Today’s Literacy Headlines

Though perhaps best known for his children’s books featuring animals illustrated in collage, Lionni was also an innovative graphic designer, painter, sculptor and teacher. Across his work, he promoted curiosity and creativity, and encouraged people to consider their role in the world. Lionni associated with a wide swath of creatives, including artist Andy Warhol, designer Paul Rand and architect Buckminster Fuller. He also helped launch many careers, including that of Eric Carle, who also became a renowned children’s book creator.

Faced with classrooms comprising readers at myriad levels—often several grades apart in the same room—how can principals best support teachers in differentiating? How can they orchestrate school-wide interventions that support students’ growth and success as readers and communicators, and build the skills that are foundational for success in career and life? To better understand the nuances of this leadership challenge, [Edutopia] spoke with Nicole Ey, principal of Ellenville Elementary School in New York State and a 2022 NAESP National Distinguished Principal, about her school’s approach to closing gaps in reading scores across elementary grade levels.

Last week, as leading education experts gathered — again —to ponder the nation’s sluggish recovery from pandemic learning loss, one speaker put the issue in stark relief. “This is the biggest problem facing America,” Jens Ludwig, a University of Chicago professor, said flatly. Nonetheless, he told those assembled at the Washington, D.C., event sponsored by the Aspen Institute, a think tank, “We do not have our hair on fire the way it needs to be.”

Some of America’s biggest names in education tackled some of the thorniest issues facing the country’s schools on the op-ed pages of The 74 this year, expressing their concerns about continuing COVID-driven deficits among students and the future of education overall. There were some grim predictions, but also reasons for hope. Here are some of the most read, most incisive and most controversial essays we published in 2023.

Here are the year’s most notable picture, chapter and middle grade books, selected by our children’s books editor.

Following our annual tussle with hundreds of studies of merit, we’ve pared them down to 10 you shouldn’t miss—from what AI can (and can’t) do to the neuroscience of brain synchrony.

It was a weekend of learning, sharing, laughing — and even shedding some tears — as librarians and library leaders gathered at the SLJ Summit 2023: A Vision for the Future. The highlight of Sunday’s program was a keynote from “Wimpy Kid” author Jeff Kinney, who spoke about librarians’s impact. “You’ve made it your life’s work to make sure we see the humanity in one another,” Kinney said. “Books might be empathy machines, but librarians are the beating hearts of the communities they serve.” Kinney has spent his most recent book tour celebrating librarians across the country and around the world. 

A new report finds that a parent-led tutoring effort in Oakland produced similar gains in reading for young students as instruction from classroom teachers — a nod that could fuel similar efforts in other districts. The evaluation, from the Center on Reinventing Public Education at Arizona State University, calls community members “untapped pools of talent” in the effort to improve student achievement.

Students around the world suffered historic setbacks in reading and math during the COVID-19 pandemic, with declines in test scores so widespread that the United States climbed in global rankings simply by falling behind less sharply, a new study finds. The state of global education was given a bleak appraisal in the Program for International Student Assessment, the first study to examine the academic progress of students in dozens of countries during the pandemic. It finds the average international math score fell by the equivalent of three-quarters of a year of learning. Reading scores fell by the equivalent of half a year.

Spring 2024 Scholastic Book Fairs will integrate books that were controversially separated out this fall in a now-discontinued elementary school collection of titles related to diversity and LGBTQ+ issues, the company has announced. The company has enhanced its online title previews, saying they’ve become necessary to help educators navigate around state and local curriculum restrictions.

[The] call-and-response approach, where kids are asked to sound out letters, split apart sounds and put them back together is a peek into the future of how all Minnesota kids will learn to read. It’s called phonemic awareness and it’s one strategy that teachers in Rochester are using to help kids decode words. Earlier this year the Legislature passed the Read Act. The new law seeks to undo the legacy of Minnesota’s vast reading gap by requiring schools to teach reading in new ways. The act gives $70 million to schools to pay for training and curriculum from a menu of approved options. 

Anyone who has ever read a picture book that bored kids to tears will understand what I mean when I say that not every picture book is a “readaloud” picture book. In this world there are lapsit books and there are readaloud books. The lapsit book is for a one-on-one experience. The readaloud can work just as well for 400 kids as it can for one. It just has to have something about it that engages and interacts with its audience.

Hanford said what will be needed to bring substantial success includes good training of teachers, adequate resources and staffing, and strong attention to all the aspects of what is often called the “science of reading.” Plus patience, a willingness to make mid-course corrections, and humility in thinking that you know the answers.   

I have been building my Black history library since my junior year of college, when I taught third and fourth graders about the Harlem Renaissance. My library has been growing ever since, but whether you have a large collection of books or are just starting out, there are always new titles for you to discover. Here are a few tips for getting started building your own collection of Black history-focused books.

From a 200th-anniversary edition of Clement C. Moore’s Christmas Eve tale to lightheartedly loopy poems for every day of the year.

The science of reading is thankfully supplanting dubious methods of teaching young children to read, as state policymakers across the country are increasingly expanding, refreshing, and/or adopting new early reading legislation to prioritize what works. A recent study, conducted by Michigan State University researchers, asks whether such legislation impacts short-term reading and math achievement, as well as economic and racial test-score gaps. They also investigate whether potential impacts depend (or not) on particular policies or groups of policies to move the needle.

With the ‘right-to-read’ settlement, California agreed to give an extra $50 million to 75 elementary schools with the worst reading scores in the state to improve how they were teaching reading. A pair of Stanford University education researchers studied whether the settlement made a difference, and their conclusion was that yes, it did. Third graders’ reading scores in 2022 and 2023 rose relative to their peers at comparable schools that weren’t eligible for the settlement payments. Researchers equated the gains to an extra 25% of a year of learning.

To try to make up for pandemic learning loss, educators and policymakers have searched for solutions that work and — just as important — are cost effective. Now a new stud reports positive results from a reading program in California that emphasized training teachers in the principles of the science of reading, a movement focused on foundational skills such as phonics, vocabulary and comprehension.

New research suggests that parents should use sing-song speech, such as nursery rhymes, with their babies, as it aids language development. Phonetic information is not reliably processed until around seven months of age, whereas rhythmic information helps babies recognize word boundaries from the start. The study sheds light on language learning and its relation to dyslexia and developmental language disorders.

Children’s and YA author Kelly Barnhill asks, Am I still a writer if I’ve lost my words? “Recently, I wrote a story. Only six sentences long, but a story nonetheless. With a character, a place and the passage of time. An opening, a turn, a conclusion. Such a small thing, a tiny accomplishment. And yet. I stared at the card for a long time, utterly astonished.”

Formal childcare gave pre-schoolers’ vocabulary a boost during the first year of the pandemic, according to new research. Young children could produce an average of 29 more words for each day they spent in childcare, and understand an average of 16 words more than toddlers who did not spend time in childcare settings. Communication and problem-solving skills also improved for children from less affluent homes who attended early childhood education and care (ECEC), the U.K. study found.

These games can spark creativity, boost engagement, and teach important executive function skills such as turn-taking. The following are some favorite games for morning meetings, developed over the last decade of bringing theater residencies to schools. These can be played in a circle by the whole class simultaneously, in table groups, or even in partnerships.

When Gil Gershoni was in 3rd grade and his teacher assigned the 30 or so students in his class turns at reading aloud, he quickly developed an avoidance strategy. He figured out the approximate number of seconds that each student read. Two students before his turn, he would raise his hand and ask to go to the restroom, where he’d sit in a stall and count in his head until he knew that his turn had been bypassed by at least two students. Then he would return to his seat in the classroom and hope the teacher didn’t circle back to him. Decades later, Gershoni now jokingly calls it his “power play.”

Here’s to keeping it interesting. Pushing the envelope. Pushing boundaries. Pushing buttons. Here’s to children’s books that expand our assumptions of what a children’s book can be.

Providing elementary students with multiple means of action and expression helps ensure that teachers create equitable, valid assessments.

Advocates of teaching morphology argue that it can help older students who still struggle to read multisyllabic words, and that it can support deeper and richer vocabulary development as reading becomes more complex and discipline-specific. Morphology instruction is also gaining popularity within the “science of reading” movement, which aims to align classroom practice with research evidence. Still, exactly how and when—or even if—to teach morphology are open questions, said Kathleen Rastle, a professor of cognitive psychology who studies language, literacy, and learning at the Royal Holloway University of London.

New laws give the Minnesota Department of Education more say over how schools approach reading instruction. A handful of districts may provide a glimpse into how state leaders expect every educator to teach young children how to read. It’s been nearly a decade since Anoka-Hennepin officials began moving away from a literacy approach that relies heavily on the development of vocabulary and context clues. Educators now teach children the roots of words and repeatedly practice decoding them so that it becomes second nature, part of a strategy known as structured literacy.

Literacy experts have largely praised the new mandate. By moving from a hodgepodge of different curriculums that varied school by school, it’s easier to train teachers at a larger scale. But observers also warned that getting teachers up to speed quickly with new materials would prove challenging — and that success would hinge on whether teachers felt adequately supported. The city did not give schools much lead time, announcing the overhaul less than two months before the summer break. Teachers were expected to roll out new materials when they returned in September.

The animated show called “Carl the Collector” follows Carl, a raccoon with autism who loves to collect things, and his friends in Fuzzytown, a place where everyone is learning about themselves and those around them. Carl is described as warm-hearted and energetic, laser-focused and having great attention to detail, but he struggles with anxiety in new circumstances and when things don’t go as expected. His friends include both neurotypical and neurodiverse characters.

What children who face eyesight, hearing and literacy challenges can decipher may be limited, but what they appreciate and celebrate knows no bounds.

The nonprofit Khan Academy is making strategic decisions to shore up its position at the forefront of the use of artificial intelligence in K-12 education. One move it’s making—announced Nov. 15—is to cut the price almost in half for use of Khanmigo, its AI-powered chatbot that is currently being used in 32 school districts. Later this month, the school districts that use the tool will be able to employ a new feature, offering personalized feedback on student essays and other writing.

Dan Santat’s A First Time for Everything won the 2023 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature. A clearly moved Santat accepted the award at the National Book Foundation ceremony on Wednesday night. “I’d like to thank everyone at the National Book Award Committee, and especially this year’s judges for selecting such a diverse range of books from young adults to middle grade and picture books and graphic novels, which demonstrate that a wide variety of stories can be worthy of such high praise,” he said. He finished with a special acknowledgment of his mother.

The buzz around the science of reading can mean that a focus on writing instruction becomes lost in the mix. Instead of the science of reading, maybe we should refer to it as the science of literacy. Why? Because the processes of reading and writing are connected, and we should be thinking about how we teach reading and writing in a connected way in the classroom. Reading is receptive and writing is generative, and these skills work hand in hand when we receive, process, and communicate ideas.

For years, North Carolina’s quest to improve reading skills focused on the kids who were falling behind. In 2021, attention shifted to the teachers who couldn’t increase reading proficiency, with the General Assembly providing more than $90 million to retrain elementary school teachers. But what about the schools that teach the teachers? The UNC system’s Board of Governors recently hired a consultant to check up on its 15 colleges of education. The goal was to make sure graduates would show up for their first jobs ready to help children learn to read.

L.M. Montgomery’s oft-forgotten novel, which turns 100 this year, is more timely than ever.

One reason so many diagnoses are missed is that thousands of schools in the U.S. continue to use an iteration of the discrepancy model to test children for learning disabilities. Moreover, for a multitude of reasons, including biases in IQ tests, a disproportionate number of those diagnosed—and helped—have been white and middle- to upper-class. “It’s unfair, it’s discriminatory, and it disadvantages already economically disadvantaged kids,” says Jack Fletcher, co-founder of the Texas Center for Learning Disabilities in Houston and one of the first scientists to question the discrepancy model’s validity.

About half of all parents say that their children have struggled to learn how to read at some point in their education. Still, the majority think that their child’s elementary school is putting the right amount of emphasis on reading skills, and that instruction in the subject is going “pretty well,” or “ok.” These are the findings from a nationally representative survey of 800 parents of children in grades K-5. The results shine a light on parents’ understanding of the “science of reading” movement—a recent push to align classroom instruction with evidence-based practice.

Studies have found that schools with a greater amount of teacher collaborations have resulted in higher student achievement outcomes in reading and math. Having collaborative structures in place will allow school systems to implement the following suggestions for enhancing teamwork between teachers and ELL specialists with greater ease.

It’s difficult to quantify all the potential benefits that students miss out on when they lack regular access to active certified school librarians or library media specialists, as they are sometimes called. But research and anecdotes show the range of losses extends from basic literacy lessons and the opportunity to learn research skills to powerful collaborations that can engage students and inspire a love of reading.

More districts and schools are using tiered systems of support, with an increased focus on building up students’ social-emotional skills. That’s according to a survey by Panorama Education, an education technology company that provides tools to help school districts adopt and use multi-tiered system of supports, or MTSS. MTSS is a framework implemented by thousands of districts across the country, with the goal of identifying and meeting every student’s unique instructional, social-emotional, and behavioral needs, according to Panorama. It is based on three tiers of support, each more personalized and intensive, with the understanding that not all students need the same amount of instruction and intervention.

The 10 winners of The New York Times/New York Public Library Best Illustrated Children’s Books Award are chosen each year by a rotating panel of three expert judges. On the 2023 panel were Sean Qualls, an award-winning illustrator of many acclaimed picture books; Maria Popova, a cultural critic and picture book author; and Christopher Lassen, a children’s librarian at the New York Public Library.

My students love to be on the computers and get so excited when I say we are going to be doing a lesson online. However, I refuse to allow students to simply log screen time in my classroom. The tools and resources my students use must generate discussion and are often used in a team or partner setting, as I strongly believe that student interaction supports our instructional goals. Here are are five of the best online tools I’ve found that support student discussion and help improve literacy.

While many public school students remain months or years behind academically, significantly fewer are participating in supplemental academic programs over the summer and this school year. Fewer than 1 in 5 K-12 students participated in academic programs in public schools this summer, and about 1 in 8 are taking part in remedial or enrichment activities after school in 2023-24 — both down from the last school year, according to the latest results from the federal School Pulse Panel, which came out this week.

A Navajo scholar offers insight and resources for educators. Farina King, a Navajo Nation citizen, is the Horizon Chair of Native American Ecology and Culture and associate professor of Native American studies at the University of Oklahoma. “Every November, someone contacts me to present about Native Americans for Native American Heritage Month. In such presentations, I provide background about the month and why it matters. But I also emphasize how important it is to learn about Native Americans not just in a single month or at a single event. I stress turning to and listening foremost to Native American and Indigenous voices throughout the year.”

We Need Diverse Books has launched Indigenous Reads Rising (IRR), a new website dedicated to “celebrating Indigenous children’s literature of Native Nations.” The site features booklists and articles on Native American literature, land acknowledgment, and tropes and stereotypes, as well as extensive resources for teachers, librarians, and readers. The goal of the resources is to help educators use Native books in the classroom and offer guidance and best practices on how to teach those books. 

A recent bill introduced by United States legislators whose children have dyslexia is exposing the importance of testing children for dyslexia and providing dyslexia accommodations for those who need them. Dyslexia is one of the most significant causes of illiteracy in the United States, and U. S. Senator Bill Cassidy, who hails from Louisiana, is no stranger to the subject. “It is an issue that is very important to me, both as a parent of a dyslexic child and as a Senator,” Cassidy said in a Senator Education Hearing on Dyslexia in 2016. 

Most tests that elementary teachers take to enter the profession don’t adequately measure their knowledge of best practices for reading instruction, a new analysis contends. How elementary teachers are prepared to teach reading has become a central topic in the “science of reading” movement, a national push to align literacy instruction with evidence-based practices. Some in the education field, including NCTQ, make the case that stronger licensure tests will lead to better student reading outcomes. But changes to state licensing systems, especially those that introduce new requirements, have long been controversial.

As district superintendents who oversee more than 80 schools combined in Brooklyn and the Bronx, we have seen firsthand how a well-chosen reading curriculum can spark and hold students’ interest, sharpen instruction, and shape classwork that builds confidence and literacy alike. In our schools, reading lessons build foundational skills, vocabulary, critical thinking, and a bank of background knowledge that connects students to one another and prepares them for lifelong learning.

Jill Moore’s wheelchair doesn’t prevent her from exploring parks, playgrounds and other public spaces. In fact, as an inclusive play specialist for Minnesota-based playground designer Landscape Structures, she’s developed an expertise in noodling through landscapes that able-bodied people sometimes take for granted, searching for access opportunities and impediments designers might have overlooked, or as she puts it, “connecting the lived experience with the design.”

Two groups have aimed to find consensus in one contested area of the ongoing reading wars: what the “science of reading” should look like for English learners. In a statement released in October, The Reading League, an organization that advocates for the science of reading, and the National Committee for Effective Literacy, a group that promotes research and policies to support literacy development for English learners, agreed on best practices for evidence-based reading instruction for EL and emergent bilingual students.

These picture books feature characters who find ways to communicate with older relatives or with each other, even when they don’t share a common language.

Our comprehensive, all-in, research-based look at the design of effective learning spaces. We tried to identify factors that might be addressed within classrooms immediately, or within school or district budgets over a longer term. 

Intervention systems work when they are supported by great Tier 1 instruction, embedded as research-based tools, implemented with fidelity, and when the most qualified educators are working with our neediest students. If those four qualifiers are not met, then RTI or MTSS is likely costing your school or district an exorbitant amount of money and time while not having a significant impact on the performance of your students. There are five steps an administrator can take to examine the effectiveness of these programs. Administrators should carefully evaluate the goals of intervention programs, what they hope to achieve, and how closely they are being followed. 

Names are one of the topics covered in We’re Gonna Keep on Talking, which Orr co-authored with Philadelphia educator Matthew R. Kay. The book guides educators through how to foster meaningful conversations about race with elementary school students. The names unit, which Orr has done about five times over the last 15 years, uses books to initiate discussions within the classroom. The authors recommend how to structure partner and class dialogues and how to create a supportive environment for students to share their experiences related to names. The unit also encourages students to delve deeper into their own identities by gathering information about their names from their families.

Studies have shown that students who score higher on tests of general knowledge are also comprehend more of what they read. Informed by these findings, some curriculum companies have organized their English/language arts series to build students’ background knowledge on a collection of topics. Now, advocates of this knowledge-building approach have released a tool, designed for states, districts, and schools to evaluate how well curricula they’re planning to adopt meet this goal—or how their current selections stack up. The Knowledge Matters Campaign, a group that advocates for this approach to ELA instruction and has endorsed several curricula, debuted the tool on Wednesday.

Today, the Knowledge Matters Campaign is unveiling a new K-8 English language arts curriculum review tool to advance the understanding of truly high-quality, content-rich literacy instruction. The new Knowledge Matters Review Tool identifies eight dimensions to high-quality, content-rich ELA curricula.

Intensive, high-dose tutoring can boost early reading skills, even in a virtual format, according to a new experimental study. Researchers from the National Student Support Accelerator at Stanford University tracked the reading progress of about 2,000 K-2 students in a dozen Texas charter schools. Through video chats, each tutor gave groups of one or two participating students supplemental lessons in phonics and decoding for 20 minutes a day, four times a week, from September 2022 through May 2023

The Ravenswood City School District, which has about 1,600 students in its elementary and middle schools (excluding charters) in East Palo Alto and Menlo Park, saw chronic absenteeism spike from just 471 out of 2,549 (18.5 percent) during the 2018-19 school year to 846 out of 1,637 students (51.7 percent) in 2021-22. This one district is just one example of a nationwide issue. In 2021-22, 6.5 million more students across the U.S. missed at least 10 percent or more of school days than in 2017-18, according to an Attendance Works analysis. Students miss out on foundation skills that impact them forever when they miss school, including learning to socialize with their peers, said Sara Stone, Ravenswood’s assistant superintendent of teaching and learning.

By reading books out loud every day, teachers introduce students to higher-level texts and new vocabulary, while modeling deeper thinking and strong discussion skills.

When it comes to student demographics, such as children living in poverty, Oklahoma and Mississippi are often comparable. But the two states are very different when it comes to students’ ability to read—with Mississippi pulling away from Oklahoma. State officials are now trying to change that trend and close the gap, and some see Mississippi as a template. “Are we modeling after Mississippi?” state Rep. Dick Lowe, R-Amber, asked officials with the Oklahoma State Department of Education at a recent legislative study. “Mississippi had such a great turnaround. It’s just been amazing to see that. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel.”