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The purpose of this study was to determine if young adults have access through school libraries to LGBTQ-themed literature. The library collections in 125 high schools in one Southern U.S. state were examined for the inclusion of LGBTQ-themed fiction, nonfiction, and biographies, including a core collection of 21 recommended titles. Results showed that, in general, the school libraries were under-collecting LGBTQ-themed titles. Although LGBTQ teens are estimated to make up 5.9 percent of the students in American high schools, the average number of LGBTQ-themed titles held by these school libraries was 0.4 percent. Suggestions for further study are included. (Contains 3 tables, 4 figures, and 1 footnote.)

Digital medias that become popular through the development of technology have given a different functionality to read write experiences. The new conceptions such as reading from screen, e-literacy, digital text etc. have gained currency. The aim of the research was determined as the effect of reading from screen upon the levels of reading comprehension of the fifth grade elementary school students in the informative and narrative text types. In the study, the pretest-posttest control group design was used. The participants consisted of 60 students studying at an elementary school located in the central district of Sakarya. Totally six texts were chosen to utilize in the study and the participants in control group were assigned to read the printed materials, while others were reading the version of the same material from screen. The reading comprehension test developed by the researchers was used as an assessment instrument. In the evaluation of informative texts, the five WS and one H method were used in accordance with the constructivist approach that is one of the alternative evaluation approaches, while the questions were being prepared for the narrative texts, the story elements which are generally required to be found in a text, were used and the story map method was prepared accordingly. The analysis of the reading comprehension points was performed through three related evaluations regarding the text category and therefore, two-factor ANOVA was used. As a result, the levels of reading comprehension of the students who read the informative text from screen were significantly higher than others. Moreover, there was no significant difference between the students reading the narrative texts from screen and printed material in terms of the levels of reading comprehension.

In recent decades, researchers have indicated that U.S. schools have underexposed elementary grade students to informational text. The increased exposure to this genre should be a top instructional priority. In the present study, we explored 46 third-grade students' attitudes toward and perceptions of informational text. Using three data sources (a student survey, individual interviews, and logs of independent reading time), we found that students read nonfiction text less frequently than fictional texts and preferred fictional to nonfiction text. Based on these findings, we provided suggestions on how teachers can help young readers diversify their text preferences.

With 13 published novels and 5 children's literature books, which have been translated into 25 languages, Andrey Kurkov has been recognized as one of the most renowned Ukrainian writers in the world of literature, and "Ukraine Diaries" is his first non-fiction literary work. This paper attempts to focus on Kurkov's unique literary characteristics in the unusual combination of deceptive simplicity of style and the profound insights, coupled with acrid ridicule and subtle narration, which can all be attributed to the characteristics of "the Absurdist School". The writer regards his living condition, as the report from Kiev shows, as kind of dilemma, or paradox: on the one hand, he feels frustrated with Russia intellectually despite the affinity to traditional culture in emotion; on the other hand, he feels more indignant about the European Union who brought painful experiences to his country and his people, in spite of his closeness to western culture and political system.

A balanced literacy program provides students with opportunities to interact with texts from a variety of genres. The dawn of the New York State Common Core Learning Standards has paved a natural gateway for students and teachers to regularly engage in reading, discussing, and writing nonfiction. This shift in the standards has inspired educators to design and teach co-curricular lessons and activities, connecting multiple content and special areas. Reading books about artists, musicians and inventors, as well as social, cultural, and political icons, expands the depth and breadth of one's understanding for how their contributions have shaped history. Infusing supplementary nonfiction texts into the curricula also presents students with other perspectives to consider. This takes them beyond the bare bones offered in traditional textbooks. Having access to a diverse selection of nonfiction resources is a critical component of inquiry-based learning. These texts serve to bridge what is being taught in the classroom with real-world experiences and applications. Nonfiction is written and published in numerous formats that appeal to students who possess a wide range of interests and reading abilities.

The use of teaching practices that involve intertextual relationship discovery in today's elementary classrooms is increasingly essential to the success of young learners of reading. Teachers must constantly strive to expand their perspective of how to incorporate the dialogue included in prior knowledge assessment. Teachers must also consider how the use of fiction and non-fiction text relate to each other when building young learner reader comprehension skills. This paper first briefly examines the premise of a universal approach to including prior knowledge as intertext. It then provides a case example of how prior knowledge is integral to an intertextual teaching practice.

An innovative reading comprehension curriculum that recruits social cognition in the teaching of visualizing, making inferences, and literature concepts was created, thereby achieving the first aim of the research. The Reading Rangers (RR) program was based on three research-based learning principles that were relied on in converting reading comprehension to a social domain. The RR curriculum was designed to capitalize on the social reasoning strengths of low-income children that have been identified in the cognitive-developmental literature. The second research aim entailed implementing this curriculum within a low-income urban school and comparing its effectiveness to an established reading comprehension curriculum already being used in the district. The finding that the Reading Rangers curriculum was more effective than the district program in facilitating students' use/production of strategies is particularly noteworthy, as production is considered a higher-level cognitive skill than recognition. This result is even more striking when considering the short duration of instruction, which was just twelve days. It is encouraging that the Reading Rangers curriculum proved to be effective in teaching reading comprehension strategy use to urban, low-income children. The current findings are consistent with other research that has shown positive effects on learning from educational practices that build upon children's social cognitive strengths. Given the persistence of the income-achievement gap and the preliminary success of this curriculum, building on social cognitive strengths in urban classrooms may be a promising approach for boosting low-income students' reading achievement.

Many elementary teachers teach students to write, but this writing tends to focus only on students writing about themselves or writing short stories. Because students do not spend enough time in the early grades reading nonfiction in science and history, they lack the knowledge--of both content and the nature of nonfiction writing--necessary to undertake research papers in middle and high school. To really teach students how to write, educators must give them examples of good writing found in nonfiction books and require students to read them, not skim them, cover to cover. Reading nonfiction contributes powerfully to the knowledge that students need in order to read more difficult material--the kind they will surely face in college. But more importantly, the work of writing a research paper will lead students to read more and become more knowledgeable in the process. As any good writer knows, the best writing emerges from a rich store of knowledge that the author is trying to pass on. Without that knowledge and the motivation to share it, all the literacy strategies in the world will not make much difference. In this article, the author suggests that schools start assigning a page per year: each first-grader would be required to write a one-page paper on a subject other than himself or herself, with at least one source. At least one page and one source would be added each year to the required academic writing, so that fifth-graders, for example, would have to write a five-page paper with five sources, ninth-graders would have to write a nine-page paper with nine sources, and so on, until each and every high school senior could be asked to prepare a 12-page history research paper with 12 sources. Such a plan would gradually prepare students for future academic writing and could also reduce the need for remedial instruction in writing (and perhaps in remedial reading as well) when students enroll in college. The author contends that if school districts adopted such a plan, it would not take high school teachers nearly as much time as it does now to teach students to write history research papers; students could draw on the knowledge they gained in previous grades to distinguish between primary and secondary sources, formulate an argument or a narrative based on those sources, develop a bibliography, and write and revise numerous drafts. (Contains 1 footnote.)

This paper explores the positivist, museum-based, and touristic constructions of indigenous cultures in the Americas, as represented in the DK "Eyewitness" series, and then overturns these constructions using an artist book created by the authors. In our analysis of the nonfiction series, we identified three trajectories: cataloguing, consignment to the past, and pleasurable display. Using techniques borrowed from "new historiography" and the decolonizing methodologies of Linda Tuhiwai Smith (1999), we suggest ways in which adults and young people might "speak back" to these positivist paradigms.

The Reading, Engaging, and Learning project (REAL) investigated whether a classroom intervention that enhanced young children's experience with informational books would increase reading achievement and engagement. Participants attended schools serving low income neighborhoods with 86% African American enrollment. The longitudinal study spanned second through fourth grades. Treatment conditions were: (1) Text Infusion/Reading for Learning Instruction--students were given greater access to informational books in their classroom libraries and in reading instruction; (2) Text Infusion Alone--the same books were provided but teachers were not asked to alter their instruction; (3) Traditional Instruction--students experienced business as usual in the classroom. Children were assessed each year on measures of reading and reading engagement, and classroom instructional practices were observed. On most measures, the informational text infusion intervention did not yield differential growth over time. However, the results inform efforts to increase children's facility with informational text in the early years in order to improve reading comprehension.

The field of teacher research is increasingly including self-study as a valid and reliable method with which teachers can study and improve practice. In this self-study, I develop knowledge of myself as a nonfiction reader and use it to inform my instruction. Guided by the work of Schoenbach, Greenleaf, Cziko, and Hurwitz (1999), I use metacognitive reading logs to examine how I think when I read and to select reading strategies around which to develop lessons for my third-grade students. In three cycles of action research, I teach the lessons and analyze them through journaling and dialoging with two critical friends. I find that empathizing with a novice experience of reading helps my lesson content become more rigorous and my pedagogy become more authentic and inclusive of my students as co-constructors of knowledge. These findings have implications for my practice, for teacher professional development, and for the field of teacher cognitive psychology.

After hearing reminisces from her parents about childhood adventures that took place in the 1930's Mississippi Delta, the author, Peggy F. Hopper, decided to document these stores in two children's books, "Peggy Sue and the Pepper Patch" and "The Adventures of Theodore Roosevelt Hollumway Jones and John Hart: Chasing Bandits." Her mission more directly was to give voice to the positive stories of multiracial relationships during a time of racial tensions in the Delta. With a background in reading and English education, the author faced challenges for deciding which aspects of culture representative of the time should be included. Since both books are categorized in the genre of children's nonfiction, care was taken to make each book as historically accurate as possible given that the books are memories from that era.

The purpose of this study is to explore the use of self-help books with therapeutic aims; and to propose suggestions by discussing the present situation of self-help books in Turkish cultural context. Taking these aims into account, the existing literature on self-help books is initially reviewed, and a picture of the self-help books in Turkey is drawn regarding the current status of bibliotherapy. Considering Turkey, there firstly exists a confusion in differentiating between self-help books and self-development books. In addition, Turkish self-help books are mainly translations of popular western self-development books lacking the elements of Turkish culture. Thus, original Turkish self-help books are required for personal uses of the readers and professional therapeutic practices. And there is a need for further investigations regarding Turkish context as to how mental health practitioners and clients conceive and make use of self-help books.

This article describes the process used by one high school teacher to incorporate writing into her classroom. The teacher made several modifications to her curriculum to provide her students with opportunities to engage in online research, and produce text for real-world audiences. The students' comments indicate that although they were initially apprehensive they were ultimately excited to work on the project. The writing project provided an opportunity for students to use English language arts skills and interact with various nonfiction texts.

The growth of STEM career occupations is outpacing the college enrollment of STEM students in the United States. There have been many research projects investigating this issue. There has not however been a study which investigated the impact non-fiction literature has on student interest in studying STEM (specifically engineering) content. The purpose of this study was to investigate the change of student attitudes toward engineering after reading literature involving non-fiction engineering centric narratives. The study used a modified version of the PATT (Pupils Attitudes Towards Technology) called the TEAS (Technology and Engineering Attitudes Scale) to measure student attitude change. The students were high-school aged students in the United States (ages: 15-17) who were enrolled in an English Literature course. The students completed the TEAS before and after reading and studying two engineering and technology centric non-fiction books (The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind and October Sky). The data revealed that student attitude after reading and studying the two books did not statistically change.

Despite increased attention toward children's nonfiction and informational texts in recent decades, there is still little research that investigates the ways in which various cultural identities are depicted in nonfiction children's books. Focusing specifically on the 143 winners and honor recipients of the Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction Literature for Children (1990-2017), this article reports the findings of a critical content analysis of depictions of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) identified people in award-winning nonfiction youth literature. The authors look across this set of texts as a literary construction of the world, making explicit where and how LGBTQ people are visible in these award-winning books for young readers. By analyzing specific depictions of queer-identified people, the authors argue the creators of these books rely upon heteronormative constructions, queer erasure, and compulsory heterosexuality to minimize (and even eliminate) queerness.

This article addresses the importance and benefits of integrating informational texts into read alouds in preschool classrooms through an instructional approach entitled REAL Time. Teachers use the REAL Time framework to pair complex storybooks with one or more informational texts in order to develop children's understanding of key vocabulary and important real world concepts. Teachers are then encouraged to plan curricular experiences for children that deepen and extend their understanding. Such experiences help the teacher link children's content knowledge across texts and learning experiences. While implementing REAL Time, teachers draw attention to text features and functions of informational texts in ways that build children's understanding of print.

Previous research has examined the use of nontraditional readings, particularly fiction, as a tool for teaching sociological concepts. Few studies have specifically looked at nonfiction monographs and ethnographies. This paper extends prior research by exploring how in-person and online book clubs using nonfiction texts can be used as a tool to engage and introduce students to sociological ideas. Book clubs were implemented in eight different sections across three courses. The structure and format of the book clubs varied considerably. We identify best practices for incorporating book clubs into sociology courses. Drawing on data from instructor-designed surveys, institutional course evaluations, and course exams, we also examine how book clubs influence student attitudes and learning outcomes. We conclude that book clubs can be adapted to fit a variety of courses and across different types of institutions.

This article examines data gathered in a broader study of a school-based reading challenge to children aged from 8 to 14 to read science information books, centred in their school or class library. A survey was conducted before they embarked on the reading challenge to establish the children's reading habits. After the period of time allotted to the challenge had ended, participating teachers and children completed questionnaires and a sample from each were interviewed. Evidence relating to reading non-fiction for pleasure was identified and extracted from the dataset and analysed. Prior to the challenge, most children's attitude to science books was that they would be boring, difficult or at variance with what they perceived as their reader identity. More positive attitudes resulted from taking part in the challenge. Contemporary science information books were found to be in themselves a source of pleasure. It is concluded that it is possible to differentiate between the pleasures of fiction and non-fiction and that different types of pleasure which are derived from reading science non-fiction can also be differentiated, ranging from extrinsic to intrinsic and including efferent and aesthetic. A tentative typology of intrinsic pleasures is proposed.

This article considers our experiences teaching a hybrid literature/creative writing subject called "Life Writing." We consider the value of literature students engaging in creative writing practice--in this instance, the nonfiction subgenre of life writing--as part of their critical literary studies. We argue that in practicing life writing, our literature students are exposed to and gain wider perspective on the practical, critical, creative, and ethical issues that arise from working with literary texts. Such an approach is not with risk. As we discuss in this article, life writing texts can often narrate difficult or traumatic material. However, we want to show how life writing, with its particular focus on actual lives and lived experience, creates a particularly conducive ethical, intellectual, and creative space for learning about and practicing writing.

The "Next Generation Science Standards" (NGSS Lead States 2013) mandates that schools provide students an understanding of the skills and knowledge that scientists use to engage in scientific practices. In this article, I argue that one of the best ways to accomplish this goal is to have students take the perspective of the scientist by reading nonfiction narratives written by scientists and science writers. I explore the anthropological and neurological evidence that suggests that perspective-taking is an essential component in the learning process. It has been shown that by around age 4, the human child begins to be able to take the perspective of others--a process that neuroscientists have shown engages episodic memory, a memory type that some neurocognitive scientists believe is central in organizing human cognition. Neuroscientists have shown that the brain regions in which episodic memory resides undergo pronounced anatomical changes during adolescence, suggesting that perspective-taking assumes an even greater role in cognition during adolescence and young adulthood. Moreover, I argue that the practice of science itself is narrative in nature. With each new observation and experiment, the scientist is acting to reveal an emerging story. It is the story-like nature of science that motivates the scientist to push onward with new experiments and new observations. It is also the story-like nature of the practice of science that can potentially engage the student. The classroom studies that I review here confirm the power of the narrative in increasing students' understanding of science.

This research explores upper elementary students' motivation to read fiction and nonfiction. Using expectancy-value theory, the researchers developed separate surveys to measure motivation to read fiction and nonfiction. Researchers administered surveys to 1,104 upper elementary students (grades 3-6) in multiple locations across the United States and found the instruments to be psychometrically sound. Results corroborate previous research demonstrating students' declining motivation to read across grade levels; in particular, students' value for reading was declining. This research also corroborates previous research findings that girls are more motivated than boys to read fiction. Researchers found insignificant gender differences between girls' and boys' motivations to read nonfiction, indicating a need to further investigate students' motivation to read nonfiction. Implications for classroom application of survey results and the need to enhance students' value for reading are discussed.

Many youth in the juvenile justice system with or at risk for emotional and behavioral disorders struggle with reading. A multiple-baseline-across-participants single-case research design was used to examine the relationship between a supplemental peer-mediated reading intervention and juvenile offenders' generation of main idea statements about informational text, which we used as an indicator of reading comprehension. Overall, students demonstrated considerable variability across conditions, which may have been related to contextual factors in the juvenile justice facility. Visual analysis of the results suggested a moderately positive, although variable, impact on students' generation of main ideas. Implementing rigorously designed research in juvenile justice facilities remains challenging. We discuss implications for providing supplemental reading intervention for struggling readers within these settings.

The Common Core State Standards have placed more emphasis on the close reading of all texts, and have made a point of increasing the use of nonfiction in secondary English classrooms. In this article, the author describes an approach for implementing close reading of literary nonfiction. The approach comes from a small-scale classroom-based research study that revealed statistically significant gains on the subtest measuring analysis of literature. After defining close reading and discussing how and why instructional methods differ, based on elements of analysis within fiction and nonfiction, the author describes the close reading approach using student samples. The approach described in detail is a three-column journal used for guiding students in the close reading of literary nonfiction.

This article examines how non-fiction children's television programmes portray bodily changes and sexuality at puberty. Engaging with the body and the sexuality of children in the broadcast media raises cultural and social challenges. Public concern about social morality and the 'sexualisation of children', sexual objectification and pornography, together with the construction of childhood as a naïve pre-sexual stage of life, have silenced children's television when it comes to the subject of children's sexuality. However, a few programmes have offered an alternative to this taboo. Based on a study of 30 non-fiction programmes submitted between 1964 and 2016 to "Prix Jeunesse" international festival for children's media, this paper describes and analyses how these programmes present unique, thought-provoking and innovative ways of engaging with the culturally controversial issue of the body and sexuality on children's television.

The Common Core has emphasized reading for comprehension, including making inferences. However, little is known about the textual demands found within assessment and instructional passages that are promoted as being in line with Common Core expectations. The purpose of this content analysis was to identify the readability levels, passage length, and types of inferences found within 72 fiction and nonfiction passages from the "PARCC," "Smarter Balanced," and "SAGE" Common Core assessments and one core literacy program, "Journeys," for students in grades three, four, and five. Results show that the readability levels of passages in this study were written at higher levels than their associated grade levels. Anaphoric relationships were by far the most common inference type found in the texts, followed by Prior Knowledge and Retrospective inferences.

The present study compares how Swedish (n = 340) and Norwegian (n = 236) teachers' human capital and social capital support reading habits as an aspect of professional development. The overall aim was to describe how teachers' human and social capital support their professional development as measured by the aspect of reading habits during leisure time. Our research questions were: To what extent do Swedish and Norwegian teachers differ in their reading habits during leisure time? To what extent do young and old Swedish and Norwegian teachers differ in their reading habits during leisure time? To what extent does Swedish and Norwegian teachers' social capital (collegial talk, principal talk) predict their reading habits during leisure time? To what extent does Swedish and Norwegian teachers' human capital (based on their age, education, and work years) predict their reading habits during leisure time? We compared teachers' reading habits between countries. Older teachers read, on average, more fiction, nonfiction, and newspapers. However, younger teachers in both countries are more prone to read digital texts than older teachers. By contrast, teachers' social capital only seemed to matter in Sweden, while talks with the principal had no effect in either country.

Finding culturally relevant informational books for a classroom library can be difficult. However, expanding the definition of informational text to include procedural forms, specifically cookbooks, can enhance the cultural relevance, range, and number of books available for students to read. Reasons for placing cookbooks in the classroom library include promoting reader interest and providing opportunities for students to read short yet predictable texts. Additionally, cookbooks contain the technical vocabulary of the culinary arts, thus helping readers expand their knowledge of food science. Criteria for selecting cookbooks for the classroom library include layout, font, photographs, physical size, content, and representations of the world and its people.

This study examined whether children 4- and 5-years-old (N = 156) can revise a physical science misconception from different types of picture books. A realistic fiction book and informational book with identical images matched in word count and reading difficulty level were compared to a control book about plants. In the pretest and posttest, children were asked to make predictions about pairs of objects that either had the same or different weight. The pretest scores showed that many children began with the misconception that heavier objects fall faster than lighter objects. Posttest scores revealed that children revised this misconception after reading the realistic fiction and informational picture books but not after reading the control book. These findings provide evidence that children as young as age 4 can acquire physical science knowledge from picture books and that both realistic fiction and informational books can be used effectively to expose children to science concepts.

The authors argue that nonfiction reading and writing instruction in K-12 settings must include authentic opportunities for students to seek information online. To that end, the authors provide two frameworks for thinking about information acquisition in the 21st century. The first, the intentional and incidental information continuum, describes how adults encounter information. On one end is the information that adults actively seek, often by going online; on the other is information that is encountered passively. In between is information that could be considered semi-incidental: The specific information is not actively sought, but the source was accessed purposefully. The second framework, a graphic for thinking about why adults actively seek information, proposes that searches should be thought of in terms of the seeker's education or preparation and the importance of the search. The authors contend that these frameworks can be used to rethink nonfiction reading and writing instruction.

In this essay John Fantuzzo critiques civic education's current focus on power and turns to James Baldwin's conception of love as offering an alternative approach. Fantuzzo's argument is that Baldwin's understanding of love can contribute to civic education by disclosing the significance of interpersonal solidarity between citizens, a significance that is obscured when power is of primary focus. He develops this argument by first examining the work of love in Baldwin's fiction and nonfiction. He then analyzes what he calls the familiar story in civic education, which is conceptually based in identity politics, progress, and power. Finding a sophisticated rehearsal of the familiar story in Meira Levinson's "No Citizen Left Behind," Fantuzzo illuminates for readers how, despite the many strengths of her book, Levinson's focus on power obscures the need for interpersonal solidarity in civic education. He concludes by providing a close reading of Baldwin's "A Letter to My Nephew" in order to explain Baldwin's guiding principles for a civic education that prioritizes the work of love. Without ignoring social inequities or the need for civic empowerment, Fantuzzo shows that Baldwin contributes to civic education by prioritizing the work of love and instructing his nephew, and the reading public, to face the civic love gap.

This article features student perspectives on the role of personal writing in English class. Key findings and quotations are shared from two in-depth interviews with students who wrote exceptional personal essays as part of a narrative nonfiction unit in a 10th grade English class. Participants reported that writing personally generated more investment than a traditional academic assignment, controlling the level of sharing was key to being able to write honestly and openly, and mentor texts and writers' notebooks were key tools which empowered their successful writing.

Being proficient in independently reading and writing complex informational text has become a need for college and career success. While there is a great deal of agreement on the importance of the reading of informational text in early grades and teachers are encouraged to increase amount of the reading of informational text in early grades, few quantitative studies have been conducted to examine if the frequency of reading informational text is relevant to student reading achievement. This study aims to investigate the relationship of reading informational text and students' reading performance in 4th grade based on PIRLS 2011 data through multilevel modeling.

To increase reading volume and help students access challenging texts, the authors propose a four-dimensional framework for text sets. The quad text set framework is designed around a target text: a challenging content area text, such as a canonical literary work, research article, or historical primary source document. The three remaining dimensions include visual texts (e.g., a video, pictures), informational texts to build students' background knowledge and vocabulary, and an accessible young adult novel or current events article to help students engage with the topic. Working together, these texts can build students' background knowledge, make the target text accessible to students, and also allow them to synthesize information across sources. The authors suggest that quad text sets are useful in English, science, and social studies classrooms.

Children's literature plays an essential role in the literacy development of children. This department column focuses on the teaching and use of children's literature and provides educators with information about a wide range of books across multiple genres that are representative of the diverse world in which we live. A strong emphasis is placed on the importance of having diverse library collections that take into account numerous factors, such as race, class, disability, and religion. This column also offers innovative approaches for bringing children and books together, as well as content analyses and rich descriptions of titles that share common features (e.g., endpapers, the blending of poetry and nonfiction).

In a South Dakota early childhood program, children and adults in the kindergarten classroom collaborated to build a "classroom zoo" in support of the children's pretend play. Creation of the zoo incorporated information about animals and zoos that the children and their families and teachers located in secondary sources such as nonfiction books and the Web site of the San Diego Zoo. Zoo-related activities culminated in a Grand Opening to which families and other classrooms in the center were invited. (Contains 19 figures.)

The intent of this research was to investigate the experiences of eighth grade readers as they read nonfiction text on an iPad for academic purposes. We investigated reading strategies that students use to support their reading as well as what role iPad features played in the reading process. New literacies, metacognition and transactional theories informed the framework. Multiple data sources were used to triangulate findings and included (a) retrospective think alouds, (b) student iPad survey, (c) pre and post study student interviews, (d) Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategies Inventory and (e) student observations. Data for the collective case study participants focused on the identification of proficient readers who displayed confidence, competency, and control over text. Themes identified in the collective case studies included (a) reading comprehension strategies, (b) nonfiction features and (c) iPad features to support their reading of nonfiction on the iPad.

In the summer of 2002, the authors' university offered an online course, titled "Swims with Words: Reading, Writing, and Teaching Creative Nonfiction" (referred to as "CNF"). "Swims with Words" is a seven-week online writing course that immersed students in reading and writing nonfiction texts so they could explore nonfiction's value and its relation to other genres, and investigate its potential for their own writing and teaching. This was a new approach to teaching writing (online), as well as a new genre for all of the 18 participants. Before the course began, the authors designed their research project to explore how teachers develop their own understanding of a new genre, how their own writing develops, how their writing instruction changes, and how all of this happens through an online venue. In this paper, the authors focus on how teachers form their concept of this genre. They expected the participants' understanding of this genre--their mental models of CNF--to influence what they tried in their writing and in their teaching of writing.

This article focuses on the use of questioning strategies to promote comprehension of informational texts. It proposes that if students gain personally effective questioning strategies for comprehending informational text and a sense of self-efficacy in using these strategies independently, before they enter middle and secondary grades, their chances of school completion, and success will be enhanced. It challenges teachers to model appropriate questions. In addition this article highlights three questioning strategies teachers can use to help student generate quality questions.

Story telling is a very important skill for children to have. The ability to recall information as well as to infer, embellish, and make up stories is critical to living as a successful social member of society. The Chart presented in this article demonstrates the progress one child with autism made in telling both fiction and nonfiction stories.