There are so many fantastic educators leading the way in literacy, shifting not only how we teach reading and writing but what we consider to be literacy as a whole. These are my Top 5.

1. Pernille Ripp - Follow Pernille on social media (see her blog about what she posts on which site) and you will be guaranteed to walk away with a wealth of book recommendations, not to mention strategies for creating a culture of reading in your classroom and, more recently, becoming an anti-racist educator. Not on social media? That's ok - Pernille has written 4 books that elaborate on creating a community of passionate readers and learners.
2. Donalyn Miller - If you've read The Book Whisperer or Reading in the Wild, then you know the magic of Donalyn Miller. Her books are beautifully written but, even more importantly, they share ideas that will transform how you teach reading in your classroom. From the 40 Book Challenge to the #bookaday summer reading challenge, Donalyn focuses on inspiring students to become lifelong readers.
3. Colby Sharp - Like Pernille Ripp, Colby Sharp is #goals when it comes to building a classroom library that will inspire kids to read. He regularly highlights new books on his Instagram page, hosts the podcast The Yarn, where he interviews some of the best middle grades and YA authors around, and co-organized nErDcampMI, the first literacy-focused EdCamp. He has also written a couple of books, one of which is the writing focused The Creativity Project.
4. Jennifer Serravallo - Through her multiple books, articles and blog posts, Jennifer shares practical strategies that every teacher can implement in their classrooms to grow strong readers and writers. If you already own The Reading Strategies Book, you'll be interested to know that she completely updated chapter 3 to reflect recent research (you can read her letter about that here). Jennifer's books go well beyond tips and tricks...these books are jam-packed with easy-to-implement strategies for all areas of reading and writing (bonus: 2 of the books are available in Spanish).
5. Adrienne Gear - I remember attending a pro-d session with Adrienne back when her first book was merely a photocopied booklet handed out during the session. Now, Adrienne has 7 published books (with another one coming soon!) with accompanying resources in French and English. In many ways Adrienne is a combination of the rest of the educators on this list - part practical strategies, part inspirational ideas and part book recommendations. Stay up to date with her latest releases, including her GearPicks Pack book subscriptions for schools, on her website and on social media.

- Being a master reading teacher begins with being a master reader. Donalyn Miller
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- The true alchemists do not change lead into gold; they change the world into words. William H. Gass

Are you teaching reading or teaching readers? What about writing? What's one thing you can change today to make sure that all of your students see themselves as readers and writers?

Critical literacy examines the relationships between language and power in text (text, in this case, can be anything from a picture book to a novel to a social media post). It is a way of analyzing texts to identify issues of power, injustice and equity. Similar in many ways to information literacy, critical literacy focuses less on locating information and instead emphasizes analyzing and evaluating sources from a social justice standpoint. In reality, one cannot effectively function without the other; to analyze information one must first locate it and, conversely, one cannot evaluate sources without critically analyzing them.

As more and more of our lives shift online, reading and writing are changing rapidly. Several studies have shown that the skills necessary to be literate in the 21st century have expanded from simply being able to read and write printed text to being able to consume and produce a variety of texts, from traditional print to digital technology (Serafini, 2012). As teachers, we need to become curators of a variety of content that allows students to not only access a wide variety of texts, but to be able to think critically about the content and draw connections between them. Enter multi-modal text sets.
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• A navigator will not only decode the written text but also navigate the visual and design elements of a text, including non-linear elements such as hyperlinks.
• An interpreter will make sense of the written, visual and design elements of a text being navigated.
• A designer will make choices about how to actively construct meaning from all of the available elements of a text based upon their own personal interests, needs and experiences. In short, the reader-viewer is actively designing their experience with the text.
• An interrogator will question why each element of text has been presented when, where and how it has been. They will analyze the content to better understand the purpose of the various elements and how they connect to the overall meaning of the text.