ABSTRACT
The literacy opportunities, materials, and projects that teachers provide for students give powerful messages to children about the role, importance, and nature of reading, writing, and thinking in everyday life. Teachers make many daily decisions about curriculum in classrooms. Even when using the state frameworks and adopted textbooks as the core of their literacy curriculum, teachers must necessarily select specific texts and activities. Teachers who are using a literature-based or interdisciplinary curriculum make decisions about themes, literature, time and space utilization, project publication format, and assessment. What the teacher values is reflected in the many decisions. Children, even very young children, interpret and, in many cases, internalize the messages transmitted by these decisions.
