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Al Roker

Empowering Parents

Getting support for your struggling reader. Learning to read is a challenge for almost 40 percent of kids — and a challenge for their parents. Hosted by Al Roker, the show visits schools in Huntingtown, Maryland, and Portland, Oregon, to see how families learn to identify early signs of reading problems and find ideas for getting their kids the help and support they need to succeed at reading.

Empowering Parents: Reading Rockets Parents' Guide

Empowering Parents: Reading Rockets Parents’ Guide

From the moment your child is born, there are simple things you can do to help him or her become a good reader. This guide helps parents build a child’s early reading skills at home, recognize signs of trouble, support the child as they enter school, understand options for extra support, and recognize when parents need to go outside the school for help.

Encouraging Your Child to Read

Encouraging Your Child to Read

When reading is an enjoyable part of everyday life, children will develop positive attitudes about reading. These tips for parents demonstrate how to make reading a part of life for preschool and school-aged children.

Encouraging Your Child to Read

Encouraging Your Child to Read

This booklet outlines the reading and language skills that children develop at different ages and suggests activities to help develop these skills — activities that every family can try and that are fun for both caregivers and children.

Parent with elementary child talking to teacher at school

Engaging Family and Community in Afterschool and Summer Programs

Informal literacy experiences often serve to shape young people’s identity as readers and writers as much as or more than formal schooling.Community and family support can emphasize the importance of reading and writing, build confidence, influence young people’s literacy habits, and encourage youth to seek out ways to engage in literate activities. Through a renewed national push for literacy on all levels, both families and community members have diverse opportunities in which to impact students’ literacy skills.This article offers strategies to develop community engagement.
Elementary kids holding up word study examples in class

English Gets a Bad Rap!

English orthography, or the English spelling system, may not be as transparent or easy to spell as Spanish, Italian, or Serbo-Croatian, but it’s not crazy! Most English word spellings can be explained and most English words do follow spelling patterns.

Illustration of open book with ideas and clouds

English Language Arts Standards

Get an overview of ELA standards in the U.S., with links to sample state standards, and a summary of the key shifts for ELA and literacy in the Common Core State Standards.

Young Latina student smiling in the classroom at her desk

English Language Learners

Explore how to create a welcoming classroom for your ELLs, specific strategies that support bilingual children in each area of literacy development, and tips on connecting with families.

elementary teacher working with a small group of students in class

English Language Learners with Learning Disabilities

Bilingual speech-language pathologist Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan discusses effective assessment and instruction strategies for English language learners with learning disabilities, as well as ways to help encourage the active involvement of parents of ELLs with LD in their children’s schools.

English Learner Tool Kit

English Learner Tool Kit

This 10-chapter toolkit features recommendations on how to implement best practices with ELLs. It includes information on topics such as how to write curriculum, communicate with parents, and serve ELLs with disabilities, as well as updates on research. The toolkit is the companion document to a letter sent to states, which outlines legal obligations to English Learners under civil rights laws.

America’s National Parks

Enjoy the Summer!

There is a lot to do in late summer. There are parks and museums to visit, pools to swim in, oceans to explore, backyard adventures, and even insects to observe. But even if you never leave your own neighborhood, you can explore these and more when you look through the pages of books. 

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