Have you ever looked at old photographs and imagined what life was like when they were taken?

Taking the time to guide students through a thoughtful examination of photographs can help them to connect to concepts and successfully tackle learning new material. Impersonal textbooks on seemingly inaccessible topics become much more inviting once students have "lived in the moment" of photographs on that topic.

Look for vivid photographs that connect with your curriculum and to which your students can make a personal connection. Guide students in their viewing of a photograph by stimulating their mental imagery and suggesting a personal connection to events portrayed in the picture. For example, to prepare students to study the Great Depression, identify a photograph that illustrates some key themes of the time period. Encourage students to put themselves into the photograph by choosing a person pictured there and imagining they are that person. Ask them to consider what they might be feeling and what their day might be like.

Using this strategy, students encounter key ideas through pictures before reading, increasing their motivation to learn more about the topic and priming them to learn from text materials that may otherwise be regarded as cold and impersonal.

The complete "You Ought to Be in Pictures" strategy, along with over 40 other user-friendly strategies that scaffold comprehension, are available in Classroom Strategies for Interactive Learning, Third Edition—the updated and revised edition of Doug Buehl's popular bestseller.

To try an instructional strategy that provides students with a framework for generating their own questions as readers of texts across a variety of academic disciplines, download this free strategy from the book:

Free strategy: Self-Questioning Taxonomy

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"Tell me about it," you say as your preschooler presents his latest artistic masterpiece. Young children create pictures to capture meaning. When teachers or parents talk with children about their drawings and then offer to write down what they say, children have opportunities to learn that the written word can convey meaning. The earlier these experiences are provided, the earlier children get the idea that words are powerful.

Take the time to talk to your preschoolers about the masterpieces they create. Through talking about their drawings, children learn far more about writing than the mere fact that what they say can be written down.

It's not necessary to write down the first words the child says as these words rarely tell the whole story. Instead, ask questions to encourage the child to elaborate on all that the picture might mean. Then offer to write down what the child wants to say about the story behind the picture. This is one way that teachers can help preschoolers to understand that a special graphic system—writing—is used to convey meaning.

To learn more about encouraging and supporting early writing development in your preschoolers, download Chapter 6 of Writing in Preschool: Learning to Orchestrate Meaning and Marks, Second Edition:

Free chapter: Assessing Writing Development in the Early Years

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Writing in Preschool: Learning to Orchestrate Meaning and Marks, Second Edition is one of six insightful books in the Preschool Literacy Collection available from IRA in April.

To read about other books in the new edition of the Preschool Literacy Collection, click here.

What does high-quality writing look like at the fourth- and fifth-grade level?

This writing sample, "The Origon of Rabbits," is a very nice lead-in for a piece of informational text about rabbits. Younger writers often begin their informational texts by either announcing up front the topic of their writing or by expecting the title to provide the context for readers. But as fourth- and fifth-grade students mature as writers, their opening strategies become more sophisticated, as shown in this writing sample. It demonstrates this young writer's ability to lead readers into a text by building context.

To see numerous examples of student work that demonstrate exactly what does—and doesn't—represent a "standards-setting" performance in writing in these grades, download Chapter 5 of Reading and Writing with Understanding: Comprehension in Fourth and Fifth Grades:

Free chapter: Effective Writing

Reading and Writing with Understanding offers classroom ideas that are specially targeted for students at this critical stage of literacy development—along with dozens of examples of student performances and detailed commentaries on student work for both reading and writing.

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One by one, classrooms start to enter the auditorium ...The auditorium reverberates with the sounds of laughter, hand clapping, and excitement from the students. The sound subsides when the principal emerges from behind the stage curtains and takes a seat on a rocking chair situated in front of the entire school body. Holding a book, the principal begins to read, and the entire school shares a common experience.

Kick off your school's literacy mission with a Literacy Pep Rally. This schoolwide learning community event gathers parents, students, teachers, administrators, staff, and literacy coaches together to reaffirm their commitment to teaching and learning literacy.

Literacy coaches should start the school year by discussing with the administration the school's broad vision for literacy. Based on that discussion, the school principal, with the help of the literacy coach, creates a Literacy Pep Rally where plans can be announced for the year, including creating schoolwide book clubs, instituting grade-level book talks, and challenging students to read a certain number of books during the year. The entire school community can share a read-aloud from a meaningful text, celebrate schoolwide literacy successes, and enjoy presentations from guest authors and illustrators. The Pep Rally initiates a literacy mission for the year and encourages the entire school community to work toward that mission.

If you are a literacy coach working in early and elementary literacy programs, you'll find a wealth of resources and strategies—like the Literacy Pep Rally—in The Literacy Coach's Companion, PreK–3 by Maryann Mraz, Bob Algozzine and Brian Kissel. For more ways to enhance your coaching role and promote literacy initiatives in your school, download Chapter 1 of The Literacy Coach's Companion, PreK–3:

Free chapter: Your Role and the Task at Hand: The Responsibilities of a Coach in Supporting Effective Literacy Instruction

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Look at the pictures and think about the story.

Say the beginning three sounds. blocks

Read on to collect clues.

Go back and read again.

Break words into parts. paint + er = painter

Good readers use strategies such as these to figure out unknown words or to make sense of their reading. You can help your students to remember these strategies with two helpful tools from Diagnostic Literacy Assessments and Instructional Strategies: A Literacy Specialist's Resource—the Good Readers Poster and the Good Readers Bookmark. Display the Good Readers Poster in the classroom and provide each student with a personal Good Readers Bookmark.

Read the strategies aloud and provide examples for using each of the strategies while you read. While students are reading, remind them to use their Good Readers Bookmark strategies whenever they come to words they don't know or if what they're reading doesn't make sense. Students can take the bookmarks with them and have the strategies at hand wherever they read.

Diagnostic Literacy Assessments and Instructional Strategies provides everything you need to assess and teach necessary literacy skills to grade K–8 children, including strategies and diagnostic assessments for such crucial topics as language and vocabulary development, phonological awareness, fluency, and comprehension. To get all of the book's reproducibles for assessments and instructional strategies—including the Good Readers Poster and Bookmark—download the Appendix:

Free reproducibles: Appendix: Assessments and Resources

To learn more about assessing and nurturing language and vocabulary development, download Chapter 2 of Diagnostic Literacy Assessments and Instructional Strategies:

Free chapter: Language and Vocabulary Development

To read more about this book or order online, click here.

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