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The purpose of this article is to share how the authors supported kindergartners’ and first graders’ developing creativity through stories they composed in writing and art. Over eight years, the authors explored ways to use picturebooks as mentor texts to help students explore how the authors and artists create meaning multimodally. This article shares minilessons and examples of how students creatively and imaginatively told their stories; learned to think, see, and reason; and invented and problem solved their stories, seamlessly weaving their meanings into writing and art.

This article shares the authors' work with first graders and how, through various reading, writing, and art experiences around picturebooks, the children learned to read and communicate through art along with written language. The work is grounded in multimodality theory and the belief that all modes (particularly art for the purposes of this article) are equally valid and significant ways of communicating meaning. The article provides examples of experiences with the picturebooks I Love My New Toy and Guji Guji of how the children came to understand the language of art. Insights from this work that are discussed include that young children can and do think and read multimodally, that understanding art as an equally valid mode of communication, along with written language, provides children with additional pathways through which to construct meaning, and that art is a valid language that needs to be valued and taught.

In this article the authors share how they use global literature picturebooks with pre‐kindergarten, kindergarten, and first grade children in the context of A Curriculum That is International to develop the children's intercultural understandings. The picturebooks, shared through read alouds, individual and partner reading, and browsing, is focused particularly on children's personal identities as cultural beings and their identifying issues for which they take action to make the world a better place. In addition, the illustrations are discussed to develop the children's understandings of creating meaning through art. The authors argue that by through experiences with global literature children develop richer understandings of themselves as complex cultural beings and a perception of themselves as capable problem‐solvers who identify issues and take action to solve them.

This study, set in the context of a longitudinal interpretative case study of the literacy learning of one child, Sarah, from age 2-5, documents the role and significance Sarah's name had in deepening her understandings of written language. Data, collected primarily through participant observations, interviews/informal conversations, and writing samples, were gathered in everyday literacy events. Sarah's name, the first writing she memorized and didn't invent, presented her with key issues she needed to confront in refining her literacy, such as the functions and forms of written language, upper- and lower-case letters, directionality, and the relationship between the orthographic and phonological systems of our language. This study highlights the critical importance of an authentic, purposeful, literacy-rich, supportive environment for children, providing them with time to invent, predict and guess how written language works, and compare their inventions with conventional spellings, particularly their names. Sarah's inventions and the interaction and support she received from others built her self-confidence as a learner and deepened her understandings of written language.

In this article, the authors share their work with Zachary, a fourth grader who was perceived as having difficulties with reading. Through retrospective miscue analysis (RMA) over 14 sessions in 5 months, Zachary came to revalue reading as a process of constructing meaning and to revalue himself as a capable reader. The authors describe and use transcripts to show how Zachary came to understand and build on his strengths as a reader through RMA and read more effectively and efficiently. They argue that RMA is a powerful tool that enriches a reading curriculum of authentic reading. It raises reading to a consciousness level, demystifies the reading process, and helps readers, particularly those who are struggling, grow stronger as readers.

“Lingua Anglia: Bridging Language and Learners” discusses critical, transformative, and powerful ways to support students’ acquisition of Standard English.

[...]all reading, whether alphabetic or nonalphabetic, print or multimodal, involves readers integrating the same strategies with language cueing systems (see Figure 2) to make sense of what they read. Previewing, as noted above, is a useful strategy for this. Since they provide fewer linguistic challenges, using texts with pictures/images such as graphic novels (see Table 1) are helpful in supporting multilingual learners in the secondary classrooms.

This study uses a transactive socio-psycholinguistic lens to study children's negotiation of orthographic features while reading A Letter to Amy (Amy). It examines nine second graders' oral readings & retellings to understand the effect of these features on their comprehending (process readers use as they transact with text) & comprehension (the end product of reading). The results indicate a complex relationship between the orthographic features of Amy & readers' comprehending. The syntactic structures, exaggerated spellings, & unexpected punctuation affect the students' comprehending. However, background knowledge & experiences help students' comprehension despite the prevalence of a number of unique orthographic features. Implication for teachers include, 1) developing awareness that orthographic features of texts can influence readers' comprehending; 2) how readers \"sound\" when they read, does not necessarily indicate stronger or weaker comprehension; & 3) in order to successfully navigate literature, children need opportunity & experience with a variety of texts. Adapted from the source document