Jennifer D. Turner

Orchestrating Success for African American Readers: The Case of an Effective Third-Grade Teacher.

Abstract Through building on and extending the metaphor of “orchestration,” forwarded by reading scholars, this case study research describes and examines how an effective third‐grade teacher organizes and facilitates high‐quality reading instruction for African American students. Findings suggested that the teacher used three pedagogical strategies to meet African American students’ social and literacy needs: (a) enacting a “border crossing curriculum” (b) making the strategies and skills of good readers “transparent” and (c) making cross‐cultural connections to students through literature. Implications for classroom reading instruction and reading research are discussed.

When It's More Than You, Jesus, and the Pencil: Reflections on an Academic Writing Mentorship

What makes academic writing so challenging, and what might be done to help graduate students who struggle with it? The authors explore answers to these questions by reflecting upon their own experiences in graduate school and highlighting their collaboration as African American literacy scholars. They use the term academic writing mentorship to characterize their writing relationship and discuss how collaborative work transformed their perceptions of and experiences with academic writing. They also offer academic writing mentorships as a possible strategy for supporting graduate students struggling with academic writing.

Accelerating the College and Career Readiness of Diverse K-5 Literacy Learners.

Given the increasing demand for a well-educated American workforce, college and career readiness has become a significant educational priority. New educational initiatives, including the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts, are being developed and implemented to prepare students for success in postsecondary education and the workplace. In this article, we discuss how college and career readiness standards have transformed expectations for literacy instruction in K–5 classrooms, especially for students from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Given that students of color have been historically underserved in schools, we contend that these children need more equitable and enriched opportunities to learn academic literacies, content knowledge, and communication skills to achieve their future college aspirations and career goals. To that end, we offer key principles (i.e., community-oriented classrooms, close reading of complex texts, content-rich inquiry, and cultural connectedness) that elementary educators can use to design engaging learning environments and robust literacy lessons that advance the college and career readiness of all students.

New Teachers as Literacy Leaders

New teachers, even in their first years, can be important literacy leaders in their classrooms and schools. The authors offer their thoughts and ideas to inspire new teachers to step up and strive to lead.

Will the Real Reader Please Stand up

On the surface, Kevin Johnson (a pseudonym) appears to be an ideal third-grade student in a school populated with many at-risk learners. Kevin’s oral reading is graceful and fluent, and he can almost always reproduce the particulars included in the text he reads. His love of sports and computer games has been painstakingly channeled by his parents into a sense of responsibility to keep his grades up and complete his work on time. Kevin seldom complains about school and looks forward to seeing his friends every day. Seeing his teacher every day is another matter altogether. The problem is that Kevin’s third-grade teacher

Rethinking the meaning of difference: Contemporary challenges for researchers and practitioners in literacy and language education

Book reviewed in this article: Handbook of Language and Literacy: Development and Disorders. Edited by C. Addison Stone, Elaine R. Silliman, Barbara J. Ehren, & Kenn Apel. 2004.

Getting into the Zone: Cases of Student-Centered Multicultural Literacy Teacher Education.

The purpose of this article is to report our preliminary work on student-centered teacher preparation to promote school success among culturally and linguistically diverse learners. The authors believe that teacher education programs need to be very purposeful in their approach to multicultural literacy teacher education. Drawing upon Vygotskian perspective on learning, the authors chose two cases from the beginning of their teacher education program and during student teaching, which often marks the end of teacher education program. The authors explain the potential of a student-centered approach they experienced and its implications for teacher education programs.

Learning Disabilities or Teaching Disabilities? Rethinking Literacy Failure

Mrs. Baxter (pseudonym), an experienced first-grade teacher at a local urban school, is having a very bad day. Several of her students have been struggling mightily with the acquisition of reading skills, and others have descended into sheer boredom. Mrs. Baxter is having a difficult time not blaming herself for the failure of her students. After all, as her curriculum coordinator has repeatedly emphasized, the school’s core reading program is a research-based and well-proven program of instruction. The program is rooted in the development of a set of preliminary subskills thought to underlie the act of reading. Although these skills are developed in isolation from real text, the program provides teachers with a thorough script to follow. The coordinator has made some veiled suggestions that it may be the fidelity with which Mrs. Baxter is implementing the program that is the source of the students’ problems. Her idea of doing several unannounced walk-throughs in the coming weeks to determine if the scripted program is being properly delivered has done little to assuage Mrs. Baxter’s