The mission of the U. S. Department of Education is to ensure equal access to education and to promote educational excellence for all Americans. The Department WebSite includes information on funding, research, publications, and programs.
The Office of Elementary and Secondary Education strives to promote academic excellence, enhance educational opportunities and equity for all of America’s children and families, and to improve the quality of teaching and learning by providing leadership, technical assistance and financial support.
The Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) is a component of the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS), which is one of the principal components of the U.S. Department of Education (ED). OSEP’s mission and organization focus on the free, appropriate public education of children and youth with disabilities from birth through age 21. OSEP is a major funder of Reading Rockets.
The Administration for Children and Families (ACF), within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is responsible for federal programs that promote the economic and social well-being of families, children, individuals, and communities.
The primary purpose of descriptive writing is to describe a person, place or thing in such a way that a picture is formed in the reader’s mind. Capturing an event through descriptive writing involves paying close attention to the details by using all of your five senses.
Many of the adults in your child’s life are unfamiliar with learning disorders in general, or your child’s unique pattern of strengths and limitations. Developing a one- to three-page dossier that provides useful information about your child can help their babysitters, coaches, teachers, bus drivers, school support staff, neighbors, and relatives understand their limitations.
This teaching tip highlights a strategy that assists teachers in structuring classroom discussions about texts. Specifically, this conversational technique helps students think and talk about a text beyond its literal meaning. Students learn to make decisions about why a particular phrase is the Most Valuable Phrase (MVP) within a text as a whole.
Use Curriculum-Based Measurement to make sure students are on track for academic success by charting their trajectory of improvement all the way through the school year. CBM calculates rate of improvement during the first month of school and determines how much a student will need to improve each month to reach benchmark goals.
Concerns about how to build academic vocabulary and weave its instruction into curricula are common among classroom teachers. This article reviews the research and offers some practical suggestions for teachers.
Introducing elementary-aged students to local and community news through the newspaper can help them strengthen comprehension and research skills. Community news keeps it relevant to the kids, enhancing motivation to discuss and learn more about what they are reading. Classroom activities are included in this article.
What should fluency instruction look like? And what can teachers do to help students whose fluency is far behind their peers’? This article can help practitioners effectively use fluency-based assessments and select instructional practices.
