Editors’ Overview and Insights

Overview & Insights

FROM THE EDITORS

Dear Readers,

We are delighted to share with you the Fall 2022 edition of The Oklahoma Reader, the journal of the Oklahoma Literacy Association. We hope you enjoy the featured articles and the regular columns of the journal.

This issue begins with a letter from Dr. Eileen Richardson, Oklahoma Literacy Association’s chair for 2022-2023. In this letter, she poignantly reminds us that teachers are indeed superheroes, and she commends not only Oklahoma teachers but also the Oklahoma State Department of Education for its recently published dyslexia handbook and for offering LETRS training to Oklahoma teachers. As editors, we certainly echo these sentiments.

This issue contains three featured articles: 1) The Lenses We View Ourselves, Our Students, and Knowledge Through: Partnering with Our Students When Teaching Nonfiction Texts in Secondary Education, 2) Books that Celebrate African Americans’ Achievement in STEM, and 3) Mimesis: Using Mentor Texts as the Basis for Reading and Writing Poetry. In the first featured article, Rebecca Maldonado reviews four different types of knowledge lenses and how each one affects pedagogy and learning. She focuses on how teachers can use a constructivist lens when teaching nonfiction text to secondary students. In the second featured manuscript, Annie White provides a book review of five books that depict the lives and achievements of African Americans in STEM. The picture books featured in this manuscript are inspirational and celebrate the accomplishments of people of color in STEM. In the third featured manuscript, Keith Polette describes how mentor texts can be used as a basis for students as they write their own poetry. The mimemic workshop and the mimemic process are described, and five mentor poems that can be used from fourth to ninth grades are presented.

Following the featured articles, Holly Rice and Eileen Richardson provide teachers with tips for providing social-emotional learning through literacy in “Are the Children Okay?” Using Social-

Emotional Learning through Literacy; they offer some specific texts that can be used for that purpose. Then DiAnne McDown shows us how to involve young students in learning to infer in Teaching Inference Using Scavenger Hunts of Text During Close Reading. To wrap up our Teacher-to-Teacher section, Cathy Smith offers us her insights into Creating a Culture of Literacy in the classroom, focusing on interactive read-alouds, the classroom library, student choice, time, and parental and community involvement.

In addition to these articles, several regular columns can be found in this issue. First, Jennifer Morris has written a book review of Digitally Supported Disciplinary Literacy for Diverse K-5 Classrooms. In the research column, Linda McElroy provides a summary of Kelly and Likens’ (2022) research on Preservice Teachers’ engagement with fourth graders through virtual book clubs. Shelley MartinYoung’s Tech Talk column provides information to teachers on how to use technology to engage, explore, and explain. Next, in the policy column, Dr. Julie Collins has provided a legislative update relating to dyslexia and reading education. Finally, Sue Parsons’s insightful children’s literature article focuses on picture book biographies of three well-known and well-loved classic children’s authors. The article is timely considering recent events in our state and country.

As editors, we would like to express our thanks to the journal authors, contributors, and manuscript reviewers. Without these individuals, a publication like this would not be possible. We would also like to encourage you to attend the Oklahoma Literacy Association’s Annual Conference on Saturday, April 1, 2023 at Oklahoma Christian University. The theme this year is Energizing the Reading and Writing Connections; Dr. Carol Jago will be the keynote speaker. We look forward to seeing you on April 1st!

Sincerely,

Susan Morrison, Barbara McClanahan, Maribeth Nottingham