Today’s Literacy Headlines

Orton-Gillingham was once used primarily with children who have dyslexia but is now being used more broadly. That’s because it contains the five components of evidence-based instruction identified by two national panels on reading and early-literacy instruction: teaching phonemic awareness, systematic phonics lessons, promoting reading fluency, vocabulary learning, and reading comprehension. Underpinning this reading instruction is its multisensory approach, whereby instructors use sight, hearing, touch and movement to help students connect language with letters and words.

At Makakilo Elementary, Christine Carder posed a question to her first graders. “What letters make the sound ‘ea’ as in tea?” The class eagerly scrambled to write down the correct letter combination in their notebooks. This exercise helps to build students’ phonemic awareness, instructional coach Karen Yogi explained to the group of parents invited to observe Makakilo’s reading lessons for the morning. Older students will later advance to activities such as reading in pairs and assessing each other’s fluency and vocabulary skills, Yogi added. “This is why my son says he’s famished at dinner, instead of hungry,” said parent Donna Sinclair, noting the improvement she’s seen in her fifth grader’s vocabulary this year. Makakilo Elementary is one of about 80 schools in the state to receive funding from a roughly $50 million federal grant awarded in 2019 to improve literacy among the country’s youngest readers.

Is it better to have all English learners together, separate from their non-English learner peers? How about more instructional time in a heterogeneous classroom? Or pull-out sessions for language development? The answer, researchers say, depends on a variety of factors and decisions including the demographics of a district’s English learners, their language proficiency levels, teacher capacity, and the consideration of trade-offs that occur when choosing one grouping model over another. Yet some educators hold to the assumption that grouping English learners together—separate from other students—is the most efficient way to provide the additional support these students are legally entitled to receive.

American Falls swings conservative,yet the town has proudly embraced a goal that backers describe as “progressive”: universal preschool. Residents have rallied around a simple mantra — “read, talk, play” — and turned it into a movement. That homegrown success has been fueled by a broader experiment spreading across the state, where communities build their own systems for early childhood education. These ad hoc projects are known as “collaboratives,” and they bring together educators, school district leaders, and nonprofit and business executives to identify and dismantle barriers to early childhood development. It’s known here as early learning done “the Idaho way.”

Today’s K–12 classrooms are brimming with the use of technology. Students use computers and websites to access digital materials, work on projects and produce presentation materials, and take assessments, to cite a few examples. Alongside this widespread technological adoption, the growing linguistic and cultural diversity in classrooms has broadened the essential literacy skills required for students. Literacy skills extend beyond reading and writing printed texts and increasingly involve navigating varied communication styles in diverse contexts.

At Clinton Hill Early Learning Center (opens in a new window) in the South Ward, everything is designed with the city’s youngest children in mind. Many of the wall decorations are just 2 feet off the ground — the perfect view for infants and toddlers. The lobby overflows with plants and sunlight, the classrooms are filled with color, and the courtyard has climbing structures, toys, and, most importantly, padded flooring. Clinton Hill Early Learning Center offers one solution for closing gaps in financing early childhood education. The center is funded by the Maher Charitable Foundation, a philanthropy (opens in a new window) that engages in early childhood education projects and policy efforts and has previously funded the expansion of Newark early learning facilities.

Share these titles featuring Indigenous characters with young children, tweens, and teens all year long!

Today’s post is the latest installment in a series on simple moves teachers can make that offer the potential for large classroom impacts.

Here in Cicero School District 99, students are getting an extra 30 minutes of reading or math instruction every day, which adds up to around three additional weeks of school. School leaders hope that will be enough time to teach students key skills they missed and boost test scores. The initiative has added new instructional challenges for Cicero teachers, who were already busy putting a new reading curriculum in place and helping students cope with the ongoing fallout of the pandemic. Still, Cicero stands out for making a longer school day a reality. While many schools used COVID relief funding (opens in a new window) to beef up summer school or add optional after-school tutoring, far fewer added extra time to the school day or year.

Board books are a solid hit with tots and sturdy sellers in the publishing industry. They’re also a powerful tool for neurodevelopment in young children. The science behind board book learning supports the market boom around their popularity. “The number one most important thing about board books is the pages’ thickness, because babies and toddlers don’t have the fine motor skills to turn paper pages,” says Caitlin Gallingane, clinical assistant professor in the University of Florida’s College of Education. That enables the development of “concepts of print” — how to hold a book, how to turn pages. Babies learn these basics not just by seeing, but by getting their hands on books and mimicking their grown-ups.

Meg Medina, the current National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, has worked with the Literary Initiatives Office of the Library of Congress to create a project called Cuéntame!: Let’s Talk Books. The idea at the heart of Cuéntame — which means “tell me,” or, literally, “story me” in Spanish — is that talking about books is something that children should feel totally at ease doing, just as they’d talk about any other topic with their friends, family and teachers. Too often in school, talking about books is reserved for “book reports” or presentations.

More than a decade after it was phased out in most schools, elementary school students in California will begin learning cursive writing next year — thanks to a new law.

Schools are obligated to provide interpretation services for families of English learners, but most don’t. Now there’s some momentum to change that.

Scholastic is reversing course, saying it will no longer separate diverse stories for school book fairs after weeks of mounting backlash from educators and authors. The educational company, which both publishes and distributes books, waded into hot water last month after it confirmed that it was changing its policy for its middle school book fair offerings. It said it was putting most of the titles dealing with race, gender and sexuality into their own collection, and allowing schools to decide whether to order it, as they would with any display.

This post is the second in an ongoing series about small teacher moves that have the potential of a big impact on students.

School Library Journal shares its latest batch of starred book reviews, filled with a diverse collection of titles and a new counting book from the late Mauriece Sendak.

Our meta-analysis sampled 36 studies focusing on educational apps designed to improve math and reading skills in children aged 3 to 9. The findings bring good news: The overall effect of these apps is positive. But before parents and teachers rejoice and hand over tablets to their kids for the entire day, it’s important to note that the average positive effect hides significant variation in app effectiveness. Our study revealed that the effects of the apps ranged from slightly negative to hugely positive. With such a wide range of outcomes, it’s crucial to explore the characteristics of the studies and apps that may explain these differences.

At the beginning of the school year, it can feel like we’re endlessly assessing students. Especially with our youngest learners, we want to monitor their progress in phonological awareness, letter names, letter sounds, sight words, blending, etc. Trying to manage all of this data collection can feel overwhelming. But imagine how process monitoring can change when students are engaged in data reviews and goal setting. Changing my mindset around data transformed data collection from a monotonous task to the best part of my day. The impact of these metacognitive strategies extended far beyond simply monitoring academic progress. 

Dozens of Scholastic book fairs are ongoing in schools across the country this fall. Annually, the publisher provides books to about 120,000 book fairs, according to Scholastic’s website. Here’s what you need to know about what students can find at book fairs, who organizes them, who selects the books for them, and more.

Young readers will delight in these tales, both fun and (slightly) frightening, about preparing for and enjoying the holiday with family and friends.

Guest editors Tiffany K. Peltier, lead learning and delivery specialist for literacy at NWEA, and Marissa J. Filderman, assistant professor at The University of Alabama, saw the issue as a way to help provide clarity on the topic. In their opening letter, the pair write, “Many struggle to identify evidence-aligned intervention and assessment practices for students at risk for or identified with dyslexia. Understanding what dyslexia is — and what it is not — can better enable us to help students learn how to read and succeed in school.”

The remembrance of things past and the deconstruction of old traumas are at the heart of two exceptional new middle grade novels. “Remember Us,” by the National Book Award winner Jacqueline Woodson, and “Gone Wolf,” by Amber McBride, both draw from real-life events to imagine richly detailed worlds of pain and beauty. “Remember Us” recalls the fires of 1970s Bushwick. “Gone Wolf” begins in a 2111 Southern breakaway nation after a second Civil War.

The distinct and evolving genre merges devices of fiction and poetry with a clear narrative arc — and it’s uniquely compelling to middle and high school readers. To find out more about how middle and high school teachers are incorporating this exciting literary form into lessons, I checked in with educators from Texas to Shanghai and came away inspired to use verse novels with my students this year.  

A popular reading organization has sued the state of Ohio in an attempt to block changes Gov. Mike DeWine’s administration recently made to how early reading is taught in the state. The Reading Recovery Council of North America filed a lawsuit against the state and DeWine earlier this month, prompted largely by the bill’s attempt to stamp out a teaching practice that it has used in its own teacher-training program. It’s one of the first major legal challenges to a wave of recent state legislation aiming to align classroom instruction to the “science of reading”—the broad base of research on how children learn to read.

Students and teachers are again returning to campus, but this time in a new environment — in which Covid remains an ever-present threat, but no longer frames our everyday lives — as the country collectively adjusts to a new normal. Last year, in the first days of school, we sent reporters across the country to see how students were feeling about returning. This year, as school began, we sent reporters into the field again, to see how much — or how little — has changed, and to answer a simple yet pivotal question: Where are we now?

If graphic novels are flying off the shelves at your library, that reflects a remarkable trend: In the last few years, the format’s popularity has shot up at over 90 percent of school libraries, according to a new SLJ survey, with the biggest jump in elementary schools. Students are clamoring for humor and contemporary fiction, in particular, and manga is exploding in popularity. Manga works now comprise 43 percent of high school graphic novel purchases, according to librarians who responded to SLJ’s 2023 Graphic Novels Survey.

While most states remain behind, South Carolina and three others — Iowa, Mississippi and Tennessee — are recovering from or exceeding COVID-related declines in reading, according to researchers at Brown University. Iowa and Mississippi have also surpassed their 2019 performance in math. Experts say improvements in literacy instruction and an accelerated return to in-person learning are among the key policy decisions contributing to the rebound.

It’s fall, which means it’s Scholastic Book Fair season. Schools across the country are setting up shelves in their libraries and gymnasiums to let students shop a vast selection of books provided by the educational and publishing company. It’s a highlight for many students, and a nostalgic memory for many adults. But the events have also waded into controversy, after the company behind them changed its policy to help schools navigate the growing number of book bans in the U.S. — and was quickly accused of caving to censorship.

I’ve invited educators to share the three most important—AND most likely to be used—strategies that general education teachers can use to make their content more accessible to ELLs (and everyone else). Suggestions include framing the lesson, adding visuals, and being mindful of rate of speech.

COVID-19 impacted every aspect of life, and schools are still dealing with its residual effects. Many teachers blame the pandemic for low achievement and isolation from peers as the root cause of student conflicts in schools. But are there more positive narratives to tell? I sought out the perspectives of five teachers through informal conversations about how schools have improved since the pandemic. Four themes emerged.  In technology, mental health, and nurturing and solutions-oriented environments, COVID provided lessons schools have taken to heart.

An anthology that combines new work with selections from The Brownies’ Book, a children’s magazine launched by W.E.B. Du Bois, is bringing its mission to bear in a new national context. Karida L. Brown, a professor of sociology at Emory University and co-author of “The Sociology of W.E.B. Du Bois,” has compiled a tribute anthology of work by contemporary artists and writers punctuated with selections from the original magazine. “The New Brownies’ Book: A Love Letter to Black Families,” will be published by Chronicle Books.

As early literacy has become a national cause célèbre, there is momentum in about half the states to require or allow retention of students in third grade who are behind grade level in reading. The case for retention has powerful appeal. Research shows that students who are behind after third grade rarely catch up. And as RAND Corporation researchers Umut Ozek and Louis T. Mariano wrote this month in a policy brief for The Fordham Institute, the tide of research shows that retention is good for kids, at least in elementary school grades. That’s if it’s done right.

The latest batch of board books features smart offerings and sweet stories that meet young children right where they are developmentally. Many of these books are decked out with sounds, touch-and-feel elements, and die-cuts that will fully engage small hands and curious, growing minds. Also of note are the more sophisticated takes on the wider world that have continued to invade the board book category. For example, it’s now possible for toddlers to spend a few stiff pages in another country, immerse in another culture, or learn about climate change in their own.

With reading in elementary school, we can provide rigorous grade-level instruction, plan for rigorous grade-level meaningful learning opportunities, and provide responsive support. The most effective support comes in the form of just-in-time scaffolds that are temporary and provided only if needed. I focus on data to plan scaffolds (including observation and student work), rather than making assumptions about who needs them.

What, exactly, does the “science of reading” mean? The phrase has become popular over the past several years, used as a shorthand for many of the instructional changes schools have adopted to bring reading instruction more in line with research on how kids actually learn to read. But not all educators share the same definition, an EdWeek Research Center Survey found, a potential challenge to better aligning research and practice nationwide.

Jeff Kinney, author of the mega-bestselling Diary of a Wimpy Kid books, holds a unique position. With the launch of volume #18 in the series, No Brainer, he will use the requisite book tour to make a statement—in support of libraries. “We decided to put on a tour in which librarians and libraries are really the centerpiece,” he says. “These days, especially, librarians have been put in this position where they have to be very courageous, with the constant threat of book bans. Being at the center of the culture wars, libraries are in a really vulnerable position.”

The number of students in special education in the United States has doubled over the past four decades, with schools responsible for providing special services to a growing segment of their student bodies. The increase in the percentage of students on IEPs isn’t necessarily a bad thing, according to experts. While it could signal that traditional classrooms are less suited to meet the instructional needs of a growing segment of America’s student population, it could also mean that educators have become better at identifying when students need special services and parents have become less resistant to seeking them out for their children.

New works of nonfiction and fiction transcend stereotypes, and connect a wealth of ideas and facts for young readers. Over the last 25 years, children’s books by Native American authors and illustrators have presented a vibrant and expansive view of American Indians and America. Joseph Bruchac has been telling Native American stories since the 1970s, helping to fill the void he noticed as a child eager to read about his Abenaki heritage. With often inspired results, he has brought careful research to folk tales, biographies and novels.

Words matter. Bilingualism and multilingualism are superpowers. But the US education system has not always had that view. Traditionally, not speaking English has been seen as a deficit, and accented English has been considered imperfect English. This approach has made emergent bilinguals and multilingual students less confident and has reinforced stereotypes that lead to inequality. There is a rich cultural background to every student’s heritage, including the languages they speak. We must elevate and honor these students because they hold the superpower of bilingualism.

Holding back struggling readers in elementary school can yield benefits that extend in surprising directions, a recently released study suggests. In addition to improving academic performance for targeted students, the authors determine that younger siblings in the same families also see greater success in school in subsequent years. The study, circulated as a working paper through the National Bureau of Economic Research, focuses on a Florida policy that has previously been shown to boost achievement among young learners.

A new study suggests that a curriculum that promotes science learning over time not only increases students’ science vocabulary and ability to read science-related texts, it enhances their general reading comprehension and even their mathematics achievement. Researchers from Harvard University, North Carolina State University, and the American Institutes for Research investigated the effects of a curriculum intervention called the Model of Reading Engagement (MORE). MORE was designed to help children in grades 1-3 build their knowledge of social studies and science content and vocabulary.

With about 66,000 students — more than the public school enrollment in Boston or Seattle — the Pentagon’s schools for children of military members and civilian employees quietly achieve results most educators can only dream of. How does the military do it? In large part by operating a school system that is insulated from many of the problems plaguing American education. Defense Department schools are well-funded, socioeconomically and racially integrated, and have a centralized structure that is not subject to the whims of school boards or mayors.

Recent school board and public library meetings discussing specific books in collections have been packed with emotional speeches and incendiary language.  Those arguments—for removing or retaining titles—can be very compelling. They capitalize on parental fears or succeed in tapping the empathy of others. But the battle against book ban attempts should be waged from a foundation of fact and statistics, says First Book president, CEO, and co-founder Kyle Zimmer. “We should not be making educational decisions, which impact the future of our kids, our communities, and, honestly, our country, based on emotion,” Zimmer says. “This should be a data-driven conversation. That’s why First Book has stepped up with these two studies.”

Although learning to identify sounds, letters and words is necessary for reading comprehension, it is not enough. Effective readers connect what is on the page with what they already know. So, what is deep reading comprehension, and how might we promote it in schools? For starters, it looks different in each discipline.

Teachers, reading specialists and other educators conducting dyslexia screenings should pay particular attention to students’ linguistic backgrounds to avoid over- or under-identification of students whose home languages differ from the language of instruction at school, according to an advisory released Monday by the International Literacy Association. 

When teachers make their teaching and learning goals clear to their class, every activity has a purpose and every student understands what they’re doing.

In July of 2021, Robert “Robby” Asberry took over as the new superintendent of Hancock County Schools, a small district in Hawesville, Kentucky. Driven by the negative academic effects of the pandemic on students and his own son’s struggles with reading, Asberry made overhauling the district’s literacy instruction one of his first priorities. Here’s what happened next.

For years, research has pointed to dual language immersion schools as a reliable option for English learners and their monolingual English-speaking peers to achieve academic and linguistic success. However, a longstanding dearth of bilingual educators has made it difficult to ensure universal access to this type of programming. New research from The Century Foundation, a progressive think tank, explores the challenges in growing a bilingual teacher workforce as well as potential federal and state policy solutions.

Gil Gershoni is the founder of the “Dear Dyslexia Postcard Project” being launched this October for Dyslexia Awareness month. Gershoni says he grew up feeling the frustration firsthand of seeing words on the page as a puzzle, struggling to read with dyslexia. This year, he asked others to write a postcard, expressing what dyslexia means to them through artwork and a word. “To me, dyslexia is mysterious,” said Maren Samuels, 11, who is in the sixth grade at North Bridge Academy in Mill Valley.

Reading-based learning differences such as dyslexia can pose unique challenges for students in school. These challenges, however, aren’t indicative of a student’s intelligence or potential. With understanding and tailored approaches, educators can create a supportive environment for these learners. Here are five critical steps to support students with reading-based learning differences.

It’s important to recognize that teaching reading is complex and cannot be left to chance. Students need instruction all aspects of word recognition and language comprehension in a systematic and intentional way. And they deserve to have teachers to continually update their knowledge base about effective instruction and actually work to implement that knowledge.

Schools nationwide are encountering ultiple challenges as they try to drive down stubbornly high absence rates. Students’ mindsets about attending school in person every day have shifted, staff say. Families are more likely to keep sick kids home. In some places, more families are experiencing economic hardships and housing instability. Emerging state data, compiled by Chalkbeat, suggests that the stunning rise in students missing school did not come close to returning to pre-pandemic levels last school year.

Debut picture books by Jason Reynolds and Michael Datcher celebrate the cultural history of a neighborhood. One click of his camera’s shutter is all it took for the New York Times photographer Chester Higgins Jr. to capture the magic of two powerful literary figures — the regal Maya Angelou, aglitter in sequins, and the soft-shoed Amiri Baraka, shoulders bowed and knees bent — dancing together. Higgins’s photo is all it took to inspire the multi-award-winning Jason Reynolds to write his debut picture book, so he could answer the question that immediately popped into his head: “Why were they dancing?”

A truly effective SEL program needs planning, resources, and structure to succeed. Buy-in must start from the top, with the district engaging administrators at each school as well as other key stakeholders, including classroom teachers, families, and the community. In the past couple years, the superintendent in my district, Terrell Hill, prioritized an SEL plan to support educators and students for their transition into the post-pandemic academic world.

For more than 100 years, Knapp Elementary has served students in its Racine, WI neighborhood. Today, of its 465 students, 85% are considered economically disadvantaged. The class that had largely missed Kindergarten due to COVID ended first grade in the spring of 2022. Just 4 percent read on grade level. One year later, in the spring of 2023, the number of students meeting benchmarks in reading had jumped to 42 percent, a better than tenfold increase. Kindergartners and K4 early childhood learners are making similarly impressive gains. The building is now buzzing with optimism–even teachers in upper grades.

A fun and meaningful activity can help early elementary students appreciate the different languages in their backgrounds. In my class, I have students make language portraits. Language portraits can come in different shapes and sizes, such as posters, collages, questionnaires, journals, and even poetry.

Students with learning differences may need extra support to thrive in school, engage in classroom discussions, and complete tasks. But all students bring unique strengths and needs to the classroom—whether or not they have diagnosed challenges with executive functioning or a learning disability like dyslexia—educators said. Education Week asked teachers to share the best advice they’ve received for supporting students with learning differences. They spotlighted flexibility, inclusivity, and clear communication as keys to success.

Teachers can guide pre-K students to understand and appreciate nature by discussing and documenting their observations. When young children spend time in natural environments, their cognitive, social and emotional, and communication skills improve. Connecting with nature expands brain development, promotes social interaction, and provides an environment conducive for imaginary play, discovery, wonder, and effortless curiosity.

Chicago Public Schools said Monday that last year’s kindergarten, first, and second grade students made promising progress in reading, according to data from a new test now used in most district elementary schools. Officials touted reading growth on a new test called i-Ready, which students took at the beginning, middle, and end of the 2022-23 school year. According to a press release, about 40% of kindergarten through second grade students were at or above grade level in reading by May, up from just 9% in September.  

Research into children’s learning disabilities is occurring at an elevated level all over the country but applying findings into impactful solutions can take years, much to the frustration of families and educators involved. But a research effort by principal investigators from Florida State University’s Florida Center for Reading Research (FCRR), the MGH Institute of Health Professions and the University of Virginia hopes to change that. A five-year grant is behind the Learning Disabilities Translational Science Collective, a multisite research center that will utilize $8,911,922 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development. The goal: translating discoveries from research into practical solutions.