Language Arts - Current Issue

As foundational reading curricula are being rapidly scaled up, it is essential to consider how teachers navigate these shifts alongside their existing and multifaceted expertise in bilingualism, early childhood pedagogy, and reading development. This article examines the challenges bilingual teachers face when implementing foundational reading instruction in bilingual early childhood classrooms, focusing on the instructional practices and experiences of two early childhood bilingual teachers. It highlights the need for professional learning and teacher agency grounded in a broad and interconnected literacy ecosystem.

This study examines how translanguaging and multimodal pedagogies enable emergent bilingual students to use their full linguistic repertoire while developing biliteracy. It also explores how various modes of text representation facilitate the collection and dissemination of new knowledge while promoting inquiry-based learning.

This article explores immigration policies and their impact on classrooms and makes suggestions for school and classroom practices from the perspective that immigration is normal.

Explore suggestions for uplifting immigrant experiences through schoolwide policies, teacher learning, and instructional choices.

In this essay, we reflect on whether there can ever, realistically, be a one-size-fits-all solution to the complexity of teaching reading. Working together in a school-university partnership, we speak about the importance of giving space to the teacher’s unique expertise in the crafting of reading instruction.

This article debunks the common rationale for enforcing the use of only “standard” English among Black Language speakers—it will help students “get a job” in the future. On the contrary, I argue that Black Language is an important vehicle for learning the content that is required for future job placement. Ignoring this truth forces Black students to only learn in white mainstream English. Finally, I explain how phonics instruction has never honored Black Language phonology and offer suggestions for practitioners.

This article identifies how literature inspires activism for secondary students using Cisneros’s Efren Divided (2020) and Alvarez’s In the Time of the Butterflies (1994).

We provide recommendations for how teachers may employ translanguaging writing pedagogy to cultivate positive multilingual learners’ identities.

This piece explores strategies that infuse TSEL competencies into daily read-alouds, using culturally diverse texts to resist the ongoing harm of the current censorship movement for the emotional, social, and literacy future of all students

This year we are exploring the vital role classroom discussion plays in scaffolding young children into practices that promote greater civic knowledge and engagement. This article explores the role of vulnerability, literacy, and multicultural education in creating classroom environments that promote liberation and equity while supporting students into discussions that bridge cultural and linguistic gaps.