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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.

Decades of research offer important understandings about the nature of comprehension and its development. Drawing on both classic and contemporary research, in this article, we identify some key understandings about reading comprehension processes and instruction, including these: Comprehension instruction should begin early, teaching word-reading and bridging skills (including graphophonological semantic cognitive flexibility, morphological awareness, and reading fluency) supports reading comprehension development, reading comprehension is not automatic even when fluency is strong, teaching text structures and features fosters reading comprehension development, comprehension processes vary by what and why we are reading, comprehension strategy instruction improves comprehension, vocabulary and knowledge building support reading comprehension development, supporting engagement with text (volume reading, discussion and analysis of text, and writing) fosters comprehension development, and instructional practices that kindle reading motivation improve comprehension. We present a visual depiction of this model, emphasizing the layered nature of impactful comprehension instruction.

As reasons to promote the inclusion of graphic novels in the curriculum expand, many teachers have yet to incorporate graphic novels into their teaching repertoire. In this article, two teacher educators describe a systematic approach that they use to teach preservice teachers how to read graphic novels, focusing on specific strategies in three major areas: visual literacy, key graphic novel vocabulary, and synthesizing images and words. The goal is to promote the use of graphic novels by preservice teachers for multiple purposes in future classrooms. These strategies are shared to encourage inservice teachers to develop a level of comfort with graphic novels by systematically trying out the strategies themselves and considering the addition of graphic novels to their curriculum.

The authors detail how one fourth‐grade teacher implemented a comics writers’ workshop in the weeks that concluded the academic school year. Each phase of the comics writers’ workshop is described. Students interpreted and analyzed the words, images, and design features that compose published comics before constructing and publishing their own multimodal comics text. The authors show that multimodal literacies instruction recognizes the multiple ways in which students can represent and communicate their thinking, and they argue that multimodal literacies instruction should occur throughout the curriculum across the school year.

The increase of graphic novels in libraries and schools and on award lists illustrates one way that children's literature is changing. This article explores the relation between words and illustrations in a popular graphic novel. The multimodal format of graphic novels requires readers to consider the words, graphics, panel sizes, and uses of color and line. Thus, the authors propose that (a) students need explicit instruction on how to read graphic novels, (b) graphic novel reading requires slow reading to attend to the details, and (c) opportunities to talk about text are necessary to explore the complexities of graphic novels.

Nonfiction children's literature has changed in recent years, including an increase in organizational, design, and text features. The authors conducted a content analysis of 112 nonfiction award-winning and honor books from 2000 to 2018 to examine how the books have changed over time. The authors discuss the patterns, changes, and complexities found in nonfiction children's literature and provide text sets and guiding questions for classroom instruction and exploration of three features that appear in books in a variety of ways and may be challenging for students: atypical text, graphics with information, and supplemental expository information.

This forum focuses on the intersections of texts and identities with the aim of selecting and mediating texts that readers and writers find valuable within and outside of formal educational settings.

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.

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.

There is far more to the digital divide than meets the eye. In this article, the authors consolidate existing research on the digital divide to offer some tangible ways for educators to bridge the gap between the haves and have‐nots, or the cans and cannots. Drawing on Aldous Huxley's notion of a “brave new world,” some digital divide approaches and frameworks require debunking and are strongly associated with first‐world nations that fail to account for the differential access to technologies that people who live in poverty have. Taking a closer look at current realities, the authors send out a call to teachers, administrators, and researchers to think more seriously and consequentially about the effect the widespread adoption of technologies has had on younger generations and the role of the digital on knowledge creation and on imagined futures.