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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.

Recently, many have released calls for the need to help students evaluate online information. Additionally, many have offered strategies, lists, and other heuristics for helping students evaluate. However, educators lack a method for organizing these various practices into a systematic framework that captures the complex (occurring within online inquiry) and multifaceted (having multiple components) nature of evaluation. Such a framework can guide students as they evaluate information online. The author proposes such a framework that positions readers as proactive judges engaging in iterative evaluation of relevancy and credibility within and across three tiers (content, source, and context) and multiple texts while researching a topic of interest during online research and comprehension. The author also offers three instructional practices for engaging students in the framework, as well as an example of one student using the framework with support from his teacher.

Comprehending expository reading material is a challenge for many students. Research has shown that students’ expository reading comprehension can improve with the help of text structure instruction. The purpose of this article is to present teachers with a framework for effectively implementing text structure instruction in their classrooms. Within this framework, the authors suggest four possible learning objectives for text structure instruction. They then describe instructional strategies related to each objective and ways to assess whether the objectives were met. Finally, the authors discuss some issues to consider when choosing expository reading material for students and present text structure unit plans for grades 2 and 5 as examples of how teachers might construct a unit.

The ability to analyze and evaluate online sources for credibility continues to be a universal concern. In a 2006 study by the University of Connecticut, seventh graders lacked the ability to discredit a hoax website about a tree octopus. Using the same website in this qualitative study, 68 elementary students shared rationales about the source's authenticity during an exploration of reliability reasoning. Student responses provided insight into the application of web literacy skills and highlighted a need for increased instructional emphasis on critical thinking and explicit modeling of reliability reasoning during online searches.

The category of nonfiction picture books has changed in the past few decades, putting more emphasis on engaging writing styles, attention to accuracy, and using synergic relations between images and texts. As a result of this shift, the strategies taught to students for reading nonfiction picture books must change. The author presents five strategies that readers navigating new nonfiction picture books can use to comprehend all of the information provided by authors and illustrators: reading the pictures, tracking the words, focusing on the medium, analyzing the back matter, and highlighting the text in visual elements. When readers use these strategies, new nonfiction picture books encourage them to think critically, engage in their own research, and dive deeply into the content they are reading about.

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.

This commentary challenges the traditional, narrow definition of reading fluency. As part of this reconceptualization, the authors consider the role of stamina, content, and vocabulary in fluent reading. They look at prosody, silent reading, oral reading, and challenging texts (both fiction and informational). Finally, the authors discuss the role that fluency can play in upper grades and how educators can aid its development for older readers.

Within the context of schooling, conceptions of literacy are increasingly being associated with the capacity for learners to engage in disciplinary meaning making through face-to-face deliberation and dialogue. In this commentary, the author explores how a conversational infrastructure—meaning routines for talk, norms, scaffolds, and a repertoire of talk moves—can help teachers foster a discourse community in their classrooms. Such an infrastructure can support students of all backgrounds to explore, through discourse, how claims are made by members of a discipline, what counts as evidence, and the ground rules by which members of a knowledge-building community can engage one another in justifying certain points of view while acknowledging alternatives. This vision is presented as an alternative to the unspoken rules and rituals that sociologists refer to as doing school, which serve to constrain academically productive talk in many classrooms.

To increase reading volume and help students access challenging texts, the authors propose a four‐dimensional framework for text sets. The quad text set framework is designed around a target text: a challenging content area text, such as a canonical literary work, research article, or historical primary source document. The three remaining dimensions include visual texts (e.g., a video, pictures), informational texts to build students’ background knowledge and vocabulary, and an accessible young adult novel or current events article to help students engage with the topic. Working together, these texts can build students’ background knowledge, make the target text accessible to students, and also allow them to synthesize information across sources. The authors suggest that quad text sets are useful in English, science, and social studies classrooms.

Young students must become proficient in the new literacies of 21st‐century technologies to be considered literate. This department explores how literacy educators can integrate information and communication technologies into the curriculum.