mes of the era are also researched. Students read multiple sources, including biogra phies, autobiographies, and letters. Bartlett's Familiar Quotations is con sulted to reveal memorable quote

nd interesting events in his or her life. Other introductory ac tivities include interviewing parents and local actors who portray famous individuals.

only been reading for a few years! Therefore, the initial unit activi ties familiarize students with as many notable persons as possible.

The spontaneous, natural discussion ema nates from the students' research of their subjects' leadership qualities and experiences. At the same time, mem bers of the class might study the topic of leadership to supplement this unit

. To "become" those persons in the discus sion, the children were encouraged to discover critical information about them, including their achievements, early influences, reactions to issues of their day, and so on.

Dear Winston," said the writing scrawl, "You have helped me a lot in facing my goals. Now I can know that I don't hav

alternate graphic organizer for the traditional story map, which promotes inferential comprehension through the consid-eration of stories via the lenses of opposing characters.

ommon instructional tool for story comprehension, the story map, depicts comprehension as a sequence of esca-lating plot events with little attention to characters’ thoughts and feelings

However, to gain social understand-ing from fiction, we must consider characters’ internal experiences in addi-tion to plot because “just as in real life, the worlds of literary fiction are replete with complicated individuals whose inner lives are rarely easily discerned but warrant exploration”

literature teaches readers about the social world and how to navigate through difficult emotions and inevitable conflicts.

This empathy with Max, which transcended gender, ethnicity, and real-ity, was likely affirming for her self- concept. She also gained understanding about how her teacher experienced a similar situation.

The reader engages with and per-ceives the text based on varying personal backgrounds and reading experiences, which shape the young reader ’ s assessment of text difficulty.

Difficulty points to the involvement of the reader (the read-er ’ s perceptions of the text, judgments, etc.), while text complexity is better suited to represent the nature of the text (sentence structure, vocabulary, etc.).

isual information such as the expressions of the characters and the details in the environment will stimulate readers to go deeper in their interpretation.

The skills required for engaging with this kind of complexity move students cognitively from simply enjoying and doing their reading work to examining both image and text as integral parts of their literacy.

Lastly, a high level of complexity associated with knowledge demands refers to texts on themes that are not part of common experiences—for example, those that are culture- specific or distant in time—or texts that reference or allude to other texts to communicate meaning

simple structure is a level of text organization that is predict-able and chronological. Conversely, a text structure that is complex relies on unpredictability and shifts both in chro-nology and point of view. Illustrations that are part of complex structure (see also the notion of interdependent storytelling on p. 8) are “essential to understanding the text and may pro-vide information that is not otherwise

The quantitative dimension, which considers text factors such as word length/frequency and sentence length, can be measured by computer algorithms. In contrast, the qualitative aspect of text selection relies on teachers’ professional judgment

We sug-gest that in order for teachers to select complex texts for their students, teachers must first understand the meaning of complexity in language arts texts and be able to distinguish challenging from complex, includ-ing the interplay between text, illustration, and reader engagement in K–3 picture books, ultimately focusing on reader/task connections.

u might not see much difference between Jordan's first and second poems, but I could al ready see changes in Jordan. Even though he still focused on using repetition and frequent mention of various holidays, he had started to think of him self as a writer. He had also begun to think beyond himself and try out new ideas in his poems. A

s audience a backhanded apology while recog nizing the power of using simple words full of im agery. I believe my students' writing illustrates Butler's (2002) contention that "Using the writing of others to teach writing can yield effective and long-lasting benefits that give students confidence to write convincingly on their own

hat they do not simply explain what a particular text should mean to students

med poetry can be quite difficult to create, and, often, young stu dents' rhymed poems end up sounding stale or trite.

ome teachers even provide their students with fill-in-the-blank poems in which the meter and rhyming couplets are already laid out. All the student has to do is provide particular parts of speech to complete the poem, much in the style of a rebus or Mad Lib. Thi

nstructor asked me to voice my opinion about the meaning of a particular poem. Even

No matter what our personal feelings about po etry are, as teachers we must endeavor to teach po etry to our students.

at is it about teaching poetry that teach ers find so threatening? Is

6. Discussing the text.

5. Animation and expression

4. Fluent reading modeled.

. Clear purpose established

. Previewed and practiced

. Text selecti

Specifically, they found that choice was a motivating factor for reading and that the choices children made were often related to the teacher read-aloud

(Morrow, 2003) while developing their vocabular ies, experiential backgrounds, and concepts of print and story. Through a read-aloud, teachers can mod el reading strategies and demonstrate the ways in which the language of the book is different from spoken language (Hedrick & Pearish, 20

hile most educators agree that teachers should read aloud to their students on a regular ba sis, the specifics of how to conduct the read-aloud are less clea

e single most important activity for building knowledge required for eventual success in reading is reading aloud to children"

en Artley (1975) asked teachers what they remembered most from their elementary school ex periences, they consistently reported that teacher read-alouds were among their favorite memorie

o motivate their students to read and to build their topical knowledge about a specific subje

hildren who make such responses seem to view stories as invitations to participate or perform.

. Taking over. The last type of expressive engagement is taking over the text and manipu lating it for one's own purposes. In this type of response, anything goes because children aban don any attempt at interpretation or understand ing and treat the story as a launching pad for the expression of their own creativity. T

he children assume the role of story characters, or shove their classmates into the story in some way. F

r) has created with words and visual images. 3. Critiquing/controlling. In this third cate gory of expressive engagement, children suggest alternatives in plots, characters, or settings

he first type of expressive engagement is dramatizing the story spontaneously?in nonverbal and verbal ways

iterary response may also include art, music, writing, sociodramatic play, and planned drama (

Immediately after the teacher reads this, Charles starts to sing the theme song of the U.S. televi sion program Cops: "Bad boys, Bad boys, what ya gonna do when they come for you? Bad boys, bad boys!

use the assessment portfolios to evaluate the children's progress and to share with parents. The weekly writing samples give tangible, and often dra matic, evidence of what the children can actually do. They also document each child's growing control of writing mechanics and craft over time.

ll children are expected to write during this time, but I also al low quiet on-task talk between class members as needed. This helps to de velop the notion that the class is a com munity of writers.

I add these new ideas to the class topics chart, which displays a cu mulative record of possible writing top ics.

ps children elaborate in their writing. When to teach a given minilesson de pends upon what I observe the children doing as they write. If I believe several children could profit from a given mini lesson, it is time to teach it to the class. I repeat the content of most minilessons several times throughout the year, so if a child does not pick up on what is taught initially, there will be other op portunities to learn.

he third category of minilessons, writer's craft, deals with aspects that contribute to the effectiveness of a piece of writing.

I encourage children to practice their phonemic segmentation skills as they pronounce words slowly to hear the phonemes in the words and to associate them

e journal writing workshop described was suc cessfully implemented in a first-grade classroom, in which the children be came an enthusiastic and effective community of writers

is recom mended by many authorities in the field that children avoid simply summarizing their daily readings, but rather react to what they have read (Parsons, 1990).

hese activities are intended to assist students in drawing upon past experiences or schemata before reading in order to enhance comprehension. Hav

econd, with basal programs children are al most always placed into ability groups for reading instruction, a practice which can be detrimental to self-esteem and reading devel opment. Mini-lessons offer a wonderful way out of this dilemma

he initial block of sharing time in the RW is a time when teachers can share new discoveries they have made in literature

The five main components of the RW structure are: (1) Sharing time, (2) the Mini lesson, (3) State-of-the-class, (4) Self-selected reading and response, and (5) Sharing time.

cond, the classroom environment and daily routine must encourage reading as a pri mary activity integrated with other language modes, i.e., writing, speaking, and listenin

st, students should have own ership of their time (Atwell, 1987). This im plies that students be given opportunities to make choices about how they will spend their reading time. B

hildren spend up to 70% of allocated reading instructional time engaged in completing worksheets and workbook pages (Anderson, Hiebert, Scott, & Wilkin son,

n the Becoming a Nation of Readers report, various research studies in dicated that children in typical primary grade classrooms read independently only 7 to 8 minutes per day;

1) a lack of time spent reading, and 2) the use of worksheets

. Literature on theme studies and inquiry cycles Language Arts, Vol. 82 No. 5, March 2005 (Fisher, 1998; Gamberg, Kwak, Hutchings, 8t Altheim, 1988; Short 8t Burke, 1991) helped me transform my curriculum from themes about teddy bears and applesauce to in- quiry cycles where the children asked questions pertinent to their worlds. Questions surfaced about the house that was being demol- ished and rebuilt across from the school. When spring came, it rained and rained and eventually caused major flooding. Nature gave us in- credible reasons to investigate our world

On the following day during writing workshop, I pull my chair up along- side Aaron, and we decide to write a story together about our experience. When we share our story with the rest of the class, many more chil- dren are prompted to share stories from their worlds- stories of Sandra's next-door neighbor who raises 200 birds and of Manuel's grandma who had a runaway tamale!

"He is doomed to failure."

Aaron comes over and whispers to me that it is a good thing that I am teaching him to read because they need him to read a lot here at the bar.

hat every child who comes through the classroom door becomes our tea

Draw on information from multiple print or digital sources, demonstrating the ability to locate an answer to a question quickly or to solve a problem efficiently

nterpret information presented visually, orally, or quantitatively (e.g., in charts, graphs, diagrams, time lines, animations, or interactive elements on Web pages) and explain how the information contributes to an understanding of the text in which it appears

Use information gained from illustrations (e.g., maps, photographs) and the words in a text to demonstrate understanding of the text (e.g., where, when, why, and how key events occur).

Use information gained from illustrations (e.g., maps, photographs) and the words in a text to demonstrate understanding of the text (e.g., where, when, why, and how key events occur)

Use information gained from the illustrations and words in a print or digital text to demonstrate understanding of its characters, setting, or plot.

Use illustrations and details in a story to describe its characters, setting, or events.

Use illustrations and details in a story to describe its characters, setting, or events

With prompting and support, describe the relationship between illustrations and the story in which they appear (e.g., what moment in a story an illustration depicts)

Through dialogue, open-ended questions, and consensus building, youth from all backgrounds are invited to exercise theirrights as engaged citizens to help create community responses to inequality.

In our examination of culturally relevant practices in writing classrooms, Latrise and I foundthat many classroom teachers were familiar with culturally relevant pedagogy and could evendefine it, yet struggled how to operationalize their definitions.

Poppa Joe’s “Power Writers,” or student poets in his Power Writing class, were culturally, lin-guistically, and socially diverse, representing the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Columbia,Belize, and the United States. These student poets used the Power Writing circle to build com-munity while reading original compositions aloud in an open mic format, much like the venuesI observed in Northern California, and engaging in giving and receiving feedback

I could use this knowledge to reimagine the literacy classroom as an engaging and compellingspace for all students. Through community nominations, I learned about the work with two class-room teachers, Poppa Joe and Mama C, who invited secondary school students to use poetry asa tool to tell their stories, define themselves, and explore their histories, as well as their presentselves

s literacy orliterary-centered events outside of school and work communities that combined oral, aural, andwritten traditions through an exchange of words, sounds, and movements that privileged a Blackaesthetic

However young people’s livesare not static, nor do their lives have to be predetermined by poverty and miseducation.

youth prepare for a “performance of possibilities”(Madison,2005) as they share their writing publicly; that is, they use classroom forums, micro-phones, and stages as a way to (re)present themselves to the world. Although the “official world”of writing for the youth I have gotten to know through my work has been the world of publicschools and classrooms, they along with conscientious teachers have forged a collective “thirdspace” to present their literate selves and cultivate their literate identities.