacy within and beyond their content areas and to see literacy as active and interdisciplinary. Third, the assignment includes clear limitations for a DL approach, particularly when participants focus mainly on connections to their content area. This sometimes obfuscated participants' enjoyment of reading. Originality/value: The study offers a new perspective on a task that is often seen as specifically "ELA": reading a book-length text. This project offers space for ELA educators to consider literacy from a DL, equity-oriented framework focused on enjoyment in literature within and beyond ELA classrooms.

Nationally and internationally, we face a crisis of misinformation and disinformation (De Jesus & Hubbard, "Social Studies," 112(3), 136-145, 2021; Lee & Hosam, "Sociological Forum," 35, 996-1008, 2020). Now more than ever, children need to know how authors obtain the information included in nonfiction books. Backmatter simultaneously models informational literacy and engages students more deeply with information, offering them the opportunity to explore further. Through regular explorations of backmatter, students become vicariously immersed in the dynamic processes by which information is created and communicated, normalizing the vetting and utility of information in the public sphere as well as in their own lives. In this article, we offer a brief overview of the evolution of backmatter in nonfiction for young people and propose a typology of backmatter. By highlighting the important, complex roles backmatter serves, we hope to help establish it as an indispensable part of reading a book.

Having grown up Black in America, the author reflects on his limited exposure to African American literature in school as well as his even more limited opportunity to see himself reflected in the mirrors of those texts. The article then extends into a framework for expanding the inclusion of African American texts in educators' classrooms. Approaching the literature from a historical design perspective (concerning the purposes that gave the literature life and direction throughout its existence), the article divides African American literature into two groups -- the texts that centre race and race matter and those that centre lives and lifestyles -- in an effort to challenge educators' understanding of both the literature and the people represented within it. The article acknowledges that, while perhaps different in design, both groups of texts speak to the humanity of African American students as the students exist both within and beyond the context of race.

The book "Superhero Scientists" is a non-fiction text for children to read about people involved in the fascinating world of science. The 21 chapters are full of facts, life stories and scientific discoveries. From astrophysicists to pilots, epidemiologists to vets, marine biologists to scene of crime officers--the book details why they are all superheroes. In this article, the authors present an extract from the book.

A 9th grade Honors English class creates and publishes original poems, art, fiction, and nonfiction products through an activity called "Type Three -- Twenty Time = T4." The instructional method merges elements from Renzulli's Type III process with elements from Brookhouser's 20Time Project-based learning model. Each student researches an interest passion topic and creates a related original product or service for a real audience. Upon reflection on the experience, the author identifies evidence-based practices including compacting ELA course content to create time for the T4 process; enhanced student engagement; active learning versus passive learning; improved writing skills; quality presentation skills; higher level creative and critical thinking; and upgraded 21st Century skills.

Even though the importance of extensive reading practice is well documented, as are students' changing leisure-time reading habits, knowledge of how much students read at school is still limited. Therefore, this study investigates how many pages of continuous text, nonfiction as well as fiction, students in middle (Grades 4-6) and lower secondary (Grades 7-9) school read during an ordinary school day. Comparing data from two large-scale surveys, in 2007 and 2017, our analyses indicate that the proportion of students who read one full page or more has decreased significantly. More students in middle school compared to lower secondary still read nonfiction, whereas the reading of fiction is now equally low. We conclude that the growing achievement gap among Swedish students on reading literacy tests is mirrored in the widening divide between students who still read extensively at school and those who do not read at all.

Situated in sociocultural theories of language and literacy, the authors describe an approach to teaching nonfiction text to emergent bilinguals (EBs) through the strategic use of a reading protocol. The protocol focuses on "where" reading text is positioned in a learning sequence and "how" students engage with these texts. Classroom transcripts are used to illustrate how the approach supports EBs to engage productively with nonfiction texts. The authors suggest three key considerations for supporting EBs' productive reading of nonfiction texts. These considerations highlight the equity issues inherent in providing and scaffolding access to these texts for this group of students.

The Common Core State Standards' focus on nonfiction texts has prompted middle schools to include more historical nonfiction, including books that focus on the United States' racialized past (and present) such as "We Are Not Yet Equal" by Carol Anderson (2018) and "Stamped: Racism, Antiracism and You" (2020) by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi. But books for youth about racism have been shrouded in controversy, anti-critical race theory legislation, and calls for censorship, suggesting that we need a better understanding of the books' content. Thus, the purpose of this study was to use content analysis to examine messages about racism and antiracism in "We Are Not Yet Equal and Stamped." Findings indicated the texts suggest racism takes numerous forms, and it is foundational and persistent throughout the United States' past and present, manifesting as scientific racism, institutional racism, racist violence, representational racism, and racist language.

In a time when some nonfiction historical books for children and young adults have drawn concern and critique for sharing difficult histories, teachers may be looking for ways to contextualize those narratives and provide more support for students as they engage in these histories. Going beyond the book with primary sources can help provide that context, and can create opportunities for critical reflection, historical thinking, and analysis.

In informational texts, when the identities of the narrators are inconsistent with the identities of the writers, can such text be classified as nonfiction? In this article, we examine the relationship between the writer and the narrator of informational nonfiction books in alignment with the ELA Common Core State Standards for reading in grades K-5. We discuss a trade book series that is widely distributed and accepted as nonfiction even when the narrator's age, ethnicity, and identities significantly differ from the writer. Specifically, we describe our approach to evaluating the "Holidays Around the World" series published by National Geographic, one of the most widely recognized and trusted brands in children's nonfiction.

Inference-making is integral to reading comprehension, defined as information 'retrieved or generated during reading to fill in information left implicit in a text'. However, there are few studies regarding the inferencing of young emergent multilinguals that account for multilingualism and culture, attend to the learning processes influenced by classroom instruction and interaction, and utilize qualitative methods to explore the multifaceted process of inferencing. This study explores classroom instances in which two second-grade emergent multilinguals encountered difficulties with inference-making, specifically when their first language or background knowledge was not accessed to support inference-making. Framing their difficulties as missed opportunities for learning, this study considers first language integration and multilingual pedagogies as ways to enrich learning. Findings revealed that inference-making was highly contextual, differing from text-to-text. Learners were able to infer in many instances, but difficulties arose when learners desired to articulate their inferences with specific words. Additionally, students encountered difficulties with the content language and background knowledge necessary to access an expository text. Implications of this study include supporting inference-making with students' first language and culturally sustaining pedagogies in order to provide meaningful opportunities to engage in higher-order thinking surrounding texts.

Researchers seeking to make valid conclusions about engagement for young children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) must first determine the reliability of estimates obtained across the conditions sampled. Working from that premise, we conducted a secondary data analysis of shared book readings between caregivers and their children with ASD, examining the contribution of measurement error on estimates of four states of child engagement. Caregivers read two different book types, each three times, with their children. With book type and occasion as measurement facets, we conducted a generalizability study and a series of decision studies. With the interaction of "Persons × Book Type × Occasion" contributing the most measurement error for four engagement variables, we only found stable estimates for unengaged behaviors. For the active engagement, visual engagement, and disruptive variables, 4, 5, and more than 10 book types, respectively, were necessary to obtain stable estimates across two occasions.

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explain how the Common Core State Standards may have influenced teachers' practices and philosophies regarding literacy instruction. Conducted in five kindergarten through second-grade classrooms within one elementary school, this research study collected semi-structured interviews, classroom observations, and teacher-reported lesson plans over fourteen weeks. We observed that one of the largest instructional shifts due to the implementation of new standards was in the area of informational text use. This change came about not due to the volume of empirical research stating the benefits of such texts, but rather because of an educational policy change. These findings hold implications for K-12 schools and for teacher education programs which are, in many instances, caught between the research, policies, and practice.

The National Writing Project's (NWP) College, Career, and Community Writers Program (C3WP) aims to improve young people's ability to write thoughtful, evidence-based arguments. In an era where public discourse has become increasingly polarized, and "echo chambers" of narrow views populate people's social media feeds, teaching students to ground their arguments in evidence is more important than ever. To equip students to thrive in this challenging environment, the NWP's approach to argument writing starts with having students understand multiple points of view that go beyond pros and cons and are based on multiple pieces of evidence, which ultimately enables students to take responsible civic action. At its core, C3WP supports students in navigating an increasingly dense informational world so they can become informed citizens who are prepared to participate in and ultimately strengthen a healthy and vibrant democracy.

The purpose of this study was to compare the reading skills of the fourth graders who were poor readers in different text genres (story and informative text). Fifty-six fourth-grade students who were poor readers participated in this study. Reading rates, reading errors and reading prosody characteristics of the students were examined in the study. It was concluded that although reading rates of students were higher when reading the informative text, they had also produced a higher number of errors for this text genre. This finding revealed that the informative text was completed in a shorter amount of time, but more errors occurred than when reading the story text. The findings of this study make it abundantly clear that all stakeholders should continue to work diligently in organising reading instruction and reading interventions that support reading fluency among all readers and for all text genres.

Critical literacy works to make readers aware of the explicit and implicit ideologies present in texts. Engaging in critical reading helps readers recognize and interrogate ideologies in texts in order to be more informed readers. This action research study examined the development of critical literacy skills in 19 prospective elementary teachers across three weeks of a semester-long undergraduate children's literature course. Researchers, who were also course instructors, intentionally paired texts to help students enter a Third Space in which they could practice intertextuality (Tracey & Morrow, 2012). The Third Space afforded ideological distance from both the students' personal ideologies and those inherent (and often unrecognized) in texts, thus allowing students to better connect and critique messages within and across texts. Researchers engaged in first- and second-cycle coding and collaborative discussion of students' written responses to texts and discussion transcripts. Findings suggest that pairing texts with similar themes allows students to begin to uncover implicit ideologies and reevaluate their stances both toward the literature and to their own ideological beliefs. However, quality of discussion, background knowledge, and emotional connection to the literature and/or the topic may also affect the ways in which students critically engage with texts in the Third Space.

Leisure reading is associated with several important educational and cognitive benefits, and yet fewer and fewer young adults are reading in their free time. To better study what drives leisure reading in undergraduates, we developed the Predictors of Leisure Reading (PoLR) scale. The PoLR investigates key predictors of leisure reading, namely reading motivations, obstacles, attitudes, and interests. We examined the PoLR's ability to predict language skills in 200 undergraduates, both directly and indirectly via exposure to fiction and nonfiction texts. Language skills were measured with a diverse battery of tasks, including items from two sections of the Scholastic Aptitude Test. We found that reading enjoyment predicts better verbal abilities, and this was often explained via exposure to fiction rather than nonfiction. In contrast, participants who reported reading due to extrinsic pressures typically had weaker verbal abilities, often explained by stronger associations with nonfiction. This pattern was observed across the raw correlations and in a series of path analyses. In sum, it was 'reading enjoyment' and 'identifying as a reader' that uniquely predicted better verbal abilities in our undergraduate sample. The importance of these findings is discussed in relation to fostering reading enjoyment throughout the various stages of formal education.

This study aims at exploring gender differences in text-type-specific reading competences via readers' gender-specific reading preferences. Women were expected to read more often for the sake of entertainment (entertainment preference), whereas men were expected to read more often to gain information (information preference). We further assumed that individuals who read for entertainment would have higher reading competence in fictional literary texts compared with non-fictional informational texts, and vice versa for individuals who read to gain information. The analysis was based on a sample of 830 adults between 19 and 71 years (M = 31.04; SD = 12.53) from a pilot study of the "German National Educational Panel Study" ("NEPS"). A structural equation model confirmed that women and men show different reading preferences during leisure time. The preference to read for entertainment was predictive for reading competence in literary texts; however, the preference to read for information had positive effects on reading competence in both informational and literary texts.

This paper analyzes "production stories," a genre of information literature and media responsible for teaching children how everyday things are made. As nineteenth-century families increasingly consumed tropical commodities produced by slave labor, including sugar, tea, coffee, rum, and tobacco, the production story developed in Britain and the United States as a way to explain to children where everyday household goods originate, making global trade networks visible in the home. These "production stories" developed strategies for raising or eliding ethical questions posed by who makes things, under what conditions, and for whom. Focusing on stories of sugar production, I find that production stories reveal surprising details about technical processes for making things, but conceal the human cost of production. They also end with consumption, when children use the products, symbolically affirming the conditions under which they were made. Drawing on scholarship from the history of technology and the history of the Atlantic slave trade, I contend that problematic representations of manufacturing processes feed into and support whitewashed histories for children. I conclude by analyzing contemporary picturebooks that resist certain genre patterns and encourage positive identification with enslaved black characters, who like child readers, are at once makers, readers, and consumers.

Relatively little is known about preschool teachers' read-aloud techniques with informational picture books. The purpose of this investigation was to identify similarities and differences between preschool teachers' read-aloud techniques with fictional stories, which are commonly read in preschool, and informational texts. Instrumental case study and purposive sampling were employed to investigate the reading techniques of two White female teachers in one preschool classroom as they read in small groups with children two-and-a-half to five years old. In terms of similarities across genres, teachers made personal connections, prompted children to interpret pictures, used multimodal instruction, and differentiated instruction. In terms of key differences, when reading fictional stories, teachers scaffolded children's inferences and predictions, whereas for informational texts, teachers described academic vocabulary and content and focused on informational text features. Preschool teachers might expect to use a core set of reading techniques across texts and also differentiate according to the type of picture book.

The author relates their involvement in the process of testing a picture storybook to teach science concepts. The project asked: If children were learning through a story where the science content was explicit, would children be able to explain the science in the context of the story and then in real-world contexts? Would the learning become embedded? In this article, the author helps to develop a picture storybook to teach science concepts and compares it with a non-fiction text. To compare learning from the picture book with non-fiction texts, the author compared the effect of reading a non-fiction text with reading the story.

By providing a wide selection of high-quality materials that will grab the attention of individual readers, school libraries can play an integral part in initiating and supporting student agency and a student-centered approach to learning. Such materials should not only address and expand upon what kids are learning in the classroom, but also allow them to explore an array of personal interests, tastes, and passions. Every student has his or her own way of acquiring and processing factual content, and books presented in different formats nurture a variety of learning styles and specific preferences. This article highlights books with a focus on science and can be used to supplement classroom materials and traditional narrative nonfiction. Ranging from profusely illustrated graphic novels to captivating fiction series, these titles will appeal to a spectrum of tastes, learning styles, and interests. The titles featured here are a small sampling of the wide range of offerings that can be used to explore and expand upon science curriculums, and a similar spectrum of selections for other subject areas should also be made available. These materials can be identified by consulting professional review sources, library catalogs, and readers' advisory resources such as CLCD (Children's Literature Comprehensive Database) or EBSCO's NoveList.

Recent contentions about "fake news" and misinformation online has shed light on the critical need for media literacy at a global scale. Indeed, digital stories are one of the main forms of communication in the 21st century through blogs, videos-sharing websites, forums, or social networks. However, the line between facts and fiction can often become blurry in these online spaces, and being able to distinguish between reality and fantasy can have important consequences in the lives of young Internet users. Using contemporary examples from news stories, fanfiction, advertising, and radicalization, this article outlines the features, affordances, and real-life implications of digital stories. As a result, we provide recommendations for educators to create awareness and empower students about digital storytelling practices.

This article describes an instructional model for integrating children's literature and language arts into the elementary school science curriculum. This science-literacy instructional model is an adaptation from the original 5E model of scientific inquiry. The model demonstrates how reading, writing, listening, and speaking can be incorporated into science instruction and how the use of fictional children's literature, in addition to nonfiction, can engage the learner and facilitate mastery of content and opportunities for problem solving and critical thinking.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to work toward more fully conceptualizing literacy practices as social by theorizing the combined relational and intellectual context for learning. This context is created through students' and their teachers' uses of language. In particular, the quality of language that creates this intellectual relational context is relational-keys that are inherent to any talk between people. Building upon Hymes (1974) conceptualization of key, relational-keys can be described as the emotional mood or spirit of a conversation, but they are much more than that per se. They are constitutive of the complex, multi-layered relationships that people have with each other, with themselves and with the material environment through their uses of language. Design/methodology/approach: Drawing upon a classroom ethnographic study in a first-grade classroom and using discourse analysis of classroom interactions, the author uses data from instructional conversations to illustrate how students and their teachers collaboratively perform relational-keys. Findings: Findings reveal that students and their teacher perform relational and intellectual stances toward reading and toward each other through relational-keys, that frame the act of reading and their experience of doing it together. Originality/value: The concept of relational-key provides literacy researchers with another tool to analyze what happens in instructional conversations. It also provides teachers with a curricular resource to identify relational-keys that are enacted. Therefore, teachers are able move away from the enaction of relational-keys that contribute to subtractive schooling, and toward relational-keys that nurture empowering stances in students toward reading and their relationships.

Purpose: Following recent scholarship promoting the study of sports-related texts as a vehicle for examining sociopolitical issues, this study aims to identify methods and materials used to facilitate the extended exploration of sociopolitical issues in a secondary sports literature class and to establish how students describe their experiences taking up such activities. Design/methodology/approach: This qualitative study stems from a greater investigation into the teaching of secondary sports literature classes. Data collection involved conducting interviews, observing instruction and gathering artifacts. Driven by guiding research questions, data analysis was conducted in an iterative and recursive manner and multiple validation strategies were used to enhance trustworthiness. Findings: The methods and materials used to facilitate the extended exploration of sociopolitical issues included a whole-class reading of Season of Life (Marx, 2003) and small-group research into "controversial topics" in sports culture. Student-participants described engaging with those methods and materials as relevant to their personal interests and experiences and revelatory in terms of learning about sociopolitical issues in sports and society. Originality/value: Scholarship promoting the potential for sports-related content to support literacy instruction has grown in recent years. This study covers new ground, for it documents classroom research to build understandings about the methods and materials used to facilitate the extended exploration of sociopolitical issues in a secondary sports literature class and the ways students describe their experiences engaging in such activities.

Do people comprehend texts differently based on genre expectation, i.e. whether they are instructed to read a text as fiction or nonfiction? In earlier studies conducted before the prevalence of digital and online reading, texts labeled as nonfiction demonstrated greater situational-model comprehension (gist), while the same text labeled as fiction demonstrated greater surface-level comprehension (word memory). Here we report three online experiments that examine the influence of genre expectations on comprehension today. In none of our studies do we record a difference in text comprehension based on genre expectation. We also collected data on self-reported reading habits and our analyses of these data do not show that individual prevalence of online reading directly moderates effects of genre expectations. Nevertheless, overall, the genres of fiction and nonfiction do not appear to exert universal effects on reading comprehension, especially in the world of digital and online reading.

The purpose of this article is to share specific methods employed to support preservice teachers as they engage in culturally sustaining nonfiction writing instruction with elementary children in an embedded methods course. First, we explore theories of culturally relevant and sustaining pedagogies. Next, we define culturally sustaining writing practices with young children. Finally, we share a framework for engaging in culturally sustaining nonfiction writing. We do this by describing our work of having PSTs (aka tall teachers) engaging in a culturally sustaining authoring cycle where they examine historical and contemporary movements beside their fifth-grade literacy pals (aka small teachers) to create critical nonfiction writing.

Pre-service teacher education programmes should systematically plan to increase the PST's understanding of how to meet the needs of the 13% of the children with disabilities in the general education classroom and develop skills and strategies to support children with disabilities and their families. Reading inclusion literature, non-fiction literature written either by an individual with a disability or their families, may offer PSTs a deeper understanding, augment the information they learn in the textbooks, and make clearer the complexity of the lives of students with disabilities and their family's experience. The participants were 22 pre-service early childhood education teachers enrolled in a senior-level Family, School, and Community course at a university in a southern state during their semester prior to student teaching. After reading a non-fiction inclusion literature book, participants reflected on what they learned from the book and how the book might impact their teaching in the future. Coding of all reflections revealed the following emergent themes: Understanding Parent Perspectives, Deeper Understanding of the Student and their Disability, and Advocacy. Results indicate a strong impact on how pre-service early childhood educators will support and interact with children with disabilities and their families in their future classrooms.

Purpose: Our world had always been multimodal, but studying how young children enact and embody literacy practices, especially reading, has often been overlooked. The purpose of this study was to examine how young children respond to nonfiction picturebooks in multimodal ways. This paper aims to answer the question: What multimodal resources do readers use to respond to and construct meaning from nonfiction picturebooks? Design/methodology/approach: Undergirded by Rosenblatt's transactional theory of reading and social semiotic multimodality, a 9-min video clip of three boys making sense of one nonfiction picturebook during reading workshop was analyzed using Norris' approach to multimodal data analysis. This research stemmed from a five-month-long case study of one kindergarten class's multimodal and collective responses to nonfiction picturebooks. Findings: Findings demonstrate how readers use gesture, gaze and proxemics in addition to language to signal agreement with one another, explain new ideas or concepts to one another and incorporate their background knowledge. In addition to reading images, the children learned to read each other. Originality/value: This research indicates that reading is inherently multimodal, recursive and complex and provides implications for teachers to reconsider what kinds of responses they prioritize in their classrooms. Additionally, this research establishes the need to better understand how readers respond to nonfiction books and a broader examination of multimodality in the literacy curriculum.

Information literacy is a critical 21st-century skill, yet young readers rarely have opportunities to consider where information comes from. In this Teaching Tip, the authors use author's notes in nonfiction storybooks to promote student awareness of authorship. The author's visibility in author's notes varies along a continuum from invisible (authors discussing the subject of the text using third-person pronouns) to visible (authors describing a personal relationship to the text). Using information literacy tenets to focus on how narrative nonfiction is created, this article highlights two specific examples of author's notes, as well as pragmatic questions related to various levels of author visibility for teachers to ask as they support their students' developing information literacy.

This study analyses fifteen months of circulation data from a popular titles collection at a regional campus undergraduate library. To better understand how popular titles collections in academic libraries are used, this data analysis shows a breakdown of use amongst the entire campus population (students, faculty, and staff). Faculty are the most frequent borrowers of items from this collection, followed by students and staff. Further analysis shows that fiction is more popular than nonfiction. Amongst circulated titles and in the broad fiction category, general literature and English literature are ranked highest. Young Adult literature is another category in which items frequently circulated. Finally, this article touches on the benefits of using a rental plan for leasing titles in a browsing collection, including a better ability to meet specific needs on campus or among student groups than with traditional acquisitions processes.

More than a decade has passed since "American Educator" featured the work of Joy Hakim, a writer whose nonfictional accounts of history and science have long fascinated students and teachers alike. With the advent of the Common Core State Standards, and their strong emphasis on nonfiction, Hakim's accounts may prove useful to educators seeking worthwhile content that both expands students' background knowledge and sparks their imagination. The following article introduces Hakim to those unfamiliar with her work (and also reacquaints those who are fans). She recounts her journey from newspaper reporter to children's book author, while sharing her thoughts on the importance of narrative nonfiction in student learning. Throughout her career, Hakim has written stories rich in detail about figures such as Aristotle, Alexander the Great, Nicolaus Copernicus, Sir Isaac Newton, and many others. In the sidebar "Field Days for Farady and Maxwell," we give a glimpse of how she takes readers on a journey back in time by excerpting a chapter from her latest publication, "Reading Science Stories," an e-book available on Amazon.com. This particular chapter tells the story of Michael Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell, whose efforts laid the foundation for "an electromagnetic revolution," as Hakim eloquently writes.