Today’s Literacy Headlines

Discussing her latest novel Tree. Table. Book. with SLJ, Lois Lowry explains how, from her first book to The Giver to now, she has always been intrigued with the concept of the gifts that age and youth can give to one another. 

A $2.5 million gift from billionaire MacKenzie Scott will jump-start a new grant program that aims to improve outcomes for Colorado’s youngest children. Early Milestones Colorado, a statewide policy and research group, received the donation from Scott last year after what leaders there describe as an exciting and mysterious process. They used the gift to create the Impact on Equity Fund, which will begin awarding $100,000 grants this fall to Colorado organizations that work on prenatal and birth-to-3 issues.

Investments that California and other states have made in public preschool have helped many parents through a child care crisis, in which quality options for early learners are often scarce and unaffordable. But many parents say the programs don’t work for their families. Even when Pre–K lasts the whole school day, working parents struggle to find child care before 9 a.m. and after 3 p.m.

This rich compilation shares 2024 books from previous Pura Belpré author and illustrator medal and honor winners.  The Pura Belpré Award (opens in a new window), established in 1996, is presented annually to a Latino/Latina writer and illustrator whose work best portrays, affirms, and celebrates the Latino cultural experience in an outstanding work of literature for children and youth.

Six years after they were first introduced, a package of bills that would put a library in almost every Michigan public school got a hearing for the first time in the Senate on Tuesday.

Quick learning “pulse checks” during and after lessons can be a powerful way to “improve and enhance student learning,” says veteran teacher and author Jay McTighe. Designed to assess students’ understanding of concepts or their ability to apply new skills, formative assessments can also inform next instructional steps.

When Jenny Kist’s students walk through the classroom door every morning, they take out their “little safe place” boxes. Made to be a portable version of a calming physical space in Kist’s early childhood education classroom, these small plastic pencil boxes hold everything Kist’s students need throughout the day to practice self-regulation and emotional identification.

Inside classroom 148, a gleeful Alyce Hartman was telling the tale of three musicians: a squirrel cradling a guitar, a grizzly bear plucking a bass, and a chicken strumming a banjo. Storytime with students is among the hallmarks of Birdie’s Bookmobile, a pop-up literacy initiative launched in 2022 by Hartman.

Engagement is a key ingredient in the recipe of learner success. If you’re a teacher, it’s the difference between building student skills and knowledge and having to go back and explain everything again. Engagement is just as important for educators who work outside of the classroom, like national park rangers, because keeping visitors involved in a learning experience that is noncompulsory is no small feat. In honor of National Park Week, here are three unique engagement strategies to try in your classroom that come directly from “America’s Best Idea.” 

Juleus Ghunta is a published children’s author and award-winning poet. But growing up, he could barely read. Ghunta and his three siblings lived in a rural part of Western Jamaica. They were raised by a single mother, and she often had to make tough choices about how to use their limited resources — including a decision to send his oldest sister to school, and to keep Ghunta at home.

After preschool enrollment took a nosedive during the pandemic, a new report offers some encouraging news. A record share of young children enrolled in preschool last school year, and state spending on preschool reached an all-time high.

Observation, exploration, and discovery are three main skills that young children (kindergarten to second grade) generally develop when they interact with their surroundings. Some children prefer to take time to observe the environment before moving around to explore, while others choose to immediately start actively discovering the wonders within the environment. Nurturing an environment that ignites curiosity and facilitates exploration, therefore, is paramount.

Staff and students at Yates Elementary in Schenectady, N.Y., rarely end a conversation without uttering two words: “Choose Kind.” The phrase, written on signs throughout the school and spoken at the end of daily loudspeaker announcements, has become a motto for staff and students after nearly a decade of implementing social-emotional learning, which teaches students how to manage their emotions, cultivate healthy relationships, and foster empathy.

It’s becoming harder, or at least less common, to read the old-fashioned way. But the new ways of reading are not all bad, says writer Jay Caspian Kang.

We’re curious: What are your favorite poems to teach, and why do they hold a special place in your curriculum?

From poems about planets and trees to poems about LGBTQIA+ heroes, young readers from elementary through high school will find something to enjoy here. Share these titles for National Poetry Month and all year long.

NJ Spotlight News joined Teresa Dispenziere’s class in February to observe reading instruction. After a whole-group lesson led by reading specialist Kathleen Deeken, students split into three groups of around six students each, to focus on different skills.

The International Literacy Association (ILA) has partnered with the American Educational Research Association (AERA) on a unique initiative to amplify student voices in discussions surrounding social justice, educational research, and reimagining literacy education. This exciting work will be showcased during a cosponsored Presidential Session this weekend at the AERA Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, Pa.

An expert in special education shares strategies for building strong and enduring relationships with students’ families that every teacher can use.

Educators at Brooklyn School of Inquiry, along with elementary schools across the city, have been required to adopt one of three reading programs, part of a mandate under schools Chancellor David Banks to boost literacy rates by flushing out popular but increasingly discredited programs. But resistance may grow louder as the city has required all local districts to adopt the new reading programs by September. Some parents and educators at schools gearing up to use the new reading materials this fall have started speaking out, arguing the curriculum changes could threaten to upend the project-based learning or teacher-created curriculums that make their schools distinctive.

We must never lose sight of the fact that until reading instruction serves all students equally, we are shortchanging everyone and society. Most importantly, we must advocate for teacher preparation programs that send educators out into the world with the skills they need to ensure success for every child in every classroom, regardless of “the language they are loved in” (to quote my mentor, Dr. Moats).

Schools around the country are changing the way they teach reading. And that is having major consequences for people who sold the flawed theory we investigated in Sold a Story, an American Public Media podcast produced by Emily Hanford. But Lucy Calkins, Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell are fighting back — and fighting to stay relevant. And so are organizations that promoted their work: The Reading Recovery Council of North America and the publisher, Heinemann.

This Q&A with Ester de Jong, professor of culturally and linguistically diverse education at the University of Colorado-Denver and co-editor for the Bilingual Research Journal, digs deeper into questions about how the Science of Reading applies to bilingual and biliteracy development. 

Sandra Boynton’s simply drawn sheep, chickens, cows, ducks, and monsters have entertained children, and their parents, for nearly 50 years, but the hippos have always been at the heart of her work. Thanks to many, many bedtimes, I have warm feelings for those hippos, and now Boynton is revisiting the berserk all-night party in a new book, Hippos Remain Calm. I took the occasion to email with her. We discussed remaining calm in these troubling times, the mysteries of hippopotami, and the connection a parent makes to a beloved story.

It’s an exciting time for children’s literature and diverse books. Every year, more exciting new titles hit the market with a rainbow of diverse characters to capture the imaginations of children. But there are just as many exciting new titles in nonfiction for young readers, and in many cases, kids prefer those to fiction. A study published in the Journal of Literacy Research found that more than 80 percent of first-graders chose nonfiction when picking their own book, the Washington Post reports.

By utilizing on-demand writing for assessment and long-range writing for scaffolded practice of applying various writing techniques, teachers can approach their instruction with intentional and tailored lessons that meet the needs of the learners in the classroom, as well as help students develop self-regulated behaviors when crafting a piece of text.

Education isn’t living up to its potential. Its researchers aren’t, either. Just last month, Mark Schneider wrapped up his six-year term as the director of the Institute of Education Sciences. At IES, he was charged with overseeing the nation’s education research efforts, including such well-known efforts as the National Assessment of Educational Progress and the What Works Clearinghouse. In this interview, Schneider talks about the need to improve scalability and to translate research work into plain, accessible English.

Missy Testerman has enjoyed a teaching career that is decades longer than most, spending more than 30 years in first- and second-grade classrooms. But when she saw that her K-8 school district in rural Appalachia was quietly becoming a refuge for families from Mexico, Central America and Asia, she shifted gears and became an English as a second language teacher, pushing to smooth her students’ — and their families’ — transition to life in the U.S.Testerman on Wednesday was named the 2024 National Teacher of the Year by the Council of Chief State School Officers. As Teacher of the Year, she’ll spend a year traveling the U.S. as an ambassador to the teaching profession, telling The74 that she’ll urge other teachers to become advocates for their students — and for their fellow educators.

As an English as a Second Language specialist at her Tennessee school and a long-time member of her rural Appalachian community, Missy Testerman often finds herself straddling two worlds, trying to bridge the divide. That could mean anything from accompanying a student and his mother to get a refill for epilepsy medication, to showing the staff at the local courthouse how to use a translation app so they can communicate with immigrant families.“Simple gestures such as sitting with my students’ families at high school graduation or a school play goes a long way in helping them find acceptance in our rural area since I have belonged to this community for decades and others trust my lead,” Testerman wrote recently. “I take this role as ambassador seriously, and I am thankful for the opportunity to connect these groups.” And now, Testerman will be serving as an ambassador on an even bigger stage: She’s the new National Teacher of the Year.

The children in three illustrated satirical tales are up against something far more complex than ogres, witches and big bad wolves.

Assessment data shows some progress since 2021 in the percentage of K-2 students on track for reading, but that rate of progress has slowed more recently, according to an analysis by Amplify. Only about half of students across grades K-2 are on track for learning to read and 3 in 10 students are far behind, data collected from the middle of this school year shows. In recent years, many states and districts have invested in science of reading initiatives to improve literacy rates.

English language learners (ELLs) in secondary grades are exposed to many texts, daily, across subjects. To learn the content, they need translations and scaffolds that help them understand the ideas in the texts. However, with the shortage of ESL teachers, ELLs are usually provided with language support only once or twice a day. One of the best things educators can do is to equip ELLs with strategies that help them independently comprehend any text across all subjects. Google is one underappreciated way to support English learners. 

When students are reading below their grade level, these different approaches can motivate them to engage with texts and improve their literacy skills: provide a diverse selection of reading materials with images; use multimedia resources; scaffold reading; and connect reading to real-life experiences.

The tale behind a new museum of children’s literature is equal parts imagination, chutzpah and “The Little Engine That Could.” On a crisp Saturday morning that screamed for adventure, a former tin can factory in North Kansas City, Mo., thrummed with the sound of young people climbing, sliding, spinning, jumping, exploring and reading. Yes, reading. Welcome to the Rabbit Hole, a brand-new, decade-in-the-making museum of children’s literature founded by the only people with the stamina for such a feat: former bookstore owners. 

Quick (and fun) strategies to check for understanding, reinforce learning, and identify misconceptions in the last moments of class. There’s not always time for closing activities, of course—even ones that require limited advance planning. But when you can spare a few minutes, especially at key junctures like the end of a chapter or project, they can offer brief but powerful opportunities to “correct, clarify, and celebrate.”

But amid the abundant research dedicated to figuring out how best to teach kids the basics of reading, some educational researchers are examining a more amorphous, next-level concept: What gets students to read—to the degree that they reach a state of complete absorption? The concept, known as story world absorption, refers to the mental state of a reader immersed in a story.

How the bunny became the reigning star of children’s literature. We have a complicated relationship with bunnies. On the one hand, we keep them as preschool companions, expect them to deliver candy one Sunday every spring and, in later years, read perennial bunny best sellers to our children, from “Pat the Bunny,” “I Am a Bunny” and “The Runaway Bunny” to “Guess How Much I Love You” and “Knuffle Bunny.”

For schools in or near the path of totality of the April 8 eclipse, the event has inspired lessons in science, literacy and culture. Some schools also are organizing group viewings for students to experience the awe of daytime darkness and learn about the astronomy behind it together.

“Accelerated Learning” appears to be the buzzword of the day in education. It’s what all schools are supposed to be doing to help students recover from another buzzword — “learning loss.” It is, in fact, what good teachers of English Language Learners have been doing for years. Good ELL teaching is good teaching for everybody!

As is often the case with rapid change, “the speed at which new technologies and intervention models are reaching the market has far outpaced the ability of policy researchers to keep up with evaluating them,” according to a dazzlingly thorough review of the research on education technology by Maya Escueta, Andre Joshua Nickow, Philip Oreopoulos and Vincent Quan published in The Journal of Economic Literature in 2020. Some of the most promising research is around computer-assisted learning, which the researchers defined as “computer programs and other software applications designed to improve academic skills.” 

A new survey by Ed Week found that more than half of teachers in grades 3-8 report their students’ reading stamina has “declined precipitously” in recent years. As you build up students’ stamina, consider trying out some of the following approaches to ensure you’re setting students up for success—and that they’re getting the most out of the texts they’re reading. 

Exploring broad scientific concepts can build teachers’ confidence and deepen students’ foundational learning, an early childhood expert says. By focusing on concepts — like how light makes a shadow — rather than the memorization of facts and scientific procedures, educators can help deepen young students’ foundational learning of science through exploration. 

The Reading League Compass is a web-based platform organizes resources to help stakeholders better understand how practices and curricula align to the science of reading. It includes materials, available at no cost, to support five constituencies: educators and specialists; those working with English learners/emergent bilinguals; administrators and administrator preparation programs; educator preparation programs; and policymakers and state education agencies.

Congress is currently considering legislation to update the way that the federal government funds education research and development. A new federal report has revealed big room for improvement in the way that Washington funds education research and development (R & D): A $1 billion Obama-era program yielded few improvements in student outcomes.

So how can school districts capitalize on the crucial summer months and make learning more equitable? In partnership with the Wallace Foundation and the District Summer Learning Network implemented by the nonprofit development organization FHI 360, our team at the Center for Policy, Research, and Evaluation at New York University is studying how districts implement high-quality summer programs with an eye toward equity. We analyzed 2022 summer planning documents from 26 districts and identified four strategies they’re using to make the programs more equitable.

Librarian Blaire Beathard at Mohawk Elementary in Richardson is bringing Jayme Sandberg in to read her book, Total Solar Eclipse: A Stellar Friendship Story. Beathard says students are getting excited about being part of a rare event and being able to look at the sun without hurting their eyes. In addition to Sandberg’s visit, in the week leading up to the eclipse, teachers will be talking about the eclipse in class and doing activities from the Total Solar Eclipse companion workbook, according to Beathard. The district curriculum department has also provided lessons for teachers to use in their classrooms.

It’s a sunny March afternoon at Winchester Village Elementary School in Indianapolis, and teacher Natasha Cummings is leading her class in a brand new lesson. It’s the first time she’s teaching it — and also likely the last. The second graders audibly gasp when Cummings explains the day’s activity: They’ll be simulating a total solar eclipse using the real sun, an inflatable globe and a moon made out of a play dough ball mounted on a stick. On April 8, a narrow strip of North America will experience a total solar eclipse, in which the moon entirely covers the sun, darkening the sky so that only the sun’s corona, a ghostly white ring, will be visible. Indianapolis is one of several cities in the path of totality. The last time that happened was over 800 years ago, and it won’t happen again until 2153.

Most picture books about autism talk about the challenges the main characters face or the accommodations they are required to make to live in this world. These books are enormously important because they open a window into the life of a person with autism. They help parents, teachers, librarians, and clinicians discuss autism with children. However, for undiagnosed autistic girls, something more may also be needed. Each autistic girl is her own individual kind of autistic, and she may not recognize herself in a book that portrays another individual’s autistic life. 

While teachers play a crucial role in helping students succeed, it is families who hold the key to unlocking literacy. Parents can reinforce at home the reading skills learned at school. Here are suggestions for promoting literacy that have little or no cost: audiobooks, keeping books in places that kids frequent, letter play, reading challenges, and games and songs.

A boy’s mother is missing. Her Olivetti was the last one to see her before she disappeared. In her debut novel, Allie Millington’s titular character, a midcentury Lettera 22 (called Olivetti, after the company that made him), is a sentient if stationary being who — like so many teddy bears, action figures and sock puppets in children’s literature and pop culture — can worry, remember, love and fear. 

Lots of research has shown that intensive tutoring is one of the best ways to help students improve academically. And it’s become a go-to strategy to help kids who missed a lot of instruction during the pandemic. But a new study suggests high-dosage tutoring can boost something else, too: attendance. Preliminary research recently released by Stanford University’s National Student Support Accelerator, which is conducting various tutoring studies, found that D.C. students who participated in an intensive tutoring program were more likely to show up to school on days they had a scheduled session. Overall, the likelihood they’d miss school on tutoring days fell by 7%, researchers found.

Jonathan Kozol, longtime educator and the author of many influential books, including Savage Inequalities, Death at an Early Age, and The Shame of the Nation, has just published his latest book, An End to Inequality. The new book discusses how children of color in many schools are shortchanged, as well as ways to provide them with an educational experience of high quality.

By 2025-26, all of the state’s 4-year-olds should have access to the state’s free ‘transitional kindergarten’ program. But some districts are further along than others. There are teachers who should have aides, but don’t. There are districts, like rural Mendocino, where some transitional kindergarten classrooms don’t have attached bathrooms and where school playgrounds aren’t designed for 4-year-olds. Many districts can’t hire enough staff for afterschool programs to accommodate the new transitional kindergarten students, forcing working families to scramble for care.

A forthcoming study presented at the annual Association for Education Finance and Policy conference in Baltimore last week looks at the short and long-term costs of Michigan’s Read by Grade Three law. The law calls for districts to support struggling readers in early grades through literacy coaches, “evidence based” curricular materials and assessments, and developing Individual Reading Improvement Plans for students.

A straightforward plan for facilitating multimedia projects helps ensure collaborative learning and a fun classroom experience. It’s easy for the lesson to become entirely centered around how to use the software without any subject-area content learning. Through years of trial and error with K–6 students, I’ve developed three guiding concepts for elementary video projects so that teachers and students have a good experience.

When it comes to teaching children to read, Mississippi is a bright spot, one of three states whose gains in reading achievement put their schools ahead of where they were before the pandemic. California is one of ten states where reading scores continue to fall. California policymakers may be angered by the comparison, but they can’t ignore or dismiss the data. There are three things they could learn from Mississippi’s progress.

People with autism often face a stigma for stimming — a repetitive behavior to regulate emotions that can sometimes look like someone flapping their hands or wiggling their fingers. The children’s book “Flap Your Hands: A Celebration of Stimming” presents an opposing narrative; stimming is natural and wonderful, taking families through a colorful journey of acceptance and joy. Here & Now’s Deepa Fernandes speaks with author and illustrator Steve Asbell.

The Blueberry Award is the nation’s most prominent award for those children’s books produced in a given year that strengthen kids’ connections with nature and fosters action for the planet, created by the Evanston Public Library. In addition to the winners list, you can find a slew of resources for parents (including Best Nature Board Books of 2023, The 2023 Blueberry Educators Resources Booklist and Great Adult Books selected by the 2023 Blueberry Committee).

Simple, effective exercises can help elementary students develop the foundational writing skills they need for their academic journey. The 5 strategies include: handwriting in the early grades, dictated sentences, writing to read, reading to write, and writing about what they are learning and why it matters.

Gertrude Chandler Warner’s “The Boxcar Children,” celebrating its 100th year, depicts the delights of concocting scrumptious meals. It’s an unassuming yet captivating book, depicting a sort of fantasy world with no (or very few) adults, a secret hideaway and the delights of junior domesticity — playing “house” and concocting scrumptious meals. It’s like reading about a group of kids who’ve gone camping without counselors.