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As the popularity of project‐based learning grows, so does the importance of understanding how this instructional approach can support students’ learning and development. The authors describe a project‐based approach to literacy and social studies instruction that research has shown to be effective. Key characteristics of the approach and illustrations of how those characteristics are enacted in a project‐based learning geography unit are identified. In the unit, students develop informational reading and persuasive writing skills and learn key social studies content and skills by engaging in the development of brochures about their local community for an authentic audience. The authors also describe how educators can navigate common challenges that can arise when transitioning to a project‐based approach.

Building content knowledge alongside the task of increasing literacy skills has become a goal for many elementary classrooms. Selecting and implementing texts for the literacy block that both increase content knowledge and develop students’ literacy skills alongside increasing motivation for reading is a daunting task. The authors share a strategic approach for selecting texts called the quad text set framework. This framework involves first selecting a target text, which is a challenging content‐related text, and then selecting easier texts, including visuals, to build background knowledge and a hook text to garner interest in the topic. The teacher then decides how to implement the texts to best support students’ content learning. The authors describe considerations for selecting and ordering texts for interdisciplinary units to maximize content learning and literacy and provide examples of how to implement quad text sets related to math, science, and social studies.

Expanding definitions of literacy requires classroom instruction that provides multiple pathways for students to demonstrate their understanding of the content and communicate knowledge. Privileging the use of visual and multimodal texts as valued school communication may create equitable practices for students who are new to English or struggle with literacy for a variety of reasons. The authors explore the roles that the Talking Drawings strategy played in supporting students’ content and literacy learning and in their ability to reflect on their new understandings. In seven upper elementary classrooms, students drew pictures before and after focused instruction about a topic and added written reflections about the differences between the two drawings. The results of this study demonstrate how Talking Drawings provided a multimodal pathway for students to access the curriculum, communicate new content knowledge, redirect their content misconceptions, and reflect on their learning.

The elementary grades provide a rich context for literacy and science learning. Reading, writing, and talk support students’ conceptual understanding of and engagement with science. The authors provide theoretical and research evidence to support the teaching of five instructional strategies that can facilitate literacy and science learning in tandem in the intermediate science classroom. The authors connect each strategy to a current need in science teaching and learning and provide step‐by‐step instructions about how to use this strategy in the classroom. An authentic example of a fourth‐grade lesson is included to show how the five strategies connect with students’ literacy and science learning in the elementary science classroom and beyond.

s Literacy instruction does not just happen during the language arts block, as students can learn more about reading and writing during science, social studies, and mathematics. This department features examples of how teachers can teach literacy across various content areas.

Although ubiquitous in academic discourse for over a decade, disciplinary literacy scholarship has only recently begun to explicitly interrogate critical literacy as a discipline-dependent set of dispositions, discourses, skills, and practices. Drawing from critical disciplinary literacy (CDL) theory, this article presents findings from a mini-unit co-designed and co-taught by an Iowa state district court judge and literacy professor that sought to teach 24 U.S. History students the disciplinary particulars of applying critical literacies while reading legal opinions issued by an all-male state Supreme Court. Analysis of student responses reveals that the CDL mini-unit helped most students experience disciplinary belonging and develop text-dependent skills; additionally, most students began to consider writers’ positionalities when sourcing legal opinions. Yet, a small group of students repudiated the CDL mini-unit, evidenced through both resignation and overt resistance to discussing systems of power and oppression. Implications for secondary students and teachers are discussed.

This department explores the concept of disciplinary literacy—the conceptual understandings and ways of reading, thinking, and writing involved in critiquing and constructing knowledge in a discipline—and its intersections with aspects of culturally sustaining pedagogy. Columns highlight high‐quality disciplinary literacy learning opportunities across subject areas that engage students in critically examining the world around them, interrogating accepted knowledge, contributing their own perspectives to shape that knowledge, and sustaining and developing the literacies needed to do this work.

Young people in literacy classes sometimes think their teachers are not listening to them. The practitioners featured in this column listen to questions posed by their students and respond to them, with the goal of enhancing English language arts instruction for a range of young people and educators.

This forum reviews a mix of resources to inform pedagogy and related educational practices that foreground representations of youth and their literacy practices within and outside of school.