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Although many students spend a considerable amount of time online, teachers cannot assume that students have the skills necessary for online reading and writing. Instruction in locating, navigating, organizing, and producing information in the online world is integral to students’ mastery of digital literacy. The authors detail the use of guided inquiry to explore multimodal text sets in a meaningful and collaborative way as a means of providing this instruction. Synthesis of prior research and analysis of study data resulted in the identification of five key principles necessary for effective instruction with multimodal text sets: attending to motivation and engagement, thoughtfully selecting sources, framing instruction as inquiry, supporting student synthesis, and writing for an authentic audience and purpose. These principles can help transform teachers’ instructional practices to meet the needs of today's learners.

As our world becomes increasingly interconnected, complex global challenges necessitate cross-cultural collaborative efforts. Thus, developing cosmopolitan literacies among students and teachers becomes ever more important. Believing that cosmopolitan literacies are central to being literate in contemporary times, the authors build on their existing project-based inquiry model to include global themes (e.g., poverty, global water and sanitation, climate change) and cross-cultural exchange. This theory-into-practice article explains the Project-Based Inquiry Global process and six design features that enable teachers to facilitate collaborative inquiry projects with their students. As students interact during the process, they begin to practice cosmopolitan literacies by engaging in reading, writing, and inquiry with people and topics from around the world, becoming cross-cultural difference makers.

This department focuses on literacy leaders, including school and instructional leaders, teachers, and external partners, who are working to improve outcomes for adolescent and adult learners in a wide range of education settings. Columns investigate the challenges and complexities inherent in such work and share lessons learned, impactful strategies and approaches, and promising pathways forward.

Literature circles undoubtedly foster literacy, but successful participation in literature circles requires students’ social and emotional competence. The author presents findings from a study of a fifth-grade student who demonstrated socioemotional growth while participating in literature circles. Specifically, growth in intrapersonal and interpersonal skills such as self-management, social awareness, social metacognition, and empathy were evident. These findings suggest that literature circles foster not only literacy but also socioemotional learning.

This forum highlights research that literacy teachers, students, and others can explore, use, or adapt as they provide literacy instruction and develop related programs and research agendas.

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.

Gamification uses game elements such as quests, challenges, levels, and rewards to motivate and engage students in the classroom. Given the engagement that students feel during gameplay, it is sensible to include elements of game design to motivate students and create a space for comprehensive vocabulary instruction. Designing a gamified vocabulary curriculum begins with clear learning goals, a careful selection of key terms, and the transformation of activities into quest challenges. This article shares how to design a gamified vocabulary curriculum to scaffold higher order thinking skills. Snapshots and examples of vocabulary gamification, along with suggestions for everyday practice, are included and aligned to the levels of Bloom's taxonomy. A discussion on how gamification supports student autonomy and mastery learning in a goal‐oriented environment is provided.

Sight word learning occurs in most early elementary classrooms. Some kindergarten students face the prospect of learning up to 100 sight words, and many teachers feel pressure to ensure that students know lists of words by the year's end. The authors offer five assertions about sight word learning to direct teachers and administrators toward the research behind word learning and building an early reading vocabulary. The discussion includes how we learn words, how teachers can choose words for early readers, how teachers can ensure that the words stick, and how teachers can choose instructional activities around sight word learning.

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.

Writer's checklists are evidence-based procedural facilitators that prompt students to actively engage in the writing process. Students with diverse learning needs experience problems when composing texts because of the complex steps involved. To write effectively, students must focus on understanding prompts; setting goals; generating, organizing, and translating ideas; revising content; and editing for conventions. This lengthy process often negatively affects struggling writers’ working memory and ability to self-regulate the writing process. A writer's checklist, an explicit step-by-step action plan, can be used to scaffold struggling writers’ progress and minimize challenges. Writers’ checklists serve not only as concrete reminders of the steps needed to accomplish writing tasks but also as self-checks to keep students focused and promote self-regulation. In this teaching tip, the authors recommend using a writer's checklist at the initial stages of the writing process, namely planning and drafting, before implementing it at the revising and editing stages.