Observation (“kidwatching”) is the basis for all the assessment and curriculum development that happen in this third-grade classroom. Professional inquiry into the naturally occurring data from the classroom promotes an expanded view of literacy and gives the teacher a detailed picture of what students are learning.

Dana Maloney and Monica Taylor share Maloney’s experience of using real-world problems to transform the traditional research process and motivate a group of high school seniors to critically understand their worlds.

New editors Jennifer Wilson and Carol Gilles introduce their first issue of Talking Points.

Kim Duckett and Brown look at Eye Movement Miscue Analysis (EMMA) as a way to help preservice and inservice teachers transition from a more traditional view of reading to one of reading as meaning-making.

This paper will argue that young children are rapidly becoming the “new rich” in regard to engaging with understanding and exploiting the many forms of popular culture. Children are tending to ignore school-based texts engaging instead in reading texts that represent internalization of cultural understanding and require a new set of associated reading skills. In this presentation we aim to demonstrate and discuss the nature and elements of the new “societal literacy” and the nature of the engagement with popular culture and community- based texts.

Two college professors in different settings and with dissimilar groups of students explored “the place of language” in homes and communities as their students wrote poems modeled on George Ella Lyon’s “Where I’m From.” The simple format and familiar experiences of Lyon’s poem created an accessible model for students to think deeply and write authentically about their cultural backgrounds.

Future teachers should prepare to teach technologically capable learners and to write engaging lessons to promote higher-order thinking skills. This research highlights the results of a study of students’ multimodal literacies to see how technologically enhanced responses such as blogs enable students to respond to literature with higher-order critical thinking.

Preservice teachers often find themselves caught between the theoretical constructs of whole language that are introduced in their university classes and the practical applications that emerge as they move into the world of K–12 teaching. The disconnect between the constructivist model that dominates preservice training and the transmission model that often is found in K–12 classrooms causes college students to question the validity or rationale of the theory that provides the foundation for best practices instruction. In an attempt to bridge that gap this paper describes four different workshops or projects with children built on a foundation of whole language principles which have been delivered to a combined audience of elementary students college students and teachers. While children learn college students and teachers also gain knowledge of strategies and the research that supports their implementation. Thus bridges are built to link theory and practice in a collaborative delivery and to encourage action research to further support these vital connections.

Karen Magro discusses how language arts can be a powerful tool for fostering emotional and social literacy in the classroom.

A message from WLU President Katie Van Sluys information on upcoming WLU elections registration information for the Literacies for All Summer Institute and other news of interest to WLU members.

A message from the editors about the current issue.

Claudia Cornell reviews Beth Olshansky’s new book The Power of Pictures: Creating Pathways to Literacy through Art which uses an innovative arts-based alternative to tap into the source of all good writing—the pictures inside and outside your head.

Reports from various TAWL groups around the country discuss each group’s activities.

Authors Stevenson-Land and Harmon describe how they used video podcasts in a second-language classroom to bridge the digital divide between students and teachers. Their project Vamos a los Oscars! used filmmaking in the target language to meaningfully engage the students in their learning.

Suskind finds inspiration and encouragement in the pages of Nancie Atwell’s newest book.

The authors discuss why ELA teachers need to be knowledgeable about the tools of multiple media and how such knowledge can encourage a different mindset in the classroom.

In Talking Points’ first published piece of teacher fiction Corinne O’Shaughnessy offers vignettes from the lives of several students and a look at the concerns and doubts of new teacher Ned who’s not sure he has anything to offer them.

James Wygant and Edie Lanphar the new editors of Talking Points introduce their first issue the theme of which is “Literacies for a Just and Sustainable World.”

This article considers three perspectives of a research study conducted with seventh-grade students during a unit on social justice and social change. The authors examine the possibilities and limitations of using young adult literature like Carl Hiaasen’s novel Flush on which the unit was centered community service learning and approaches to teaching for a just and sustainable world. Informed by students’ responses to this unit the authors offer suggestions for bridging the gaps between school mission and practice narrative and real-life experience and educational theory and practice.

News of the WLU elections the upcoming Literacy for All Summer Institute and information on joining WLU.

Rick Meyer discusses a documentary about the May 2006 teachers’ strike in Oaxaca Mexico and suggests that we use this as an opportunity to ask ourselves what we are doing to take action against teacher oppression in our schools.

The authors look at the persistence of stereotypes in children’s literature concerning people’s abilities and disabilities.